Mayor Jorge Elorza bikes to work everyday, and takes part in frequent night rides with community members. By all accounts the mayor is supportive of bicycling. However, Providence has made next to no progress on bike infrastructure during the two years the mayor has been in office. This needs to change.
Providence has seen the mayor step up on some issues, and his vocal leadership has had an effect. Just recently, Mayor Elorza spoke eloquently to the harm of liquefied natural gas (LNG) power plants, a move which put him in direct contradiction with Governor Raimondo. This move came after the Sierra Club of Rhode Island challenged the mayor to speak up clearly on the issue. I am making the same request.
Where is the bike infrastructure, Mayor Elorza?
We cannot expect mass cycling to take root in Rhode Island without our core cities establishing bike routes that are suitable for eight year olds, 80 year olds, and everyone in between. If we’re going to provide routes that are safe for people in wheelchairs and rascals, we need bike routes, like what the Dutch and Danish have. Doing this can help us make more efficient use of our school bus funding, our sidewalk funding, our parking, and improve business outcomes for small business.
The mayor has pushed some reform. The city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission currently receives advanced notice of city street projects, and its review of those projects has brought piecemeal changes to sections of street as they’re repaved. Many project reviews include only tiny sections of street, and nothing has yet been accomplished beyond paint, either through door-zone bike lanes, or even worse, sharrows. But this is not enough. To be frank, if Providence is not going to become a charming patch of shallow ocean in the next century, we need concerted action now.
What do community members demand?
A demand is a challenge that comes as an honor only to those politicians who warrant it. Mayor Elorza has objectively not accomplished what needs to be accomplished in his first years of office, however, he has demonstrated himself to be someone who, with pressure, might accomplish those goals. Be honored, Mayor Elorza. You’re being called to the challenge.
The mayor must work to design a full network of protected bike lanes on the major arterials of the city. A starting point for this would be 50 miles of infrastructure, which we estimate would take only 3% of on-street parking to achieve.
The mayor must also work to create “bike boulevards”- routes that are low-traffic and low-speed, off of the major arterials. These are not substitutes for protected bike lanes, which are needed to reach jobs and shopping opportunities in commercial areas, but they are majorly important improvements to help make our neighborhoods safer for school children.
The mayor’s office has been supportive of remaking the 6/10 Connector as a boulevard, but as yet has not sought public conflict with RIDOT and the governor’s office about their intransigence to community needs. We need the mayor to pick this fight, in a direct way, just as he did on LNG. It’s understandable that the mayor wishes to advocate behind the scenes, but what will bring life to this issue is a top official speaking openly about the poor priorities RIDOT is putting forward. Without that, the 6/10 Connector continues to take a back-burner position in the news cycle. Speak up, mayor! Put the state government on notice!
These projects must be funded. The city’s $40 million bond includes transportation and non-transportation priorities, but among transportation priorities only 17% of funding is going to non-car priorities, mainly sidewalks. The city must spend in proportion to its population of non-car owners (22%), and it must make good use of those funds to make sure that biking is considered a high priority.
We’ve seen you act before, mayor. We have faith in you. Step it up! We need you to take action. The bike rides aren’t enough. We’re here to vote for you and to back you up when you are ready to do this.
It’s time.
~~~~
]]>
Members of the community, including many cyclists, the head of the S. Main Street Merchants’ Association, the RI Bike Coalition, and staff members of Brown and RISD came to last month’s Bike & Ped Advisory Commission (BPAC) meeting in Providence to support protected bike lanes on the section of Main Street from Wickenden/Point Streets to College/Westminster Streets. This BPAC meeting had testimony from I-195 Commissioner Jan Brodie, and BPAC Commssioner Eric Weis took the chance to ask her if she supported protected bike lanes on the street.
Brodie said, “You don’t need to remove that second lane of travel. My biggest problem on S. Main is the double parking for delivery. If you take a lane of traffic out, you will just stop it. We don’t want that double parking thing to necessarily go away because that is how those activated first-floor uses stay activated. I hate driving on Boylston, on Newbury Street in Boston. It’s all about the double, triple parking. They don’t do anything about it because every one of those first floor uses is activated [inaudible]. I understand it’s awkward.”
James Kennedy: “Do we have the opportunity to put loading zones in, because double parking is not something that they’re really supposed to do” [laughter from group}
Brodie: Of course not [i.e., that cars aren’t supposed to double park.].
James Kennedy: I understand, I definitely hear you, [double parking] is a very active use of [the street]. We need the loading, whatever is happening there needs to happen. But, isn’t there a way that we can manage the supply of parking that exists through metering and loading zones?
Brodie: Um, I don’t know the answer to that. I imagine that would have been the solution if there was that easy solution. I don’t think they’re doing it because they just don’t want to go around the corner. Um, some of these properties don’t have a back. It’s part and parcel of Northeastern, older cities that don’t have their current needs built into their development. I’ll try to think of some of the ones that utilize the double parking who are—um, it’s restaurants–
Jenn Steinfeld [another BPAC Commissioner]: The big truck deliveries.
Brodie: The big truck deliveries, and it’s usually early in the morning.
James Kennedy: What I mean though, is with the on-street parking that already exists, couldn’t we create loading zones within that on-street parking, so that there’s loading zones for the trucks.
Brodie: Parking is another option for people. I don’t want to take it away. There isn’t a ton. It’s probably in the right balance, because there are only so many streets, and the more dense we build, the tighter the ratio between street parking and a lot of square feet built. So, um, to take, to take the need for parking out of the street and put it in centralized parking garages leaves some on-street parking so that people can zip in and zip out. All, I think all of these make for an interesting urban fabric.
James Kennedy: You wouldn’t want to remove all the parking, I mean, but obviously if we had both of the travel lanes we wouldn’t have a protected bike lane, so balancing the—having some of the parking used as loading zones for trucks, which is a use that is needed, and having metering so that the zip in and zip out can happen more effectively, alongside the fact that we’re adding garages, I mean, would you balance that and say that the parking is more important than the protected bike lane?
Brodie: My sense is that a shared bike lanes is—in the city—is an appropriate way to get bikes to go through the city.
Kennedy: What do you mean by a “shared bike lane” though?
Brodie: Uh, cars can go on it. A truck could pull over and do a delivery. It’s striped appropriately. And especially if it has some loading on it, it’s not going to be a through lane, people are not going to be going fast.
Brodie indicated that her views on the matter are up for evolution. I certainly hope she will check out Donald Shoup’s work on parking management and change her stance to support metering of parking alongside the protected bike lanes, which have broad community support. It would also be helpful if she reviewed the quick success offered by protected bike lanes to cities like Chicago, where some streets have more bikes than cars on them after just a short period of having the infrastructure. It might also be good to review @carfreepvd’s great piece highlighting the “P-Wiggle” which includes S. Main & Water Streets as a means of getting around the hills on the East Side.
]]>