6/10 connector – RI Future

October 26, 2016

Providence’s parkway proposal: the essence of community development

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Please 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.

October 4, 2016

Up Against a Wall with 6/10

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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

The 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.

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.

September 29, 2016September 29, 2016

Spencer Grassie- Let’s reconnect Olneyville to the city’s urban fabric

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Spencer Grassie is a senior at Providence College, majoring in Management and minoring in Finance. He has written the following op-ed:

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.

September 18, 2016October 4, 2016

Willy Wonka leads the way on the 6/10 Connector

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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.

September 13, 2016October 4, 2016

ProJo 6/10 editorial wrong on basic facts

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The 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.

~~~~

September 13, 2016October 4, 2016

On 6/10, Pichardo says people want ‘plan to reunite the neighborhoods’

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Governor 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.

September 10, 2016October 4, 2016

Raimondo quietly reverses 6/10 decision, then backslides.

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Governor Raimondo seemed to quietly reverse herself on the 6/10 Connector, stating that her office was open to working with the City of Providence on any solution that was safe, did not worsen traffic, and was cost-effective. Through a staffer, Raimondo later denied that her statement constituted a reversal of policy. Rhode Islanders can continue to reach out participate in the outreach Providence Planning Dept. is doing. The department opposes rebuilding 6/10 as-is.

The (non?) reversal was more of a whimper than a bang, because it contained significant caveats. But those who see a sustainable future for the corridor should press the governor to stick to her commitments going forward.

Rhode Island Bicycle Coalition activist Alex Krogh-Grabbe asked the governor what she would do on 6/10 around 5:00.

Gov. Raimondo said that if the City of Providence completes its public forums within the 60 day time frame she has outlined, she will honor their plan, so long as it is affordable and does not create safety issues for the bridges by delaying work.

The governor also gave herself breathing room for the future in laying out a caveat around traffic management.

While RIDOT officials have described the 6/10 boulevard as a traffic impediment, it’s clear that it would not be. The famed Champs Elysées in Paris carries as many cars as 6/10, while also accommodating 500,000 pedestrians a day.

Think about this highway boosters: Paris’ famed Champs-Elysees handles same traffic volume as 6-10 Connector.https://t.co/XIMM6hdrAU

— katherine gregg (@kathyprojo) August 31, 2016

Even more impressively, the city of Seoul, South Korea removed a raised highway above the Cheongyecheon River. At 160,000 cars a day, the Cheongyecheon Freeway carried 60% more cars than the 6/10 Connector, but Seoul didn’t even replace it with a boulevard. They just created a river park.

#Seoul view: Former highway with 160K cars/day, now a park with 75K visitors & 113K new jobs along it: pic.twitter.com/mn0KkE19Il

— Brent Toderian (@BrentToderian) April 23, 2015

The irony might be pressing as is, if it weren’t for the fact that Seoul officials sent observers to Providence before redesigning their highway, in order to see Waterplace Park– essentially the eastern edge of Route 6.

The reality is that traffic engineers have understood since the 1970s that urban highways create their own traffic mire, and that removing them does not worsen traffic congestion. The trick is getting RIDOT to admit this known fact. It’s hard to convince a person of something when their salary depends on them not understanding it.

Mayor Elorza will continue to take public feedback in order to aid his Planning Department in pushing for a boulevard. If you have something to share, please send your thoughts to 610connector@providenceri.gov.

Update:

Through spokesman Mike Raia, Raimondo’s office backed away from its statement to Krogh-Grabbe, saying it did not reverse its position on the need to repair overpasses on the 6/10 connector immediately, thus ending the debate on replacing it with a boulevard instead.

“She hasn’t backed away from her announcement, as RI Future is reporting,” said Raia. “This is a public safety decision. We are not considering a boulevard.”

Raia added:

“[The governor] announced three things:

“Move forward immediately with an in-kind replacement of the Huntington Ave bridge.

“Immediately start quarterly inspections of all the bridges.

“Reached an agreement with Mayor Elorza for his public input process to conclude quickly to allow RIDOT to issue RFPs by the end of the year.

“She said during the presser and again on Channel 10 that she is willing to consider modifications to a simple replace in kind for the remaining bridges as long as they do not cause any additional delay (these modifications might include a bike lane, BRT, a future project to connect 10N with 6W).”

~~~~

September 7, 2016September 7, 2016

Amid emergency repairs, Raimondo, Elorza disagree on feasability of 6/10 boulevard

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Governor Gina Raimondo and Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza disagree on whether emergency repairs needed for bridges across the 6/10 connector means the grassroots idea of turning the highway connector into a boulevard is now off the table.

At a news conference today, Raimondo said the boulevard idea is dead because emergency repairs to seven of nine bridges over the 6/10 connector need to be fast-tracked. But Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza disagrees, according to his new communications director Emily Crowell.

“Not at all,” Crowell said when asked if the mayor agrees with the governor that the boulevard idea is unfeasible because of the emergency repairs the announced today. “We’re not abandoning the idea to make the 6/10 connector multi-modal.”

Raimondo and Department of Transportation Executive Director Peter Alviti announced that the 6/10 connector needs emergency repairs. Those emergency repairs, they both said, effectively take off the table the grassroots idea to turn the 6/10 connector into a boulevard instead of repairing it. The repairs to the Huntington Avenue bridge need to be finalized in 60 days.

Elorza spoke at the State House event today.

“We can invest these dollars in a way that ensures the public safety of this roadway and also enhances the livability of this entire corridor,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to advocate for the smartest investment of these dollars to move the city and the state forward and that is what we will be doing at the table alongside RIDOT and the governor’s office to advance this project.”

Raimondo and Alviti were unequivocal that the emergency repairs means the boulevard idea is off the table.

“We have to move immediately, so some options are closed” said Raimondo, when asked about the boulevard idea. “The time is out for debate. It’s time for action. I would love to be able to take a longer process but I don’t have that option.”

Alviti said, “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.”

Raimondo added that just because the boulevard idea can’t be done doesn’t mean some smart growth measures are off the table for the highway that cuts through the west side of Providence. “We’re going to take the next couple months to listen and if there are opportunities to put in a bike lane, we will listen.”

Raimondo and Alviti said that seven of the nine bridges over the 6/10 connector are “structurally deficient.” Because the problem is more severe than initially thought, these repairs are being fast-tracked.

“Not only is the bridge defunct,” said Alviti, “but the plan to fix the bridge is defunct.” He said the 6/10 connector bridge repair have been in the works for 30 years, but they have also been without funding for 30 years.

Simultaneously, a grassroots effort to replace the 6/10 highway connector with a boulevard was gaining momentum. James Kennedy, a regular RI Future contributor who has been covering the 6/10 boulevard idea, took to Twitter to criticize the announcement.

September 1, 2016October 4, 2016

Raimondo’s office must take 6/10 position

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https://twitter.com/TransportPVD/status/770773009380638720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The assembled crowd of 200 people at Tuesday night’s 6/10 Connector community meeting were unequivocal: no highway should be rebuilt along the corridor. It found a receptive if demur audience in Providence Planning Department and Mayor Jorge Elorza. RIDOT and Governor Gina Raimondo’s Office appear to be the only agencies backing the highway rebuild after the loss of a federal grant for the billion dollar project.

https://twitter.com/TransportPVD/status/770769768815132672

RI Future has been among several area publications that have called on Mayor Elorza to take a more direct stance on the project. While the mayor’s office has clearly favored a boulevard approach to 6/10, it hasn’t yet sought direct conflict with RIDOT or Governor Raimondo’s office. Following the rejection of a federal grant RIDOT intended to use towards part of the 6/10 corridor, statements from the agency have focused on the dire need to complete the highway rebuild with a minimum of public input. Read past coverage Tear It Down: Pictures of Our Potential 6/10 Future The Drivers’ Argument for the Boulevard On Tuesday night, Mayor Elorza did not seek direct conflict with the agency, but did refer to the 6/10 Connector as “really a Disconnector”, a sign of his preferences. In a Projo report leading up to the Providence meeting, RIDOT spokesperson Charles St. Martin bristled in his emailed response to questions on the project:

As we stated before, we cannot continue to postpone this work,” wrote DOT spokesman Charles St. Martin in an email. “Thanks to the passage of Rhodeworks, Rhode Island has $400 million in committed state and federal funding to draw from to address the Route 6-10 interchange. RIDOT is evaluating its options to tackle this problem and will soon present a recommendation for next steps. No decisions have been made at this time.”

This brings us to an important question: When is Gov. Raimondo’s office going to see the writing on the wall and redirect the agencies under her charge to better priorities? The assembled crowd was almost unanimous in its priorities. The process sat small groups at tables to outline ideas and present them. Each group, to the one, came up with some form or other of the following priorities:

New housing
Non-displacement of current residents while bringing in new residents
Better outreach & a more welcoming process for Latino residents
A full and complete bike and pedestrian network
More green space
Rapid transit to connect Providence within and without its city borders
No highway

The groups varied in how they phrased these goals, but each group essentially outlined the same things. Notable about the meeting was the presence of individuals from communities like Cranston, Pawtucket, and Central Falls, whose citizens might have been more inclined to favor a highway than those having one built next to them. But those from outside Providence also favored the boulevard option. Among the attendees was Cranston at-large city council candidate Kate Aubin, who has made removing the 6/10 Connector a central tenet of her candidacy.

https://twitter.com/TransportPVD/status/770764144735838208

While Aubin is running on a progressive ticket, conservative Rhode Islanders also attended, questioning the priority of rebuilding 6/10 as-is. Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s Lawrence Gilheeney tweeted:

also, here's some pictures of last nights forum pic.twitter.com/mx3FGwvePa

— Larry Gillheeney (@LGillheeney) August 31, 2016

More pointedly, Brian Bishop, of the taxpayers’ rights group OSTPA spoke to the unnecessary waste of rebuilding the highway, drawing the night’s first laughter and applause:

https://twitter.com/TransportPVD/status/770775028090613760

Bishop, who owns properties on the East Side as well as a farm in Coventry, said that he was a “car person” and that others “can handle the bikes,” a friendly jab at non-OSTPA member Hugo Bruggeman, who held the table’s priority list and spoke to bike infrastructure like his home in the Netherlands. Bishop described the highway “hybrid” that RIDOT has been pushing over the Providence Planning-preferred boulevard as “brought to you by the same people who want to rebuild it again.” The audience roared with laughter at RIDOT’s expense.

With federal grants figured into the mix, RIDOT’s hybrid-highway proposal would have cost upwards of 80% of toll funds. Without that funding, it’s quite possible that rebuilding the highway as-is could put all other state projects on the back burner. Conservatives like Bishop and liberals like Aubin equally question the validity of this priority, despite living outside the city.

Which brings us back to a pointed question: Who exactly does favor the 6/10 Connector as a highway, other than RIDOT and Gov. Raimondo’s office? As a more politically diverse coalition coalesces around opposition to the plan, Gov. Raimondo is going to have to make some decisions soon.

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Correction: A previous version of this article erroneously named Lawrence Gilheeney’s group the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Progress. It is the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity. No doubt a liberal Freudian slip on my part. . . :-) Corrected.

April 8, 2016October 4, 2016

6/10 project, and other things that remind me of Buddy Cianci

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I would hate that you should have an unfortunate accident. . .

Last night while I was speaking to some people about the Moving Together PVD boulevard proposal, a man in a grey sweatshirt came over and said “This one here better not get into an accident on his bicycle or he might not get to the hospital in time on his boulevard.*” That man, it turned out, was Mayor Joe Polisena of Johnston, Rhode Island.

I took a deep breath, not knowing the man was the mayor of Johnston, and reached out to shake his hand. “Hi, I’m James Kennedy. I understand that this might not make sense at first, but the proposal I’m pushing is about making commutes better for the suburbs. I’d like to explain that to you.”

“I’m the mayor, I don’t need your explanation. How much more is your boulevard going to cost?”

“It’s cheaper, actually. It’ll shorten bridges and allow us to put the grid of the city back together. It’s going to be better for drivers and help us lower costs.”

He walked away.

After Director Peter Alviti of RIDOT made his presentation, Mayor Polisena was given time to give comments. He again turned to me and stated that one thing he knows as a nurse is that “minutes count” and that a boulevard would back up traffic and cause people to die before going to the hospital.

In the second context, his statement was less of a veiled threat, and more of a factually inaccurate statement. But nonetheless, it was irking to have public officials point to me, make reference to me “having an accident” and then not being allowed to respond to explain my proposal. Alviti did not let me comment in public on the proposal, but instead funneled comments through table “stations” which divided the group and made it easier for DOT to control the conversation (I did convince some suburbanites, though. . . ).

Popsicles in Olneyville

Mayor Polisena may not know how to comport himself in public, but on the contrary, Dir. Alviti does. I know from having met with Dir. Alviti that he is a good man that wants the best for the community, but I think somewhere in the public process Alviti has decided that suburbanites can’t wrap their heads around the boulevard. This is why he’s been pushing a decked highway– what I’ve dubbed the “6/10 Dig”– instead of a boulevard.

Alviti grew up in Silver Lake, and he’s told me in closed meetings that he used to walk as a child from Silver Lake to then-contiguous Olneyville to buy popsicles at the store. No child could do that today, and I know for certain that in a difficult political environment, Alviti is putting forward his expensive highway decking approach because he wants to try his best to pull a good situation from a bad plan. But his plan is wrong, and we have tradition on our side on this.

I’ll betchya a Guinness. . .

What is a decked highway? Well, while the Moving Together Providence plan calls for shortening bridges so that they only have to cross the train tracks, a decked highway calls for full length bridges over the train tracks and the highway. But that’s the bridges. The decked highway is itself another bridge: a kind of “world’s widest” bridge. It’s not only full length, but the width of the entire area of whatever part of the highway is supposed to be covered.

How can I tie these disparate threads of the story together? Who do we know who made veiled threats, who was beloved by suburbanites who once lived in the city, and who dealt with heady questions about a world’s widest bridge?

Ah, I knew there was someone. . .

I may not have had the level of enthusiasm for Buddy Cianci that some have had, but I can say one thing: Buddy Cianci knew how to get rid of unnecessary infrastructure.

The “World’s Widest Bridge” (in the Guinness Book!) was once over the Providence River. The purpose of that bridge was to carry traffic around Suicide Circle. Buddy Cianci moved a river and the Northeast Corridor, and took that bridge down, to transform the waterfront of Providence. By contrast, we need not move any river, or any train tracks, and need only remove bridges that are about to fall anyway. And then we propose replacing them with a boulevard that continues off of Memorial Boulevard.

Like Buddy did. You know, but cheaper.

Where there’s smoke, there’s logical fallacies.

And for the record, though the concern raised by Mayor Polisena about traffic and ambulance response times is a legitimate one, he is unfortunately mistaken about the nature of traffic. To begin with, the highway creates a wall with pinchpoints that only allows traffic through at odd intervals, so that even though Olneyville Square has a nearly 50 percent car-free rate and no job centers to draw outside commuters, it has some of the worst traffic in the city. Creating a boulevard would open up and make better use of Harris Avenue (which is currently pinched into a one-way street at one end, and thus carries less traffic than it might otherwise be able to). Building a boulevard would mean shortening bridges over existing crossings like Dean, Atwells, Broadway, and Westminster, and thus allowing totally new streets to be reconnected– essentially adding lanes for traffic to use. Building a boulevard would mean that there would be development and walkability near the Bus Rapid Transit lines, which is essential if we want them to be more than a decoration, and to actually carry ridership. And all of those factors mean that a boulevard would improve traffic, not make it worse.

As a matter of fact, I’ve been taunted about fire and ambulance safety before, and so I researched it by contacting UK-born Dutch biking expert David Hembrow. He pointed out to me that traffic is so efficiently dealt with in the Netherlands that cities and towns have far fewer fire stations than in the U.S., and have better response times. But that wasn’t always the case. Here are some images I pinched from his website:

Oops, that one’s a before from somewhere else. Let me try again. . .

Wait a minute! Malfunction!

Ack! Where are my Dutch photo examples! Okay, last try. . .

This one’s Olneyvillestadt. I think that’s a part of the Netherlands. . . Next to SilverLakestadt and WestEnderstam. . .

Alright, you get my point. No World’s Widest Bridges, okay? It’s a bad idea. It’s not worth the G-Note getting passed down the hallway (and I ain’t heard about that, you hear? Have some sauce). A boulevard is the best option for suburbanites. All that Dir. Alviti needs to do is refer to the state’s greatest salesman, who, er, well, wasn’t the most legitimate or upstanding politician, but who was someone who knew how to make the Woonasquatucket a place to visit.**

~~~~

*As a side note, I took two buses from work to meet a carpool to Johnston, so I didn’t bike to the meeting.

**I voted for Elorza, alright?

June 4, 2015June 4, 2015

Q&A on the 6/10 Connector

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With Governor Raimondo’s recent push for transportation funding, people are talking about patching up the 6/10 Connector vs. replacing it with a boulevard. Best practice in urban design recommends replacing urban highways with boulevards. But that would be something we haven’t done before in Rhode Island, so it’s understandable that some people have concerns. Here are a few questions I thought you might have about updating the 6/10 Connector for the 21st century.

That’s a big change. Wouldn’t it be expensive to remove the highway?Governor Raimondo is proposing a tractor-trailer toll that would allow the state to bond for $700 million. $400 million of that (plus another $400 million RIDOT wants to get from the Feds) is earmarked for the 6/10 Connector repairs. That is expensive.
Prices vary a lot for building highways, but urban highways with as many overpasses as the 6/10 Connector tend to be on the high end of the scale (and $800 million is quite high). Boulevards (think Memorial Boulevard in Providence, but more multimodal) tend to have a cost roughly ten times lower than an urban highway. Imagine how many structurally-deficient bridges we could make safe with an extra $360-720 million? That’s a very rough cost comparison, but what we can be sure of is that replacing the 6/10 Connector with a boulevard (even tripped out with the best complete streets features you can think of) would cost dramatically less than rebuilding it as a highway.
So many cars use the connector! Wouldn’t removing it create massive traffic jams?Actually many cities have removed excessive urban highways and seen no marked increase in traffic. There are a couple reasons for this. Traffic is created through a process called “induced demand” where if you build more highways, drivers will use them. Conversely, if you eliminate an urban highway, fewer people will use it as a short-cut.
“But wait!” you say. “I use 6/10 as a shortcut! You want to reduce my transportation options!” Actually, in other cities that remove urban highways, they see the traffic that previously used the highway spread out over the city’s other streets. And there’s less potential for traffic jams when drivers have lots of options. It’s like how bugs congregate around lights on hot summer nights, but out in the dark it’s less buggy. 6/10 is the bug-clogged light, city streets are the cool night air.

And one more thing: our current transportation network overwhelmingly favors driving; it has big highways that cut swaths through neighborhoods that are uninviting to other ways of getting around. Leveling the playing field by making our street system more comfortable for more ways of getting around (RIPTA, walking, and biking as well as driving) gives you more choices and more freedom. Plus, it means more other people are choosing to walk or bike and they’re not clogging up the road in front of you.
It’ll never happen. We can’t do innovative things in Rhode Island.I mean, this isn’t that innovative. And hey, we started the Industrial Revolution and moved rivers to revitalize downtown Providence. I think we have it in us to make a prudent economic decision to give Rhode Islanders more transportation options and safer bridges.
Plus, you cynics, politicians like ribbon-cuttings and ground-breakings. It’s not as sexy to photo-shoot the replacement of an archaic 1950s-era project as it is to pose for the first complete multi-modal corridor in the State.

We can assume that because the 6/10 Connector is in Raimondo’s investment plan, now is the time that something will happen with it. The state should choose the approach that is best for the neighborhoods adjacent to the corridor, which coincidentally is the option with the best return on investment. Replace the 6/10 Connector with an urban boulevard.

Want to help make this happen? Transport Providence is organizing a walk around the area in question today at 5:15 with Providence City Councilman Bryan Principe. The best thing you can do is to talk to people about this. Which people? Especially your representatives (state, federal, and city if you live in Providence), the Governor’s office, and RIDOT.