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.

“I paid for this pass, and now it’s no good and I have to pay again,” said Rosa.

Barbara Polichetti, Director of Public Affairs at RIPTA (Rhode Island Public Transit Authority)  said that, “Individuals who obtained their passes before January 1, 2013 will be required to pay $10 for their new passes. Anyone who obtained their pass after January 1, 2013 will still need to re-qualify but will not have to pay the $10 processing fee.”

Further up the line Frederick, a disabled man in his late thirties, told me that he had waited in line for over two hours the day before. “They cut off the line at ten people, and told the rest of us to come back tomorrow,” he said. He added that it is difficult for him to get around without a bus pass.

RIPTA announced back in April that they were “re-qualifying all passengers eligible to participate in RIPTA’s Reduced Fare Bus Pass Program for lower income senior citizens and persons with disabilities.” All participants were then required to obtain new passes by July 1. That deadline was later extended to September 1.

I asked Polichetti why re-qualification became necessary. “We looked at all aspects of this program as part of the Comprehensive Fare Study that was conducted last year. In addition to looking at fares, or in this case our no-fare customers, we also looked at the administration of the program. It became very clear that having passes that were valid for five years at a time was not practical or prudent – it was simply too long to go without having people check back in to see if they still qualify for the program.

“There was no way to determine if a pass holder had died or moved away; their passes remained active and in use in our system until they expired. So we knew we needed to lessen the time the passes are valid. They will now be valid for two years, not five. The passes being issued now will expire on a customer’s birthday after the two-year mark, so everyone will not have to re-qualify at the same time again – it will be staggered.”

Originally senior and disabled bus riders were facing a $.50 price hike, but that increase was put off until January, when the General Assembly might reconsider the fare increase.

“We are sensitive to the fact that this program serves a population that is facing financial, health and other stressors in their lives,” said Raymond Studley, RIPTA’s CEO in June when the extension was announced.

That population includes Alan, who first got in line for a new pass on August 31. He was told that he lacked the proper paperwork. It took him a while to get what he needed from the IRS. I wasn’t sure that the one paper he had in his hand would be enough, but Alan seemed confident.

RIPTA’s outreach to the public about the program changes has been extensive, said Polichetti, and has included distributing information at charitable organizations and senior centers across the state, running radio ads for five months, and posting reminders on its website, social media and the digital boards on buses and at the Kennedy Plaza transit hub.

Still, many senior and disabled people didn’t get the message until a bus driver informed them that their pass was no good. Jose, who was waiting in line with Rosa, doesn’t speak much English and his pass didn’t expire until May 2019. He was visibly annoyed that his pass was invalid, despite the date printed on it.

“A lot of riders thought that at the last minute the governor would have a change of heart and decide to honor the passes until they expired,” said Don Rhodes, president of the RIPTA Riders Alliance. So why didn’t RIPTA grandfather in people like Jose and Rosa, who have passes that won’t expire for a few years?

“Since one of the goals was to end the five-year tenure of the passes for better administration of the program,” said Polichetti, “this would not have worked. It would have meant that some people were still going to have five years without checking in with RIPTA, five years without us verifying that they still qualify for the program, and that they are the rightful pass holder.

“We tried to minimize the financial impact of the re-qualification process by not charging anyone who received a pass after Jan. 1, 2013 for their new passes.  The fee – which is the administrative fee for getting a photo ID pass – remains the same at $5 per year.  The new two-year passes are $10.”

Mary waited in line on Tuesday from 1pm to 3:30pm, only to be told to go home and come back tomorrow. She had spent Tuesday morning at the DMV, getting her state issued ID, and then spent hours in vain at RIPTA. It was a long day of waiting in line, with tons of other people, and she didn’t get the bus pass she needed.

“It was crazy in here yesterday,” said Mary, “It was nuts. The line was over twice as long, and stretched around the room and outside into the rain.”

Hopefully Mary will have better luck today, since she arrived an hour before the office opened.

The 2014 priorities listed by Paolino remain poor uses of city or state funding, but the former mayor’s softer tone on homelessness opens up an opportunity to hold his feet to the fire and demand some changes. Most recently, in an interview with The Projo’s Edward Fitzpatrick, Paolino says he wants the city to avoid the “Giuliani way” of removing homeless people, and look to root causes. Will Paolino stay true to his word?

Here are some things Paolino can back to show that he’s serious.

A parking lot tax, with a refund to housing costs

Paolino has large holdings in downtown parking lots. Essentially these are land speculation projects. It makes sense to hold onto prime land in the city, earning money off of commuters who park there, until a perfect skyscraper project comes along for those plots of land. Parking lots do pay property taxes, but because a surface lot is not valued highly, this gives speculators the best of all worlds– an easy short-term revenue stream, low taxes, and a lottery ticket that is likely to be worth a lot of money in the future.

I’ve argued in the past that putting a tax on surface parking would change the balance of this math. Land speculators like Paolino would be inclined to build something– anything– to hold the space until larger projects could come, instead of pimping parking lots. A developer may prefer a skyscraper, and in the long-run that may be the best thing for the city as well, but having rowhouses in the space while something else comes along means people have a place to live. As bigger projects form, the city could also require the continued tenancy of low income residents as part of mixed income development. This could itself help create more affordable housing. A tax on parking could and should also be refunded directly to properties adjacent to the parking, lowering the cost of business and residency in the city. Yet another way that this stream of revenue could considerably change the forecast for the poorest people would be if a portion of it was directly put towards housing vouchers for homeless individuals and families. Paolino has suggested that more money be put to shelters for homeless people, but what people truly need is permanent housing.

A parking lot tax would cost Paolino– he owns 11 lots. But if he’s serious about his statement that the business community needs to step up, endorsing this reform and pushing it through the business community would be one sincere step he could take.

Deregulation of single-family only zoning & parking minimums

Many Providence neighborhoods do not allow affordable housing, by law. The zoning code is full of arcane regulations designed to allow only what types of housing currently exist in a neighborhood. This is nothing like what happened in normal cities before the 1920s.

Providing affordable housing in Providence should partly be built around getting rid of some of these arcane rules.

Parking minimums require that most residences have x number of parking spots per square foot of space. This both makes the housing itself more expensive, and also rules out building new housing on land that is taken up by parking.

Providence also has a number of neighborhoods that don’t allow anything but single-family homes. Sometimes these neighborhoods already have some houses that aren’t single-family, and they’ve been carved into the zoning as exceptions. The business community and city need to work together to eliminate zones like 1 & 1A, which don’t allow things like granny cottages, rowhouses, apartments, twins, duplexes, or triple-deckers. The business community and city also have to work together to end the practice of putting residency limits on students. Students bleed out into housing, making what affordable options that exist more expensive, and displacing people on the fringes of becoming homeless.

These are not issues that Paolino can be held accountable for, but in his new-found advocacy for the homeless, they should become centerpieces of policy change. Paolino should push zoning reform.

Transit at the center, not the fringes

While Paolino can’t be blamed for zoning, he can be held accountable for his long agitation against Kennedy Plaza as a bus hub. In 2014, as I stated, Paolino advocated for moving buses “to the fringes of the city” and getting rid of the bus hub entirely, to make it an underground parking garage.

People who become homeless often have serious problems that go beyond job access, but once they get on track, keeping a job is a very important stabilizing force. Transit is one of the most important ways to make sure that low-income people, who cannot afford cars, can have access to jobs.

I’ve had some online discussions with other transit advocates who point out that RIPTA should not be running all its routes through Kennedy Plaza. I agree with this criticism, and think we need an effort to put together a full network of bus routes like what Jarrett Walker designed in Houston, but I also think it’s clear this hasn’t been what Paolino meant in the past. Referring to buses as needing to be “at the fringes” is pretty clear about why the buses need to move– in this case, to take the sour image of poor people out of the downtown. Paolino’s business coalition needs to work to make transit a priority by spearheading efforts to give buses rights-of-way, improving frequencies of bus routes by funding RIPTA better, and updating the city’s poor pedestrian and bike layout to aid last-mile connections.

I’ve argued in the past that while there’s been a lot of action around maintaining free bus passes for elderly and disabled Rhode Islanders, that more attention needed to be put to making the bus system run efficiently and frequently (an argument I borrowed from Jarrett Walker as well). However, even in that piece, I argued that it was silly not to offer homeless people free rides on RIPTA. RIPTA has temporarily extended the free bus pass program pending funding, but business leaders like Paolino need to make RIPTA a long-term priority.

Supporting RIPTA, biking, and walking would be a big turnaround for Joe Paolino, but if he’s truly a reformed man with a vision to end the plight of the homeless, that would be what he needs to do.

And Scrooge was better than his word

I would be lying if I said that I trusted Joe Paolino’s softer messaging on panhandling in Kennedy Plaza. Over the years, many of Paolino’s priorities for the city have struck me as hostile to poor people and to non-drivers, couched in the kind of right-leaning identity politics one might associate more with Donald Trump than a former Democratic mayor of a blue-state city. But everyone can change. I will open my arms to Joe Paolino if he changes his ways. He needs to embrace the end of his parking empire as a way of speculating off of city land, support putting direct tax resources into more affordable housing, back zoning deregulation to stop the experiment of single-family-only neighborhoods, and back a robust RIPTA with bike and pedestrian infrastructure to support last-mile connections. His rhetoric has to move beyond temporary housing for homeless people, and towards permanent solutions.

As Charles Dickens would put it:

Scrooge was better than his word.  He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father.  He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.  Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms.  His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

God Bless Us Every One.

~~~~

Even at that, House Republicans were more united in their support of the free RIPTA rides program than were several left-leaning legislators. The smaller but demonstrably more vocal GOP caucus spent Wednesday’s marathon budget session offering amendments and peppering Finance Committee Chairman Marvin Abney with questions and concerns. The only amendment from the progressive left came from Rep. John Lombardi, who represents the Federal Hill section of Providence. He made an impassioned plea to restore free bus service to Rhode Island’s most vulnerable residents.

“Some of my constituents earn about between $700 and $800 a month and believe it or not 50 cents can make the difference,” he said, suggesting the money could come from the General Assembly’s own budget. “I’ll tell you what, many of my constituents are alone. They just received their citizenship from other countries. They’re here. They’re from the islands, they’re Russians, they’re Albanians, they’re people from Africa. That’s who my constituency looks like and I’m sure many of you are starting to see that in your neighborhoods. I think we have a duty to help these people. I think we have to assist these people because they are most in need.”

The RIPTA Board of Directors decided to end free rides for the elderly, disabled and destitute earlier this year. The House budget keeps it alive until January, while Governor Gina Raimondo’s proposed budget did not fund it at all. The governor and House Speaker Nick Mattiello have each indicated the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority is in need of a full overhaul. Lombardi’s amendment would have funded the free rides for the entire fiscal year, regardless of a systemic overhaul.

The amendment failed, 41 voted against it and 27 supported it. House Republicans, who spent most of the evening trying to shrink government spending, were unanimous in their support of the social welfare program. Progressives, on the other hand, were not. Reps Teresa Tanzi, Art Handy, Chris Blazejewski and Shelby Maldonado all voted against extending free RIPTA rides to the elderly, disabled and destitute.

Tanzi, who represents Narragansett and South Kingstown, offered her own impassioned plea on why RIPTA shouldn’t receive additional funding.

“It is with a heavy heart that I urge folks not to support this amendment because it’s not the best thing to do with the limited funds that we have,” she said. “Believe me I would love to make a $900,000 investment in RIPTA this is not the best way to do it.”

Tanzi explained, “The problem is the state was forced to contract with a third party vendor. That third party vendor is called Logisticare and since they have taken over the number of people who have qualified for these free passes has grown. And while that has happened they have changed it so they are no longer billing those passes the way that RIPTA used to … when RIPTA was in charge of it they billed so that medicare would be reimbursing the state, so we lost significant federal dollars to match it.”

She continued, “I think what the committee heard at the end of the night heard was that throwing $800,000 more dollars at a program that is being very poorly run is not the solution and that giving them six months to renegotiate the contract with this third party vendor, giving them six months under perhaps oversight under Chairwoman [Pat] Serpa’s guidance or under a subcommittee through finance, we’re going to look at this holistically and try to come up with a solution. So nobody wants this program to end in January, nobody wants people isolated and locked up in their homes in the middle of winter. We’re looking for a solution and right now throwing $893,000 more dollars at a program that we know is being mismanaged is not the best answer.”

Tanzi is making a concerted effort today to get Speaker Mattiello to bring to a floor vote her bill that would limit the ability of felony domestic abusers to possess guns, and her advocacy against the amendment may have been part of the deal making that happens as the legislative session draws to a close.

Nonetheless, her stand drew some measure ire. Sam Bell, director of the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats, tweeted. “I rarely publicly criticize our legislative allies, but I personally think @tanzister made an error here.” When it was Lombardi’s turn to speak, he shot back sarcastically, “I’m so glad people in this chamber have heavy hearts.”

Rep. Joe Almeida, who also represents a poor neighborhood in Providence, said if the attempt to outsource the program has failed, the state should waste no more time with the private company.

“If this third party can’t run a business right, why do we still have to wait six months?” he asked. “Why do people gotta be left on the sidewalk and can’t get nowhere? If this third party can’t do it, they should have been fired a long time ago. In business we wouldn’t have waited this long. I hope RIPTA has the common sense not to bring this company back if they can’t do the job.”

Meanwhile Majority Leader John DeSimone, known for parroting the will of Speaker Mattiello, tacked to the right of Tanzi – who herself took a more conservative position than the GOP caucus.

“We need to take a comprehensive look at what we are doing,” he said. “We are the only state in the country currently that has no fare and as a result we are losing millions of dollars from the federal government. But the usage of the bus is not as good as the states that charge so there is obviously something wrong. At this point we have to be responsible, we have to get the federal money that is available to us and RIPTA may need to be revamped or remanaged or something has to happen. But the answer is not to just keep the fares free. While the motives of having a free fare are fantastic, it’s just not working.”

The RIPTA Riders Alliance held a rally outside the State House earlier this week at which an elderly woman said, “I know there is money in the budget, they just want to squander it on their friends.”

RIPTA decided to end free bus fare for these riders earlier this year. The House budget restored free fares for the elderly and disabled until January. Advocates say it would cost the state $800,000 to extend the service for the entire year.

RIPTA riders who utilize the reduced fare spoke at the rally about why they need it and how it affects their lives.

“If we already can’t afford to get to and from places and RIPTA raises the fare where does that leave us,” asked Michael Viera, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair. “If this program doesn’t exist I would not be able to make it to all my doctor appointments.”

A developmentally disabled man said, “If I don’t ride bus free I will be lonely and stranded.”

Another RIPTA rider added, “It will not only restore the sanity to our souls, it will also keep us materially safer.”

Malcus Mills, an organizer with DARE, said, “The board at RIPTA are not thinking of the people they serve. They are not thinking about us. They are not thinking about the low income folks who need this the most.”

One woman called it, “simply a matter of justice. The fact is RIPTA gets funding from all of us through our taxpayer dollars. The fact that we all pay into it, we all should be able to access it. We should not be segregated from other people.”

Another said, “I know there is money in the budget, they just want to squander it on their friends.”

Camilo Viveiros also spoke about legislators role in the process. “Are they going to use their expertise to assist the most vulnerable? Or are they going to throw people who are disabled and seniors literally under the bus?”

Randall Rose added, “We have to keep fighting for this. We already achieved something. RIPTA wanted to raise the fares in July, but we postponed it at least six months and we can keep doing it as long as we keep coming out here.”

Things are now coming to a head.

The recently revealed House budget includes money to put off the fare increase for six months, until January, but doesn’t quite put in enough funds to stop the fare increase altogether. RIPTA Riders Alliance is working to fight this, and there are several easy things people can do to help.  When the budget comes up for a House vote Wednesday, there will be a proposed amendment to add a small amount of funds to RIPTA ($800,000) and stop the fare increase.  Many disabled people and seniors have said publicly in the past year that they cannot afford to pay what RIPTA wants on their limited income, and RIPTA admits that they expect steep drops in how many bus trips disabled and senior Rhode Islanders will take.  Fortunately, there are ways to make this better.

1. One way people can help is by signing our online petition — it automatically sends messages to the State House when you sign. Please also share the petition link with others — we need people to respond quickly.
2. Another thing you can do to help is to contact your state representative and state senator and ask them both to support budget amendments: $800,000 more for RIPTA to stop this attempt to squeeze more money from RI’s limited-income disabled and seniors who are already facing challenges.  Go to vote.ri.gov to find your elected officials’ contact info — you can call them and/or email. RIPTA Riders Alliance has been distributing a flyer about this.
3. Finally, RIPTA Riders Alliance will hold an event at 1:30 this Tuesday at the State House to talk about how important this is. We are sending the message that if Rhode Island’s senior and disabled people can’t afford to travel, they will be stuck at home, less able to shop, volunteer and visit loved ones — and isolation is deadly for seniors and the disabled.  Protest makes a difference sometimes!  Please come at 1:30 on Tuesday at the State House — and let people know about the Facebook event page.

Ironically, we’re facing this terrible fare hike on the most vulnerable because of a sneaky General Assembly move last year.  When the House debated the budget last year, the House Finance Chair at the time, Raymond Gallison, put in a last-minute amendment to allow (that is, encourage) RIPTA to charge more to limited-income seniors and disabled people.  Since then Gallison has had to resign.  But it’s fitting that what began with one last-minute budget amendment is now leading to another, this time to save the most vulnerable who have been targeted as budget victims in the past.  An amendment will be proposed in the House for Wednesday’s debate, and we are hoping to get an amendment in the Senate, too.

More useful information is available on RIPTA Riders Alliance’s Facebook page.

Hundreds of seniors and disabled people have given moving testimony over the past year about how they can’t afford this bus fare hike on their limited income and will be stuck inside their residences, rarely able to go out. Advocates had called for the House budget to include money to prevent the fare hike. RIPTA Riders Alliance is disappointed that the House budget did not do this.

All the budget does is to reschedule the fare hike — RIPTA had wanted this fare hike to start this July 1, and the House budget provides only enough funding to postpone the fare hike by six months (to January 2017), according to the Providence Journal and legislative leaders. This fare hike will be devastating to Rhode Island’s most vulnerable seniors and disabled people who rely on public transit. It would be a travesty for the General Assembly to go home on vacation without addressing this problem, leaving the fare hike to take effect at the beginning of next year.

These low-income seniors and disabled people will be left in further isolation, and isolation increases feelings of depression and other medical problems. In many cases they will have to cut back on shopping trips, volunteer work, and visiting friends and family, or squeeze money elsewhere in their fixed-income budget.

This fare increase on the most vulnerable has already roused considerable opposition from the wider public, and the General Assembly cannot shirk its responsibility here. Only about $800,000 more in the budget was needed to prevent this harmful fare increase from taking effect, and the General Assembly should pass the bills (H7937 and S2685) which cancel this fare increase, as Rhode Islanders want.

[From a press release]

The budget bill contains some money to restore low-cost bus fare for indigent people – a social service that RIPTA cut earlier this year. The RIPTA Riders Alliance declined comment until more information is available. House Speaker Nick Mattiello told RI Future the funding for this program is temporary and said larger changes with RIPTA are afoot.

The proposed budget also includes new money to pay nursing home caregivers and those who works with the developmentally disabled. The investment would help raise wages for underpaid caregivers, many of whom work full time and still live in poverty. SEIU officials hailed the move as a step toward a $15 an hour minimum wage for front line caregivers.

It also preserves Governor Gina Raimondo’s increase to the Earned Income Tax Credit, and increased the investment in housing for the homeless proposed by Raimondo.

“We find it encouraging that the House Finance Committee showed their commitment and concern for Rhode Islanders experiencing housing insecurity by supporting the Governor’s budget proposal for affordable housing production and adding an additional $10 million for urban revitalization and blight remediation for a total $50 million Housing Opportunity Bond,” said Jim Ryczek, executive director of the RI Coalition for the Homeless. “We appreciate that the House Finance Committee ensured that this year’s budget invests in the long-term solutions to addressing homelessness and the lack of affordable housing in our state.”

But the House budget left out a proposed increase to the minimum wage that Raimondo included in her budget proposal. The current minimum wage in Rhode Island is $9.60 and Raimondo’s budget proposal would have raised it to $10.10. While the minimum wage does not have a fiscal effect on the budget, it is customary in Rhode Island to include policy changes in the state budget.

The House budget also nixed Raimondo’s proposal to increase investment in the school construction bond money. Many urban school buildings in Rhode Island are in dire need of repair.

It reduced Raimondo’s proposed fee on medical marijuana plants from $150 to $25. While the House measure exempts low income people from the fee, it still requires a new state tag for each plant – a move opposed by independent growers of medical marijuana.

While medical marijuana patients will pay more, beach goers will pay less under the proposed House budget. According to a news release from the House of Representatives, “Just in time for beach season, the Finance Committee slashed parking fees at state beaches — mostly in half — to better enable Rhode Islanders and visitors to enjoy one of the state’s greatest treasures. The cuts, effective July 1, eliminate hikes made in 2012, and apply to all types of passes: single-day weekend and weekday as well as season passes for residents, nonresidents and senior citizens. (Admission to state beaches themselves is free.)”

Charter school opponents should be even more pleased with the House budget proposal than with Raimondo’s version. According to the news release, “The [finance] committee moderated the governor’s proposal somewhat, allowing districts to reduce payments by either 7 percent of the per-pupil tuition cost or the average difference between per-pupil unique costs of the sending districts and those of the charter schools, whichever is greater. The committee also provided some temporary relief for districts with particularly high concentrations of students attending charter or vocational schools.”

And the House budget seems to make it easier for Rhode Islanders to generate more renewable energy. The proposal “expanded the state’s net metering program to allow “virtual” or off-site net metering by all customers, opening up access to renewable energy generation to more Rhode Islanders. Net metering is a practice that allows those who install renewable energy systems such as solar panels to connect them to the electric grid and receive credit on their bill for any excess energy they generate,” according to the House news release.

But a reader sent this comment: “The budget article 18 expands net metering, but it has a completely silly cap on it (major concession to Grid), and messes up the rates (another major concession). It will serve as a disincentive to net metering, not an incentive. The PUC is in the middle of considering the right net metering rate, and this is sort of like sticking a monkeywrench into their machinery. This is in no way a win, except superficially.”

The House is expected to vote on the budget bill next Wednesday.

Red Bandana Award

Peering into the room, one woman pointed out that there were still empty seats inside the meeting room. When told that the room’s occupancy had been reached at 40 people, she asked why there were more than 40 chairs then. No answer was immediately provided.

At issue is Rhode Island Public Transportation Authority‘s decision, per last year’s General Assembly budget, to do away with free bus fare for the elderly, disabled and homeless, and instead institute a 50 cent charge. While it is true that RIPTA’s free bus fare is generous, as Randall Rose testified before the House Finance committee, “We don’t have to be ashamed of who we are in Rhode Island. We don’t have to be ashamed that we’re more generous than other states because we’re doing the right thing…”

Even as Rhode Island seeks to do away with no-fare system, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board unanimously voted to approve a no-fare system for seniors and disabled. Similar systems exist in communities in Pennsylvania, Illionois, Oregon, Texas and Wisconsin.

Spending is much higher than usual because of revenue projected from the new truck tolls, the borrowing of $300 million in so-called “GARVEE” bonds (paid back from future Federal highway appropriations so no voter approval is deemed necessary) and some increased support from the new Federal transportation law.

Most concerning for me, the draft calls for allocating $195 million to the 6-10 project this year, 2016, even though its design – expressway or boulevard – is still being discussed and the city is investigating alternative visions for the corridor. The draft calls for $3 million of public money for a new I-295 interchange in Johnston to subsidize the Citizens Bank move to a new “campus” even though that is contrary to all our land use goals. $38 million is proposed to implement the truck tolls.  An additional $50 million or so is proposed to widen I-95 northbound through Providence when the northbound viaduct is replaced, adding to the huge gashes highways make in central Providence.  But some highway projects are deferred, such as a full Route 4/I-95 west interchange, new Route 403 ramps, and an overpass to avoid the one traffic light on Route 146.  Much money will go to repairing deficient bridges all over the state, with the intent to start as soon as possible before it gets even more expensive to do so, and a lot of state roads will be resurfaced, they are all listed.

On the transit side, it continues some slow progress toward re-establishing a commuter rail stop in Pawtucket, a little new funding for some RIPTA bus service to supplement our commuter rail, seed money to see if someone will operate seasonal ferry service, but no sign of any other rail service expansion. $17 million is allocated for an “enhanced” 6 stop bus corridor where the Providence streetcar would have gone, though it doesn’t even promise any signal priority on that route. The $35 million bus hub bonds that voters approved in 2014 is listed as 2016 revenue for a Providence Station Transit Center. The bond actually could fund bus hubs anywhere in RI, and now may be needed in Pawtucket which is apparently losing its existing Visitors Center bus hub, though there is now no project  being considered.  Otherwise it is largely business as usual for RIPTA with continued bus and paratransit van replacements.

Our bike path network will grow slowly, especially slowly in the first five years, largely limited to extending the Blackstone Bikeway in Woonsocket plus some progress on finishing the South County path. A “City Walk” proposal in Providence is recommended for funding.

My overall take is that beyond really going after improving the bridges there is no game-changer here, not even in light of climate change considerations. For example, there is no sign of any interest in electrifying our commuter rail in the 10 year period (contrast with huge subsidies available for electrifying the auto fleet) nor much sign of attempting to reduce vehicle-miles traveled, or promote more energy efficient urban core redevelopment.

I do hope some in the Rifuture community will investigate this issue which involves our transportation future and so much of our money. Consider testifying at the hearings.  I think Statewide Planning, RIDOT and RIPTA would be willing to help provide more information, but you can also contact me (bschiller@localnet.com) if you like, I do have a print copy of the documents.