Virginia Beach: Still Hating on Anything That's Not a Car

Ah, Virginia Beach, Virginia: the seaside navy town where active transit goes to die.

Last year, officials more or less told Millennials looking for better public transportation to hit the road. Now the city is posting prominent signs forbidding bikes, skateboards, rollerblades, and “motorized skateboards” in Town Center, the privately owned, open-air shopping plaza that amounts to the city’s downtown. The ban extends to public sidewalks adjoining the mall.

Beach towns skewed toward older, wealthier residents are famous for cantankerous restrictions on movement, speech, and noise that often seem to target younger people—no boomboxes after 9 p.m., hooligans! Scrub your filthy mouths!

On this theme, Virginia Beach is a curious variation: Though it relies heavily on tourism, it’s not exactly a sleepy getaway for retirees. It’s a city of 450,000 people—the largest in the state—with numerous military bases and a fairly diversified economy. Its Millennial population is growing faster than in most places in the country.

Yet local officials seem to yearn to be as unfriendly as possible to young people and their mobility preferences. Last year, the Virginia Beach City Treasurer John Atkinson quipped that the town could do without younger citizens supporting a light rail expansion proposal (which died in November ballots): “The city of Virginia Beach offers something to those willing to pay for it,” he said. “Those that want a freebie [of subsidized transit] can move to Norfolk.”

Now, in addition to posting signage forbidding “wheeled devices,” police say they’ll be addressing infractions consistently, having “noticed an uptick in trick bicyclists and skateboarders.”

“This is for the safety of everyone down there,” Virginia Beach police public affairs officer Tonya Pierce tells CityLab. “Skateboards and bikes should not be on sidewalks and in plazas where there are pedestrians. We are just looking for compliance.” She could not confirm whether there’s been an increase in injuries.

To our noses, making a show of banning cyclists and boarders downtown smells like another way to target younger (and perhaps non-white) locals. Wheeled devices were already forbidden in Town Center’s plazas by city code, and bikes are a no-go on sidewalks and foot-friendly infrastructure in most U.S. cities. But navigating the multi-lane, bike-path-free arteries that bound Town Center on a bike or skateboard looks to be a harrowing experience without hopping a curb or two.

Virginia Beach has struggled mightily to recover from the recession. Never mind all the economic benefits of a bike- and transit-friendly downtown—this town seems to prefer to Keep Downtown Unwalkable (Still).