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Transportation – RI Future http://www.rifuture.org Progressive News, Opinion, and Analysis Sat, 29 Oct 2016 16:03:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.25 Providence’s parkway proposal: the essence of community development http://www.rifuture.org/providence-parkway-proposal-community-development/ http://www.rifuture.org/providence-parkway-proposal-community-development/#respond Wed, 26 Oct 2016 16:14:33 +0000 http://www.rifuture.org/?p=68826 Continue reading "Providence’s parkway proposal: the essence of community development"

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elorza raimondoPlease join me in giving a round of applause to Mayor Elorza and the Providence Department of Planning and Development for their hard work and due diligence every step of the way during the 6/10 Connector’s community engagement process.

The city has been extremely transparent and open, taking the public’s input into consideration while drafting their design for the future of the 6/10 Connector. It is reassuring to know that the mayor and the planning department are actively listening to the needs and wants of the community. By taking a bottom-up approach, the City of Providence is conveying that its interests align with that of its communities, and appreciates the ideas and solutions that its residents bring to the table. Who else knows what’s best for the City of Providence other than the residents that live, work, and thrive here.

On Monday, October 3, the City released their draft plans for the future of the 6/10 Corridor at a public forum held at the Doorley Jr. Municipal Building in downtown Providence. While the City’s plans do not call for a surface boulevard that I and other community members would have liked to see presented, I can tolerate the parkway design. The parkway concept addresses the concerns of both sides about the looming question, “What should the future of the 6/10 Connector look like?” The plan addresses the need to fast-track the reconstruction of the structurally deficient Huntington Viaduct, out of concern that the structure might collapse. The plan appeases auto-interests as well as those citizens who want to see a concept that is more pedestrian and bike friendly, although we would much prefer a pure boulevard instead of a parkway.

The proposed parkway plan frees up land for development (approximately 50 acres), expands the footprint of DePasquale Square, adds two new off-street bike paths, creates a new exit to West Exchange Street, adds additional connections to the existing street grid, and reconnects parts of Olneyville to the urban fabric of Providence, among other things as well. The proposed “halo” elevated rotary where Route 6 merges with Route 10 allows for the potential to incorporate boulevard elements into sections of the route further down the line. While the entire length of the 6/10 Connector isn’t the pure boulevard that many of us had envisioned, the two-phased parkway plan allows the City and State to revisit the compelling arguments made in favor of an intermodal boulevard.

The most important aspect of the plan isn’t the plan itself. Rather, it is culmination of everything that has led to the plan being drafted in the first place. It is the countless hours spent by engaged citizens, who took it upon themselves to get involved, speak out, and voice their opinions about the project; citizens who persevered even when things weren’t going their way because they knew that this is a critical, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn the 6/10 Connector into something truly special. Without vocal citizens and lots of vigorous discussions, RIDOT would probably have elected to refurbish the highway a long time ago, and that wouldn’t have worked for motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, and city residents alike.

The future of the 6/10 Connector will single-handedly change the physical, social, and economic makeup of the city for generations to come. It is up to us as citizens to decide whether or not we want to make Providence a more livable community for our children, our children’s children, and ourselves. Or, if we want to sit idle, content with the current economic conditions in our Capital City. The choice is ours. RIDOT has the final say about the project’s design, and I strongly encourage my fellow Rhode Islanders to continue to be actively involved in the process, and vocal about the future we envision for a livable, thriving city for decades to come.

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How would you spend $17 million on downtown transit? http://www.rifuture.org/17-million-downtown-transit/ http://www.rifuture.org/17-million-downtown-transit/#respond Mon, 24 Oct 2016 13:30:36 +0000 http://www.rifuture.org/?p=68650 Continue reading "How would you spend $17 million on downtown transit?"

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RIPTAHave you heard about the $17 million “Downtown Enhanced Transit Corridor” grant that the city of Providence received for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority to develop a 6-stop enhanced bus corridor to run from the Providence Railroad station to a new bus hub in the hospital district?  Its largely the route originally planned to be for a streetcar.

RIPTA is organizing a “stakeholder” group to advise on implementation, the first meeting of which is scheduled for October 24.  The RIPTA Riders Alliance, of which I am a member, was invited to participate.  An open public meeting for all may be scheduled later.

$17 million should be enough to be a potential game-changer for downtown and for RIPTA, both of which are struggling.  Indeed RIPTA ridership has dropped significantly in the last 2 years, from about 20 to 18 million riders. Not long ago the RIDOT Director publicly called RIPTA a “failure” because of our low commute by transit rate.  The decision by Citizens Bank to locate a huge corporate “campus” west of I-295 where there is no transit is an indication of how little RIPTA can matter to employers.  Downtown is hurting too, from the long empty “Superman” building to the well publicized perception of unpleasant conditions and “chaos” in Kennedy Plaza.

RIPTA planners have said they intend to use the $17 million grant to jazz up the bus stops with enhanced amenities, to buy some ultra-clean hybrid buses, and have six of their lines (#1,3,6,51,58,72) routed on the
corridor to ensure very frequent service.

While this includes some good ideas, at $2/ride, soon likely to be $2.50, I don’t see how this will attract many new riders who don’t already have a pass or ride free anyway.  I don’t see how this expensive fare will do much to attract attention of those wanting to do business that might lead to economic redevelopment. Thus I suggest that the buses RIPTA wants to buy be used to establish a free loop on that corridor.

About a year ago the Coalition for Transportation Choices hosted a meeting here with invited speakers from Denver, Minneapolis and Hartford where transit initiatives were successful in building ridership and spurring economic development.  One thing Denver and Hartford (New Haven too) did to help do this was to institute a free bus shuttle connecting their train stations, also on the periphery, to key central locations.  So this can be done!  I’ll also add that having lived in Oregon 1974-75 when Portland OR was considered a failed city with a dead downtown, one thing they did, (Seattle too) to turn things around was to institute a fare-free downtown zone to get people more used to using transit and to come downtown where they can get around easily.  This was a great success even if it could not be sustained through the 2008 recession.

Not just those that love cities, we all have a stake in having our central city and transit system succeed as they have so much potential to contribute to the problem of combating climate change.

Those who think this is an idea worth exploring  need to encourage RIPTA to reconsider.  Operating funds for the shuttle is a problem, but if there is a will to do so perhaps Federal “CMAQ ” funds  can be reprogrammed for this purpose, at least for a few years.  (CMAQ helped support operating the old Providence-Newport ferry and the South County commuter rail.)  After the bad publicity on Kennedy Plaza, both for the buses and the city, something needs to be done to get positive attention.  And a free shuttle will help strengthen the value of our Northeast Corridor location and commuter rail access TO Providence, from the north and south.

This project, together with enhanced policing and better services for the homeless and mentally ill in the Plaza, can begin to turn the situation around for the better.   For reasons of environment, economy, and quality of life, and for those who love cities, we don’t want to squander this opportunity created by this grant to make a real improvement on our economy, environment, and quality of life.

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Occupy wants to reclaim Kennedy Plaza for the people http://www.rifuture.org/occupy-kennedy-plaza/ http://www.rifuture.org/occupy-kennedy-plaza/#respond Sun, 16 Oct 2016 20:33:58 +0000 http://www.rifuture.org/?p=68636 2016-10-15-occupy-5-years-02A protest organized by Occupy Providence and supported by RIPTA Riders Alliance was held in Burnside Park Saturday against plans by downtown building owners and allied politicians to push out buses and homeless people from the Kennedy Plaza area. October 15 marks the 5th anniversary of Occupy Providence. “We oppose the damaging idea of moving the state’s bus hub to a worse location far from downtown, and pushing people without homes into other parts of Providence without adequate services,” said the group in a statement, “We also oppose efforts by downtown owners to assert more control over the Kennedy Plaza area to the detriment of others.”

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“There is no ‘those people’ there is only ‘We the people!'”

As is the tradition at Occupy, the event took the form of an open microphone, where anyone was invited to stand up and address their concerns and ideas to the crowd. A sampling of the speakers is presented blow. Technical difficulties marred the video, but the audio is clear.

People spoke about the issues surrounding homelessness, the persecution of panhandlers, and the increase in the bus fares that will be impacting the most vulnerable come January. Three student from the Alpert Medical School at Brown University attended, arguing that public transportation is a health issue.

Randall Rose, a member of Occupy Providence, said, “The Kennedy Plaza area should be kept safe for everyone, and not put under the sway of a few owners who want to use their insider connections to make more money from a more tightly restricted downtown.”

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“Since when did it become a crime to ask for help?”

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Up Against a Wall with 6/10 http://www.rifuture.org/up-against-a-wall-with-610/ http://www.rifuture.org/up-against-a-wall-with-610/#respond Tue, 04 Oct 2016 14:37:22 +0000 http://www.rifuture.org/?p=68346 BgZZr1iCQAAMPOB (1)Mayor Jorge Elorza appeared with his team from Providence Planning to present a draft proposal for the 6/10 Connector Monday night. The plan took the form of a parkway.

The looming context of the meeting was Governor Gina Raimondo’s September 7th announcement to rebuild the highway as-is. Though the bridges in question remain open to car and truck traffic, Gov. Raimondo and Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti have maintained that the condition of the bridges creates an emergency situation in which the planning process must be severely curtailed. On the 7th, Director Alviti stated that the surface boulevard was “dead”. [It seems like this would be well known, but for full disclosure, that boulevard proposal came through the group Moving Together Providence, of which I am one founding member].

If there had been any hopes that the City of Providence would reignite the boulevard proposal, it did not happen Monday. The parkway plan honed very close to the design of a highway. The city’s plan made a number of changes to the RIDOT proposal that improved neighborhood connectivity through biking and walking access.

I’m going to take off my objective journalist hat and comment on some things I liked and did not like, as well as some things I continue to have questions about, as we move forward.

Good: Reclaiming Land

While the parkway continues to take up an extraordinary 240’ of width, the city’s plan nonetheless reduces the footprint in places to half of what the highway would be. This has allowed the city to claim fifty of the seventy acres originally expected to be developable under the surface boulevard proposal.

The Providence proposal reclaims significant land in Olneyville, with a phase two proposal to extend DePasquale Square into about half of the 13 acres of Federal Hill that were lost to the Dean Street exit/entrance ramps.

Good: Creating new connections for Smaller Streets like Magnolia and Tobey

As a former resident of Tobey Street, one of my favorite proposals was changing the Tobey Street on-ramp into a bridge connecting Federal Hill to Olneyville. Street grid connections like this are a good idea.

Bad: Continued Use of Traffic Pseudo-Science

Traffic engineers who are in any way honest understand that it does not make sense to do traffic counts on a road and then plan capacity for that roadway accordingly. Numerous highways have been removed and seen a significant part of the traffic that uses those highways disappear, and this is such a common occurrence that it is now a routine understanding. Given the political context of pressure from RIDOT to reify traffic counts, the City of Providence Planning Department did the logical thing, which was to base its various proposals on projections about how many cars would be on 6/10. This is going to make many of the otherwise reasonable proposals less livable. It’s a shame to see the boulevard proposal die on the western half of the roadway that inspired Cheonggyecheon.

Good: Preserved Space for Enhanced Amtrak and MBTA Upgrades

While Amtrak continues to look into whether to reorient the highly-traveled Northeast Corridor through Worcester instead of Providence, the Planning Department’s proposal to keep land open for enhanced rail travel is an important part of the economic and quality-of-life picture.

Bad: Stroad Design for Connecting Streets

The images used for connecting streets were four lane roads with anemic looking bike lanes alongside them. Urban streets should be two lanes, with even the most traffic-oriented streets getting two lanes with a turn lane. The bike lanes put in these proposals are anemically narrow (Dutch infrastructure goes for 4 meters to allow bikes to pass one another) and is without separation. These streets need a road diet.

Bad: Bait-and-Switch on the Roundabout

BgZZr1iCQAAMPOBThe Providence Planning proposal made use of a widely circulated image of a raised roundabout in the Netherlands, which serves bicycles crossing a Dutch highway. Problematically, this image was intended to go besides a proposal for a raised car roundabout to connect Routes 6 East and West and Route 10.

Roundabouts are not inherently a bad idea, but the use of this Dutch image is misleading. (Surface) roundabouts are an economical and safe way to connect roads that are high volume. (Would a raised roundabout that of course has many structures holding it up be cost-effective? That remains to be seen). They cost less than signalized intersections and usually allow more steady flow of traffic, causing them to be the default treatment in some states. Smaller roundabouts like the one carried out in Poynton, UK can be used in such a way as to create more pedestrian friendly areas while moving a surprisingly large number of vehicles. Larger roundabouts like those seen on Parisian boulevards can also carry a lot of traffic, but are being greatly curtailed as Paris attempts to revitalize the pedestrian connections around its major squares.  Dutch bike design takes pedestrian and bike crossings away from roundabouts, while using them as a connection for cars.

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In short, the roundabout should be understood as what it is: part of the parkway (which is really just a word for a scenic highway). The other connections need to put bike, pedestrians, and transit in the forefront.

Bad: No Real RIPTA Vision

While Providence Planning presented its efforts to remove cars from Olneyville Square via the raised roundabout as a way of improving through-flow of RIPTA buses, this follows the same induced demand logic that other traffic congestion schemes follow. Making a more direct connection between 10 N and 6 W will definitely take cars out of Olneyville immediately, but the pattern is that within a very short time traffic will fill that space and find equilibrium. So plans to create transit improvements need to acknowledge that. One way to improve transit-flow and make Olneyville more business friendly would be to disallow car through-traffic (allowing cars to visit and park at the edge, but pedestrianizing the center of the square is an idea that has its origins with Jef Nickerson of GCPVD). Having designated areas of the square for bus travel would then allow for better transit flow, though Providence Planning should be cognizant of the dos and don’ts about pedestrian spaces.

There also should be Bus Rapid Transit on the boulevard itself. I’ve pointed out in the past that while BRT does have some costs associated with it, a lot of the biggest costs going along with the RIDOT BRT proposal were added lanes for the BRT, and skyway bridges to connect pedestrians to center stations on a highway. A parkway continues to be a road designed with high speeds in mind, and I’m not certain how BRT could be best handled on a roadway like this, but I think it should be explored.

Getting Mugged by RIDOT

Two television stations and two newspapers asked me what I thought of the plan, and I compared it to a mugging. The Rhode Island Department of Transportation has very transparently used safety concerns about the Huntington Bridge to torpedo normal rules of process for deciding what to do with the highway. Essentially, Providence Planning has its back against the wall, and RIDOT is saying, “Your money, or your life?” Given that very limiting context, what Providence produced was a reasonable compromise that I can live with, in the same way that I accept other unpleasant realities forced upon me. I think the plan is leaps and bounds ahead of RIDOT’s proposal, but that’s not setting a high bar.

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Spencer Grassie- Let’s reconnect Olneyville to the city’s urban fabric http://www.rifuture.org/reconnect-olneyville/ http://www.rifuture.org/reconnect-olneyville/#respond Thu, 29 Sep 2016 14:28:40 +0000 http://www.rifuture.org/?p=68222 Spencer Grassie is a senior at Providence College, majoring in Management and minoring in Finance. He has written the following op-ed:

pc (1)As a current Providence College Friar and a native Rhode Islander, I am passionate about our state and capital city. As a millennial, I want to ensure that future generations have the building blocks necessary to thrive and make a living right here in the Ocean State. That is why the ProJo Editorial board’s piece, “Smart decision on bridges” is short sighted. The idea of turning the decrepit 6/10 Connector into a surface boulevard is about much more than safety.

College students and millennials rely heavily on alternative modes of transportation such as biking, walking, ride-hailing (Uber, Lyft), and public transportation. This is not to say that I, or my millennial counterparts, want to get rid of the automobile entirely, but we are drawn to places that offer a unique sense of community. We thrive in cities  that have an array of transportation options, ample amounts of interconnected green space, retailers, and restaurants for social interaction and the exchange of ideas. These places provide people with a genuine emotional connection to the community, one that the car simply cannot replicate.

I attended three public forums on the future of the 6/10, and the general consensus does not want to reconstruct the 1950s style limited-access highway. At the last forum my group envisioned the 6/10 as a tree-lined boulevard, equipped with bike lanes, walking trails, and bus rapid transit running through Providence’s newest mixed-use neighborhood. If Rhode Island is serious about making the state more conducive to millennials and attracting talented individuals and companies, our state leaders should reconsider their position on the 6/10 Connector and recognize the immense value and countless upsides the boulevard concept has for the city and state as a whole.

San Francisco, New York, and Milwaukee deconstructed their highways in favor of boulevards. These cities have proved that replacing a highway with a boulevard has the potential to create a focal point for civic pride while increasing nearby property values and promoting a higher quality of life.

At another forum, Peter Park, a city planning expert, stated that, “The 6/10 boulevard idea is not a technical issue, but a political one.” There are urban planners and transportation engineers who have successfully rolled out projects of similar complexity. The public should not worry about the technical details because these professionals possess the knowledge and skills to get jobs like this done all the time.

We, as Rhode Islanders, have two options: 1) we can continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results or 2) we can facilitate strategic action among private, civic, and public sectors to reverse the dismal public policy decisions of the 1950s by replacing the limited-access highway with an intermodal boulevard.

Let’s choose to reconnect the strangulated neighborhood of Olneyville to the city’s urban fabric, provide opportunities for disenfranchised residents, lower our infrastructure’s annual maintenance costs, and add properties to the city’s tax rolls. But most importantly, let’s choose to build a civic point of pride, one that makes us proud to be from Rhode Island because we are no longer bound by antiquated thinking.

Let’s build on Providence’s commitment to being the Creative Capital and showcase that the smallest state in the Union is looking for innovative ways to grow its economy and sense of community. Let’s build a boulevard.

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Willy Wonka leads the way on the 6/10 Connector http://www.rifuture.org/willy-wonka-610-connector/ http://www.rifuture.org/willy-wonka-610-connector/#comments Sun, 18 Sep 2016 11:28:42 +0000 http://www.rifuture.org/?p=68009 Continue reading "Willy Wonka leads the way on the 6/10 Connector"

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Peter Alviti, RIDOT director, testifying in favor of Rhode Works
Peter Alviti, RIDOT director, testifying in favor of Rhode Works. (Photo by Elisha Aldrich)

Director Peter Alviti of RIDOT recently stated his own version of reality about the 6/10 Connector when he said that, “Hypothetical plans or other scenarios could be explored in the world of theory, but in the world of reality we are facing we now need to address this structurally deficient problem.”

Alviti’s words are dismissive of basic commuting and engineering realities. It’s not really clear why spending $5-6 million to temporarily brace the Huntington Bridge would be unacceptable since it would open up time to discuss plans that may save the state hundreds of millions of dollars on the 6/10 Connector. Be that as it may, Alviti’s insistence that boulevard experts across the country are fanciful imagineers got me thinking about the most recently departed icon of imagination. As the City of Providence fights back against RIDOT, it’s going to have to take a page from the book of Willy Wonka. And no, not the Johnny Depp version, the real thing.

Every child loves Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory but it takes adult eyes to see one of the key lessons of the movie. My uncle pointed out to me growing up that what’s funniest to adults about the Gene Wilder representation of Wonka is that he never seems to raise his voice when the time is appropriate. This was obvious to my uncle, the father of four girls, because as a parent he understood how ineffective Wonka was being, and read that it was intentional. 

Help. Police. Murder.

Kevin Proft, whose excellent pieces in Eco RI have put me to shame month after month for their fine-toothed journalistic detail on 6/10, deserves credit again for his excellent piece juxtaposing the various statements of RIDOT Director Peter Alviti has made before and after the supposed “emergency” that Gov. Raimondo announced Sept. 7th. But deep inside this sharp critique of Raimondo and Alviti is an important statement about Mayor Jorge Elorza as well:

Mayor Jorge Elorza and the city are pushing back, lightly. The mayor agreed to be at the governor’s press conference, and was commended twice by Raimondo for his support of her decision.

“I want to thank all of the mayors who have come together today in support of this. Mayor Elorza … it’s been a pleasure to work with you,” the governor said at the start of her remarks.

It’s unclear how supportive the mayor actually is. In his own remarks at the Sept. 7 press conference, he noted the importance of safe infrastructure, but said public safety doesn’t need to come at the expense of the city’s needs.

“While we know the bridge must be addressed in short order, we remain enthusiastic about the opportunity to collaborate with the state on the options to enhance and improve the 6-10 corridor as a whole,” Elorza said. “RIDOT, the city, and the community have all articulated a larger goal for this project including enhanced mobility options, improving the quality of place and quality of life in and around the corridor, and opening up new areas of economic development and jobs.

“We can invest these dollars in a way that ensures the safety of this roadway and also enhances the livability of this entire corridor. It’s our responsibility to advocate for the smartest investment of these dollars.”

Mayor Elorza can’t ride this fence for long. Though everyone agrees that he supports the boulevard, what counts is not just the words that are said, but the tone and manner in which they’re said. 

Eventually Wonka finds his voice.

It’s all there, black and white. Clear as crystal. You STOLE Fizzie Lifting Drinks. You bumped into the ceiling which now has to be washed and sterilized, and so you get NOTHING. YOU LOSE. GOOD DAY, SIR.”

We’re at a delicate place, and theatrics matters. Governor Raimondo doesn’t have the facts behind her, and nor does Director Alviti. There is no reason why stabilizing the Huntington Bridge entails curtailing the rights of Providence residents to participate fully in the public process and see their vision built. But facts don’t matter. Theater does. The mayor needs to learn from the late Gene Wilder and put a bit more magic in his step.

Mayor Elorza has been taking on a lot of issues. He’s fighting hard on Liquified Natural Gas, and just unveiled an ambitious plan to fight the root causes of poverty and homelessness near Kennedy Plaza. These deserve praise. 

But it’s time to do the same on 6/10. If not, we’ll be stuck with this design for 75-100 years, and no one reading this will be able to affect change in their lifetimes.

Mayor Elorza has been taking on a lot of issues. He’s fighting hard on Liquified Natural Gas, and just unveiled an ambitious plan to fight the root causes of poverty and homelessness near Kennedy Plaza. These deserve praise. 

But it’s time to do the same on 6/10. If not, we’ll be stuck with this design for 75-100 years, and no one reading this will be able to affect change in their lifetimes.

To quote Wonka: “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.” It might seem silly, but dreams have greater power to motivate people to action than facts. It’s time to make a stronger statement. Show some imagination! Call a press conference at the 6/10 Connector. But speak up.

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Homeless advocates release their plan for Kennedy Plaza http://www.rifuture.org/homeless-advocates-kennedy-plaza/ http://www.rifuture.org/homeless-advocates-kennedy-plaza/#respond Thu, 15 Sep 2016 11:07:19 +0000 http://www.rifuture.org/?p=67902 2016-09-14 Homelessness 05
Ron Watts

Lost in yesterday’s coverage of real estate investor Joseph Paolino‘s roll out of the Providence Downtown Improvement District‘s (DID) plan to deal with the issue of panhandling (and homelessness) in downtown Providence was the introduction of an alternative plan by committed homeless and poverty activists that took place across from Kennedy Plaza at Paolino’s property “The Shops at 100.”

The Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project (RIHAP), Homeless Bill of Rights Defense Group and DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality) presented a comprehensive plan called “Reclaiming Our Public Spaces.”

The group presented recommendations in three major areas:

  • Promoting Community and Economic Development
  • Discontinuing Current Criminalization Policies; and
  • Supporting Social and Human Service Needs.
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Eric Hirsch

The advocates sought to differentiate their ideas from those to be presented by Paolinio. Dr. Eric Hirsch, Professor of Sociology at Providence College and a member of the Homeless Bill of Rights Defense Committee pointed out that Paolino’s proposals were akin to the flawed “broken windows” policies that have been discredited around the country. The “broken windows” policies were based on an idea that allowing minor offenses like littering, panhandling, loitering, or washing car windshields was an open invitation for more serious crimes. They argued that these “broken windows” were the real reasons for the rise of violent and serious property offenses.

“The problem with basing policy on this “broken window” idea is that there was no evidence to back it up,” stated Hirsch. “Unfortunately, although the idea has been completely discredited, police departments and city officials around the country continue to base policy decisions on this flawed proposal.”

“Criminalization is not a solution to homelessness,” added Roger Williams University School of Law Professor and Assistant Dean Andrew Horwitz. “It is incredibly cruel to those experiencing homelessness, dehumanizing the individuals and making it harder to connect to advocates and services. It also costs the system more by spending taxpayer dollars on court costs and incarcerations rather than on housing, medical care, and other long-term solutions.”

Key findings/conclusions from the report are:

  • Homeless people are criminally punished for being in public even when they have no other alternatives
  • The criminalization of homelessness is increasing across the country
  • Criminalization laws violate the civil and human rights of homeless people
  • Criminalization laws are costly to taxpayers
  • Criminalization laws are ineffective; and
  • Criminalization laws should be replaced with constructive solutions to ending
  • homelessness.

“Rhode Island has the potential to be a model for how to end homelessness,” concluded Barbara Freitas, Director of RIHAP. “We can do this by collaborating to provide safe, affordable, permanent housing and engaging with and educating our community. It is not done by harassing and further marginalizing our city’s most vulnerable neighbors.”

Here’s the video from their press conference:

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Moving them along http://www.rifuture.org/moving-them-along/ http://www.rifuture.org/moving-them-along/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2016 21:11:59 +0000 http://www.rifuture.org/?p=67820 Continue reading "Moving them along"

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RIPTAI saw my friend Jeff yesterday morning, on the way to his morning workout at the YMCA. Jeff is confined to a wheelchair, and uses RIPTA to get to the East Side Y most mornings. We chatted for a few minutes while we got on the same bus and shared it through the bus tunnel.

Because I commute via RIPTA, I walk through Kennedy Plaza pretty much twice a day, every day. In a couple of decades of riding the bus, early, late, middle of the day, I have never felt unsafe in the plaza. Now and again I’ve been asked for change, which I decline to give, and once or twice I’ve been offered bags of drugs, which I decline to buy. I’ve occasionally seen loud arguments and even a couple of altercations, but they were not my arguments and altercations. People loiter, but after all, how different is that from me waiting for my bus?  I see other people carrying on their lives in the Plaza, just as I’ve shared the bus with some people for years, and am familiar with a little slice of their lives. Their lives are not mine, so we coexist, but seldom interact.

Joe Paolino talks blithely about moving the buses to the Peter Pan station, or to Allens Avenue. He can do that because he never takes the bus, but has a driver to drop him off wherever he wants to go. If he gets what he wants, the rest of us who do not enjoy that luxury will have longer commutes, get wetter when it rains, and miss connections, in service of enhancing the value of his property.

Does anyone beside me remember the people who used to hang around the Fogarty building on Fountain Street in downtown Providence when the unemployment office was in it years ago?  I’m not so old that I could possibly be the only one, am I?  Or at the bus station on Sabin Street before that?  What about the people who would crowd around Travelers Aid (now Crossroads) off Westminster?  The bus station, Crossroads, and the unemployment offices have all been moved out of downtown, to keep “those people” away.

Now city leaders have set their sights on RIPTA, suggesting that the bus system is somehow a magnet for poor people and thus a threat to an upscale downtown, just like those other magnets. This is a familiar tune, but why do we keep singing it?  Paolino himself was the mayor who presided over moving the bus station from Sabin Street to its current remote location off I-95 back in the 1980s. Did that help? Moving these other supposed magnets out of downtown has not worked in the past. Why should anyone imagine it will do the trick this time?

The problem in Kennedy Plaza is not RIPTA, and pretending so will not solve anything, but only cause hardship and inconvenience to people whose lives are already marked by hardship and inconvenience. The problems are social problems of drugs, poverty, and homelessness, unmasked by the evacuation of workers from downtown. Abetted by state policy, and with transportation to downtown increasingly less convenient (RIPTA cutbacks anyone?), banks, law firms, and other commerce has left downtown. The state itself has removed hundreds of its employees, too. The poor people who congregate in Kennedy Plaza are not new; they are just the ones left behind.

Back before the state decided to evacuate its workers from downtown, there was a substantial presence downtown by social service agencies. In service of enhancing property values and chasing away the poor people who they “attracted”, those agencies were moved out of downtown. Now there is little or nothing downtown to help people who need it, but the people are still there. How strange.

Moving these problems out of the center of town will not make them go away, but only allow our civic leaders  to pretend they do not exist. Do we want to solve those problems, or just ignore them?  Wait, don’t answer that.

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ProJo 6/10 editorial wrong on basic facts http://www.rifuture.org/projo-610-editorial-wrong-on-basic-facts/ http://www.rifuture.org/projo-610-editorial-wrong-on-basic-facts/#respond Tue, 13 Sep 2016 14:13:47 +0000 http://www.rifuture.org/?p=67840 Continue reading "ProJo 6/10 editorial wrong on basic facts"

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ProjoThe Providence Journal editorial board posted a piece praising Governor Gina Raimondo for her decision to ignore the public process and the recommendations of national and local experts to fast-track the reconstruction of the 6/10 Connector.

The Projo is, as a journalistic entity, free to make whatever statements it wants on any issue. The problem with the Projo’s editorial is that it is wrong on basic facts that all parties agree to. Quoth the Projo:

Gov. Gina Raimondo, thus, did the right thing by responding boldly to new evidence that bridges along that stretch are in perilous condition, putting the public’s safety at risk. She announced Wednesday that the state must repair these crumbling structures as quickly as possible.

In doing so, she had to pull the plug on an extravagant $595-million state Department of Transportation plan to cap the highway and knit back together neighborhoods that have been disconnected for decades with a new surface boulevard. That plan would have taken longer and cost more than simply fixing the bridges.

Three plans have been considered during the 6/10 Connector public process: rebuilding the highway as-is, rebuilding the highway with a cap over it at certain crossings, and a surface boulevard. The “rebuild with a cap” option, though better described as a highway plan, has been labeled by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) as a “highway-boulevard hybrid.” Hence the confusion.

Everyone agrees that the surface boulevard would be the cheapest option of the three. That option, as outlined by community group Fix the 6/10, would cut down the amount of infrastructure spending needed to complete the project, while restoring the grid to drivers:

Rebuilding a highway in the 6/10 corridor, especially if it involves a cap, will cost at least $600 million, hundreds of millions more than a surface alternative. A surface option will cost taxpayers much less, making resources available for other projects throughout the state. Further, the ongoing maintenance costs of the highway option will burden our children with billions of dollars of maintenance and replacement costs. A surface road option will also unlock dozens of taxable acres for development, improving the region’s fiscal health.

In a Cranston public forum on the 6/10 Connector, Eco RI news documented that RIDOT officials intentionally spun the capped highway option as best, holding information that would favor the surface boulevard close to their chest unless specifically grilled on it:

RIDOT officials routinely downplayed instances where the boulevard option compared favorably to the capped-highway idea. At the meeting in Olneyville, it wasn’t until ecoRI News asked about the relative costs of the options — more than an hour into the meeting — that RIDOT revealed the boulevard option would cost taxpayers less. The difference remains undetermined, as RIDOT hasn’t calculated the cost of the boulevard option.

If the Projo had made such an error in a news article, it would be a problem. But for an editorial whose thesis is that the governor is making the tough decisions needed to save money, mistaking two of the three options on the table for one another, and then getting the costs of the options wrong calls for a full retraction.

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On 6/10, Pichardo says people want ‘plan to reunite the neighborhoods’ http://www.rifuture.org/on-610-pichardo-says-people-want-plan-to-reunite-the-neighborhoods/ http://www.rifuture.org/on-610-pichardo-says-people-want-plan-to-reunite-the-neighborhoods/#respond Tue, 13 Sep 2016 13:56:15 +0000 http://www.rifuture.org/?p=67808 Continue reading "On 6/10, Pichardo says people want ‘plan to reunite the neighborhoods’"

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pichardoGovernor Gina Raimondo may have acted too hastily when she took off the table the idea of transforming the 6/10 connector into a boulevard, according to Providence state Senator Juan Pichardo.

“The people who live in these areas were counting on the plans to reconnect the neighborhoods after being divided for so long by the highway,” Pichardo said in a recent news release. “This is a decision that will have a major impact on the daily lives of many people, and I’m concerned that it was made too hastily.”

Pichardo’s press release referred to the boulevard proposal as the “plan to reunite the neighborhoods.”

He said, “The benefit this project would have on the people in these neighborhoods just cannot be calculated. It’s rare that a government proposal gets this kind of support from the community. This project would have gone a long way to making the city more inclusive, ending decades of disenfranchisement that have been brought about in these neighborhoods. It’s more than a little disconcerting that something so positive for the whole city could be so quickly and so arbitrarily dismissed at a moment’s notice.”

Transportation advocates have been pushing to transform the 6/10 connector, which is in desperate need of repairs, into a boulevard – as other American cities have done when highways that cut through urban neighborhoods have needed major repairs. Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza is supportive of this concept. RIDOT is not. Last week, Raimondo said the overpasses are in such dire need of repair that the state cannot wait to consider the boulevard idea.

“I truly hope the state will reconsider and take into consideration the concerns and desires of an entire community, instead of repeating the mistakes of decades past by recreating a citywide scar on the landscape that has such a negative impact on the lives of so many.”

While Gov. Raimondo made remarks at a recent RIC event signaling her openness to accept any proposal that was safe, affordable, and not a traffic problem, a later statement through a spokesperson doubled down on her commitment to rebuild the highway as-is, with the caveat of adding a bike lane (on a highway?), building an additional ramp (i.e., expanding the highway), or putting in Bus Rapid Transit (part of both the RIDOT and City of Providence proposals).

Providence Planning will continue to take public feedback at 610Connector@providenceri.gov.

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