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).”

~~~~

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.

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.

~~~~

The zoning, as proposed, would limit students to three-to-a-house occupancy in Zones 1 and 1A of Providence’s zoning code. Affecting areas with large single-family homes, many of the buildings in question can house far more than three people. Exclusionary zoning has major downsides for equity, and is also a big problem for transit, biking, and other non-single-occupancy-driving modes of transportation.

The proposal passed its first test last week when City Council voted 10-3 for the provision. Zoning provisions must pass twice, and either have veto proof majorities or gain the support of the mayor, to become law. Knocking just one vote off the victory margin would allow a mayoral veto, though the prospects of such a veto are unclear.

Read: Ten PVD City Councilors voted for exclusionary zoning

As of this weekend, a tweeted email reply from Elorza representative Evan England suggested that the Mayor Elorza’s administration was leaning towards support of the provision, though the language was vague enough to leave the administration open to changing its position (Hat-tip, Patrick Anderson, Projo).

The ACLU joins critics of the zoning provision, which have included the three “no” voters on City Council, Transport Providence, Greater City Providence, and Eco Rhode Island News.

In the letter to the Council, ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown stated that, “The ordinance’s undue stigmatization of Providence’s students is contrary to the City’s reputation as a robust host to the local colleges and universities. The focus on this one criterion is unfair and extremely unlikely to help resolve any of the legitimate concerns prompting calls for action in the first place.”

The letter cites rejection by Rhode Island courts of similar laws, citing a 1994 Narragansett zoning provision that attempted to keep non-related persons from cohabitating (This answers a question I had had–a reader pointed out that Providence indeed also has such a law, preventing more than three unrelated persons from living together, and wondering whether the zoning law was ever enforced. It must be left over from before such provisions were struck down in the courts). Quoting the judge who rejected the provision, the ACLU letter shows how arbitrary many zoning provisions truly are:

“It is a strange—and unconstitutional—ordinance indeed that would permit the Hatfields and the McCoys to live in a residential zone while barring four scholars from the University of Rhode Island from sharing an apartment on the same street.”

The City Council is scheduled to vote on second passage of this ordinance at its meeting this Thursday, September 17.

A full copy of the RI ACLU’s letter is here.

If you haven’t contacted your city councilperson and the mayor, contacts for both along with voting records are in the original RI Future profile on this issue, here.

~~~~

Certainly break-ins are never a good thing, on any side of town. But the mayor said “One Providence,” not two.

The swift response from the mayor, police, and media to these mostly white, relatively affluent city dwellers highlights the opposite experience of Southside community organizations, residents, and organizers seeking the mayor’s audience for their issues. At the sounds of alarm raised by those on the East Side, Mayor Elorza rushed to a community meeting and brought along high-ranking police officials. All this despite police statistics (cited in the Projo article) demonstrating a decrease in reported break-ins on the East Side since last year. The Providence Journal followed close behind and gave the meeting front-page coverage! This comes a day after I received an email from the administration, announcing the new “Center for City Services,” based on the pledge that “everyone who lives, works, owns a business, and goes to school in Providence deserves the highest quality city services.” “Everyone,” not just the politically palatable or otherwise privileged.

The Tenant and Homeowner Association (THA), a group of working-class homeowners and renters from across Providence, predominantly people of color, who are organized to prevent foreclosure, evictions, and the abandonment of their neighborhoods, have been raising the “alarm” about the city’s hundreds of abandoned properties for months, and have yet to receive face time with the mayor.

In fact, a formal request for a meeting was met with months of silence, and only after further prodding finally received the answer from a staffer that the mayor was simply “too busy,” to meet on this issue. Yet, these East Side residents, alarmed at break-ins that have not, in fact, increased, receive the mayor’s immediate presence in their neighborhood, along with city resources in the form of eager police commanders. While break-ins appear a bit of a straw man, abandoned properties, by the mayor’s own admission, are a serious problem for the city, though not on the East Side. Hundreds of properties sit empty, inviting arson, blighting neighborhoods, and dragging down property values for those homeowners, predominantly people of color, who have managed to hang on to their homes amidst foreclosures and structural unemployment.

The mayor’s reluctance to meet with a group of affected residents, who have actually been organizing themselves around an issue for years (the last six of which were spent changing state law to protect vulnerable renters from eviction), is unacceptable. Suspicions about his priorities and the sincerity of “One Providence,” are legitimized by his earnest response to East Side residents, who are unorganized and whose “alarm” is rooted in race and class-based fear.

Instead of assuaging the fears of East Siders, perhaps the mayor should prioritize the basic needs of the many residents in the rest of Providence, whose resistance to never-ending poverty, divestment, blight, and disenfranchisement are rooted in real problems, like abandoned properties, to which the mayor himself offered lip service in the pursuit of votes.

Last week, more than 60 local students marched in circles around City Hall holding signs that read, “Keep Your Promise,” and “My Feet Hurt.”

The Providence Student Union (PSU) organized the action in protest of Mayor Elorza’s failure to follow through on his campaign promise regarding school transportation to “bring the walking limit to 2 miles, and to grant bus passes to anyone who lives beyond that.” Currently, Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) passes only extend to students living farther than 2.5 miles from school. This 2.5 mile radius came after a reduction from a 3 mile radius by former Mayor Angel Taveras via the inclusion of additional funding in the 2014-15 budget, with plans for further reduction of the radius in the 2015-2016 school year. As WPRI reports, as “Elorza and school officials scrambled to close a projected $34.7-million shortfall in the budget year that begins July 1, the $680,000 needed to reduce the distance to two miles was deemed too steep.”

PSU organizer Roselin Trinidad, in an interview with NBC 10’s Bill Rappleye, stated, “Kids have actually told me I’d rather stay at home than walk in the snow because I’m safe. I know I’m not going to slip on the sidewalk. I know I’m not going to get frostbite because I’m home.” And she continued, “the sidewalks are not well plowed, so it forces me to walk on the street. I’ve been lucky so far.” Indeed, the need for a solution to this massive lack of transportation for students who live substantial distances from their schools is incredibly palpable after this past winter, when the unplowed and unsalted sidewalks became dangerous.

It’s a predicament that I myself can relate to: while I don’t attend public school in town, I live exactly 2.5 miles from Brown’s campus where I go to teach and attend classes, and I often walk the distance. Here is the crucial difference: if I get a blister, or my feet hurt, or I’m just exhausted, or there has been a blizzard, I have the option of either taking the bus (which is paid for), getting a ride from my partner, taking a Brown-provided safeRIDE, or driving in my sometimes-functional car. When the streets were at their worst this winter, I walked to campus as little as possible, because I didn’t feel safe walking down the slippery sidewalks, or, worse, down the middle of the street because the sidewalks were too icy or completely unshoveled. Again, I live 2.5 miles from campus, which is relatively far, regardless of whether the city thinks this is a reasonable distance for high school students to walk. I fell one of the few times I did walk this winter, and I heard many stories of fellow students, a number of whom lived much closer to campus, who fell multiple times, often getting injured or bruised in the the process. If Brown students with access to multiple forms of transportation are having trouble getting to school, it is absurd that high school students being asked to make such long treks without access to public transit.

Indeed, the 2 mile mark is not enough, and this seems especially true when the weather turns sour. I say this not solely as a Brown student, but as someone who has attended 8 different public institutions across the grade spectrum, including several public colleges, all of which provided better access to transportation than Providence currently provides its students.

As Elorza himself said while campaigning, “denying students who live between 2-3 miles away from school bus passes impacts learning, impacts health, and impacts safety, and our low-income communities are disproportionately affected.”

Roselin Trinidad’s response as quoted in Bob Plain’s recent RIFuture article seems apt:  “Mayor Elorza pledged that the City would put money in next year’s budget to lower the walking distance for Providence high school students down to 2 miles. Yet his proposed budget does not direct a single dollar toward keeping this promise. It is unacceptable for Mayor Elorza to value our ability to access education before an election, but not after, and we will not quiet down until this wrong has been righted.”

Is there a way to make bussing more sustainable? Can bus passes have some form of nominal fee attached to them that is tiered much like many free or reduced price student meal programs in order to make the program budget-friendly in a way that opens it to students up to the 1.5 or 1 mile mark (according to an RIFuture article from 2014, over half of Rhode Island school districts provide transportation for students living within 1.5 miles, and almost a third of districts provide transportation to students living beyond the 1 mile mark)? Is there a way to expand this program to more students when the weather turns sour for months on end? Can schools do anything in the interim to help students get to their classes like school organized car-pooling?

I think this issue needs to be looked at seriously, and just reducing the limit to 2 miles, while a necessary first step, also leaves many other students still in precarious positions, especially if the city experiences another winter like this last one. Providence’s utter neglect evokes one of those “back in my day” stories where a grandparent describes walking uphill, through the snow both ways, to school. Except the city’s current students experience such ridiculous slogs on a daily basis. Except now, when the the students do get to school, the buildings are often crumbling. Seriously, Providence can do better.

Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza says he hasn’t broken a campaign promise to provide bus passes for local students who live more than two miles from school. He just hasn’t made good on it yet.

“I remain committed to reducing the walk-to-school radius and fixing the school assignment process so fewer students are facing long commutes,” Elorza said in a statement. “I have walked with these kids, I understand the difficulty they face, and I look forward to working together to address this issue.”

The Providence Student Union and other local high school students held a rally at City Hall Tuesday to hold Mayor Elorza accountable for a campaign pledge he made to provide bus passes for students who live more than 2 miles from school.

“This is a matter of priorities, not cash,” Elorza said in February, according to to RI Future, when he was first running for office.

But now that he is mayor, it seems to have become a matter of cash. The roughly $1 million expenditure to expand the number of students who get bus passes for their school commute was not included in his budget. As a candidate, Elorza said, “With a total city budget of $662 million, we must make it a priority to find the $1.35 million to fund passes for the 2,100 students who live between 2 and 3 miles from school.”

Elorza spokesman Evan England said today, “It’s not something we don’t want to do. There are a lot of difficult decisions right now.”

England added, “It’s not necessarily off the table for next school year,” noting the mayor may approach RIPTA about partnering on the costs, and looks forward to meeting with PSU members to talk about other potential solutions.

But when asked if the issue was an imperative to solve before next school year, England said, “I don’t know. I know it’s something the mayor feels very strongly about and something he wants to see get done.”

Most Rhode Island and many regional urban school districts provide public transportation to school when students live greater than two miles from school, according to this RI Future post. Providence provides public transportation when students live greater than 2.5 miles from school, reduced from 3 miles in September.

“Last year, a clear and simple promise was made by the City, the School Department and most of all by then-candidate for mayor Jorge Elorza to set this issue right,” said PSU member Roselin Trinidad, a senior at Central High School, in a statement about the group’s rally yesterday at City Hall. “Mayor Elorza pledged that the City would put money in next year’s budget to lower the walking distance for Providence high school students down to 2 miles. Yet his proposed budget does not direct a single dollar toward keeping this promise. It is unacceptable for Mayor Elorza to value our ability to access education before an election, but not after, and we will not quiet down until this wrong has been righted.”

Said PSU member Diane Gonzalez, a junior at Central High, “I am here today because I live 2.4 miles away from my school. That means I don’t qualify for a free monthly bus pass. My family cannot afford to spare $60 each month for a pass, so I have to walk halfway across the city every single day just to get to school, and then back again to get home. While that walk can be a pain in any weather, it can be downright dangerous when the poorly plowed streets are covered in ice or when the temperature hits 95 degrees. That’s why I hope Mayor Elorza is listening, and why I plan to come back here every day until he does.”

PSU created this video (which utilizes RI Future footage of Elorza pledging to address the situation) to draw attention to the matter.

Update: the original version of this post said Providence provides school busing at 3 miles. Last year, the city reduced that to 2.5 miles. The post was corrected.

Providence needs modern bike infrastructure, but private interests stand in its way.

Regency Plaza Apartments and the Providence “Dunk” Convention Center should not get to decide what happens to Providence’s streets. We should.

Sign the petition: Broadway and Sabin St. should get modern design standards to improve conditions for all users.

Regency Plaza would like part of Broadway to be “abandoned” to allow for further development. New apartments in downtown would be great for the city, but with a footprint that is mostly surface parking, there’s no reason for Regency Plaza to take more land from the city’s rights-of-way. It should make better use of what it has.

The Providence Convention Center has blocked any changes to its front street, Sabin St. Sabin is essentially the same street as Broadway, leading up to where the name changes over. Sabin’s geometry is extremely wide, allowing for high speeds punctuated only by traffic jams. Bike infrastructure makes streets safer and helps to reduce city congestion.

We would like Jorge Elorza to act administratively or in concert with City Council to preserve these streets as public rights-of-way, and to modernize their design.

Please sign our petition, and share it far-and-wide (not too far, though, we only need Rhode Islanders.).

Sign the petition: Broadway and Sabin St. should get modern design standards to improve conditions for all users.

~~~~

We all know that our state faces many challenges. In most cases, good and honest leadership and visions have been unthinkable, especially in these challenging times. Like many others, I am aware of those critical issues and challenges, and I am deeply concerned about what lies ahead for our creative capital and state. However, I stood by and with you through the fight in the past elections, and I still believe and stand with you as you take office.

I have no doubt in mind that you’re ready to transform our city and state by changing it from within.

As you take your respective seats in offices and roll your sleeves, keep in mind that I and thousands of other concerned Rhode Islanders are watching you– particularly those of us who walked tirelessly under scorching summer sun and bitter cold winter. We burnt our fuel and carelessly increased our cars odometers by traveling to every corner of the city and state. We knocked on strangers’ doors despite the dangers and untold and unexpected humiliations that came with it. Above all, we put our own lives on hold, believing it’s worthy. We were ready to tell your stories and share your visions with the rest of the city and state. We believed in you and still do.

Like many others, I am watching you. I am watching you because I care about you and our state. I am watching you because I still believe in One Providence and One Rhode Island, where a mother on the Southside of Providence sends her teenage boy to the nearby corner store without any fear that he might not return home safely. If you do not do what you made us believe and get swallowed by the chronic illness of “cultural and insider politics,” don’t be surprised to read my articles in the papers. Don’t be surprised to see me hitting every medium, criticizing the person you might become. Don’t be surprised to see a movement against your failures. Don’t be surprised when an ardent supporter and a friend becomes a fierce critic.

As your good friend, I am watching you with eagle eyes. Beware and be yourself! Lead with open heart, open mind and integrity!

Your caring friend,

Komlan A. Soe

Before the hike, the car tax had a $6000 exemption and a rate of 7.678%. In addition to lowering the exemption to $1000, the city cut the rate to 6%. The net result was a lower effective tax rate on cars worth more than roughly $24,000 and a higher rate on cheaper cars. To his great credit, Solomon now says that this tax cut for expensive cars was unintentional and a mistake. Here is what he told the Progressive Democrats at our mayoral forum:

“Because the exemption was taken away, we thought it was easier for people with a $5000 car to pay $60 per thousand than $77 per thousand.* In hindsight, we probably would have been better off raising the exemption level. So we kind of did it backwards…Ultimately, what we had in mind was taking care of people who had cars under five or six thousand. We thought, by lowering the rate from $77 to $60,* that that would save them some money.”

When I first met Mayor-elect Jorge Elorza, months before he announced his campaign, he told me how concerned he was about how the Taveras-Solomon car tax hike hurts working families. It is a message he repeated time and time again on the campaign trail. But the City of Providence does not have very much money, so the price of a repeal matters.

That is why the fiscal analysis the Providence City Council quietly released right before Christmas matters so much. It pegged the price of a repeal at $20.5 million. As policymakers struggling with the next budget try to squeeze in some sort of repeal, that is the cold, inflexible number they will be facing. But it should not be.

When I first saw that figure, I was surprised, since the car tax hike had only netted the city $14.2 million in the first place. Digging deeper into the report, the reason for the discrepancy became clear. The $20.5 million figure assumed the city was going to maintain the lower rate, which led to the tax break for expensive cars.

I wrote to the author of the report, Nick Freeman, and he happily provided me the cost of a clean repeal of the car tax changes—$15.15 million.

So when budget writers try to find the cash to return to the old car tax system and provide some relief for Providence’s working families, that is the number they should be aiming for, not $20.5 million. It makes a tough lift quite a bit more realistic.

And if they cannot find the money, they should provide some quick relief by repealing the rate cut to fund an increase in the exemption. It would be free. It would be fair. And it would ease the financial squeeze so many in our city suffer under.

*Confusingly, car tax rates are typically reported as dollars per thousand, so when people talk about a $60 rate, they mean 6%.