to Bolster R.I.'s Public Transportation

By DAVID FISHER/ecoRI staff

Sen. Lou DiPalma believes that better public transit is a quality-of-life issue. (Frank Carini/ecoRI staff)PROVIDENCE — Freedom is about choices. In Rhode Island, if you choose to live in a rural area, your freedom is curtailed by the lack of effective public transportation. Even if you don’t want to, you’ll probably have to own a car to get around. The Rhode Island Coalition for Transportation Choices wants to change that.

The coalition held a continental breakfast/press conference last week at the Rhode Island Foundation to roll out its Rhode Island policy and legislative agenda for 2010. The coalition is comprised of 31 organizations, from AARP to Working Rhode Island, that are dedicated to creating a more viable public transit system in Rhode Island.

The featured speakers were John Flaherty, co-chair of the transportation coalition, Chris Wilhite, transit expert from the Sierra Club, Sen. Lou DiPalma, D-Middletown, Rep. Art Handy, D-Cranston, and Buff Chace, developer and advocate for green building practices.

The three main initiatives of the coalition this year, which Flaherty called “a small first step to get Rhode Island on a path to a sustainable public transit system” are:

• To support investments in transportation choices and create a Rhode Island Transportation Trust Fund, which would increase the biannual auto registration fees by $40 and create a Petroleum Products Gross Receipts Tax to generate an annual total of $67 million for transportation investments.

• Research incentives to explore the feasibility of a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) tax in accordance with the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Transportation Funding.

• Support passage of federal legislation which would support state transportation projects, such as federal bills to promote affordable transportation choices, economic development, and the types of walkable, vibrant communities vital to Rhode Island.

“The most prevalent problem that Rhode Island faces in developing a more viable public transit system is its method of funding,” Wilhite said.

In the current funding system, the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) generates all of its revenue from the gasoline tax. In this scenario, as public transit use goes up and fewer people drive, fewer dollars are generated for the state’s public transit system.

DiPalma believes that better public transit is a quality-of-life issue. “When I first suggested the new funding structure in the Senate, I got a lot of, ‘Here we go. Another tax, another fee,’” he said. “But as I began to walk people through the bill, most said, this really makes sense.”

Road rehab is now paid for by borrowing money, through bond issues. DiPalma stressed that this continued borrowing is unsustainable. He also said that the only alternative to bond issues or toll roads and bridges, is raising and implementing these taxes.

“Pick your poison,” he said.

Handy agreed. “The VMT tax is a more equitable and accurate way to tax people on their road usage,” he said.

The VMT tax would amount to about a penny per mile, and would be charged every two years to residents when they register their vehicles. This would generate an additional $61 million for public transit and infrastructure improvements.

“I think it’s a good strategy and moves in the right direction,” Handy said, “but without federal support, in the form of aggressive legislation, most of what we might accomplish at the state level could fall flat.”

According to Chace, “Effective public transit is a competitiveness issue, when it comes to economic development. With a better public transit system, we can attract more businesses and create more and higher-paying jobs, which will, in turn, help us to retain more college students post-graduation.”

During the brief question-and-answer period after the presentation, some attendees raised questions about the VMT tax concerning people who live in and register their vehicles in Rhode Island but are employed in Massachusetts. Members of the coalition are exploring a VMT tax break for just such a situation. One local business owner said the General Assembly needs to lower the cost of doing business, by removing legal restrictions and lowering corporate taxes and thereby drawing more businesses to the state, before any of these changes can take place.

Forbes magazine recently ranked Rhode Island 50th out of 50 in business “friendliness.”

The proposed bill aims to make more roads bike and pedestrian friendly, fix and maintain roads, get more buses on the roads, expand Rhode Island’s current rail system, and to explore the possibility of creating a commuter rail that revitalizes the old Providence and Worcester railroad and connects the MBTA commuter rail stop in Franklin, Mass., to Providence, via Woonsocket and the Blackstone Valley.

The proposed new registration tax funds would be allocated thusly: $33.5 million (50 percent) for state road and bridge rehabilitation; $23.5 million (35 percent) for investments in public transit; and $10 million (15 percent) for local road rehabilitation.

That totals $67 million annually. Add to that the $61 million annually from the proposed VMT tax, and that’s a total of $128 million a year to spend on fixing roads and bolstering the state’s bus and train system.

Effective public transit, smart growth and economic development are intrinsically linked. If we, as a state, can capitalize on this link, we will be well on our way to being the best, smallest state in the country.

For more information about the Rhode Island Coalition for Transportation Choices, visit rictc.org.

Expanding, improving the state’s transit system will require lots of public noise

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

New England’s transportation system is the region’s No. 1 source of carbon dioxide, according to the Sierra Club. (Frank Carini/ecoRI staff)PROVIDENCE — During the past five years, as the cost of fuel has risen, unemployment skyrocketed and concerns about greenhouse gases grown, Rhode Island Public Transit Authority ridership has increased 35 percent.

In that time, little has been done to help RIPTA add more buses and routes. In fact, the Gov. Carcieri administration and the General Assembly have done just enough to allow the already-underfunded agency to barely maintain its current services. Talk of expansion is left to others who actually ride RIPTA buses and recognize that the well-managed agency still can’t get many people where they need to go.

In Rhode Island, 9.25 cents per gallon of gas sold goes to RIPTA, which provides the agency with one of its largest sources of funding. But when fuel prices increase and ridership swells, a key part of RIPTA’s revenue decreases, just when the public needs more bus service.

The agency’s financial struggles, therefore, are worsened by the fact that as motorists drive less, RIPTA’s main source of local support, the aforementioned gas tax, decreases.

It’s easy to recognize that Rhode Island’s funding scheme for public transportation is designed to fail, and that the country’s automobile system is not a sustainable mode of transportation. Yet, because of relentless advertising, the fear of change and lobbied-up lawmakers afraid to actually make a difference, an energy-sucking, money-grabbing, greenhouse-gas emitting car culture continues to rule America’s roadways.

“There are forces fighting to keep us in our cars,” said Catherine Lutz, a professor of anthropology at Brown University who has been studying the U.S. car system’s financial, social and health impacts. “We really need to understand the car system in order to change it.”

In the book “Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and its Effects on Our Lives” Lutz wrote with her sister Anne Lutz Fernandez, the authors detail the complex impact of the automobile on modern society and outline how to develop a healthier, cheaper and greener relationship with cars.

“We need to get people out of their cars,” Lutz said, “but the power of car advertising and the political rhetoric that comes out of Washington keeps us hostage to a car culture.”

The nation’s roadways were hijacked in the 1920s when General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum and others conspired to dismantle the U.S. streetcar system.

When the crusade to destroy the country’s popular rail-based public transit system began, only one in 10 Americans owned a car. In 2007, Americans spent nearly 500,000 years — or about 4 billion hours — stuck in traffic, according to the book by the Lutz sisters.

The financial cost of all this stop-and-go traffic they determined was $87.2 billion in wasted fuel and lost productivity, or $750 per traveler.

Lutz was joined last week at the Apeiron Institute for Sustainable Living, on Gordon Avenue, by John Flaherty, the co-chairman of the Rhode Island Coalition for Transportation Choices, and Mark Therrien, RIPTA’s assistant general manager for transit development, for a panel discussion about transportation in the Ocean State.

The three speakers agreed that Rhode Island needs to expand its transit system and build more walkable and bikeable communities. To do that, important, and sometimes-difficult, decisions will need to be made and money secured.

There is federal money available for transit projects, but those funds typically require matching state dollars. That’s a problem in Rhode Island, since “we don’t put money aside for those kinds of projects,” Flaherty said.

While eight decades in the fast lane has taken its toll on the environment and on local economies, the adjustments required to change the way Rhode Islanders and the rest of the country move around are slow to gain traction.

There are plenty of reasons why, according to the featured speakers.

Society doesn’t realize how expensive — financially and otherwise — this runaway car culture really is. Here are several facts the panelists mentioned during their presentation that backup the claim:
    • 40,000 people die a year in car-related accidents. It’s the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 1 and 34, according to Lutz.
    • 2.5 million people are injured in car crashes every year. “The most significant risk we take everyday is getting into our cars,” she said. “People just don’t realize how unsafe it is to travel by car.”
    • It costs the average American family $14,000 per year to own and operate two cars. In fact, for every dollar earned, the average U.S. household spends 18 cents on transportation, 98 percent of which goes toward buying, maintaining and operating vehicles, according to the American Public Transportation Association. It’s the largest source of personal debt after home mortgages.
    • The average cost of a new car is $26,000.
    • The average American spends 18.5 hours a week in his or her car.
    • Since the mid-1960s, about 2,000 miles of road have been built in Rhode Island, and now four decades later, the state and local municipalities can’t afford to keep roads and bridges in good repair. “You can’t take a truck over the Pawtucket River on Route ninety-five,” Flaherty said. “That’s Route ninety-five.”
    • This country’s car culture widens the gap between the rich and poor.

Many local, state and federal officials are slow to grasp, or just ignore, how unsustainable a car-dependent society is and the culture of sprawl it helped create. “We can’t continue to sprawl out and work off the same set of incentives that we have been for the past 50-plus years,” Flaherty said. “The bill for 50 years of sprawl is coming due.”
    • To serve individuals with disabilities who are unable to use regular bus service, RIPTA provides the RIde program. Unfortunately, federal law obstructs just how effective the program could be. “Our RIde vehicles often are running around with one passenger in it,” Therrien said.
    • “Everything designed and built in the last 50 years at the street level was done with cars in mind,” Flaherty said. As an example, he noted the rounded corner of curbs at many pedestrian-heavy intersections, which allow cars to make right turns faster but do little for public safety. A woman in the audience said, “we treat bike paths and bicyclists like recreation and not as a form of transportation.”
    • Local planning boards approve roads with no sidewalks or have ones that go nowhere built, ignoring the fact that these roadways also are used by walkers, joggers and bicyclers. One of the reasons for that, Therrien said, is that most of these local boards are made up of developers, builders and lawyers.

Carmakers continue to push an unyielding advertising campaign that associates a new car with progress, family, freedom, individualism and the environment. “If you love your family, buy them a car, they tell you,” Lutz said. “They tell you it’s like getting a whole new family room.”
    • A recent TV ad for a Chrysler Town & Country minivan referrers to the vehicle as a “playground on four wheels.”
    • Fossil-fuel-chugging behemoths with names like Toyota Sequoia, Chevy Tahoe, Toyota Tundra and GMC Yukon are shown scaling the sides of mountains, cruising along frozen Artic expanses and plowing through lush-green jungles.

New England’s transportation system is the region’s No. 1 source of carbon dioxide, according to the Sierra Club. In 2001, for example, the six states’ transportation sector emitted more carbon dioxide than the entire economies of Austria, Portugal and Israel.

In fact, transportation consumes 43 percent of America’s overall energy resources and is responsible for nearly a third of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. There are nearly 120,000 gas stations in the United States, including close to 400 in Rhode Island, feeding an unsustainable car culture.

To build streetcar infrastructure, extend commuter rail lines, add more RIPTA buses and routes and create more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly communities will require an organized and vocal movement, which is why the Coalition for Transportation Choices was created last year.

The partnership consists of about two dozen public advocacy groups representing economic, social and environmental issues. The coalition is working with state agencies, municipalities, lawmakers, civic organizations, the business community and the public to promote visibility, support and action to help improve Rhode Island’s transit system.

“We’ve spent 50 years educating people we can’t live without cars,” Flaherty said. “It will require work to change the system. We need to build the public and political will. Decision makers need to hear it more before they will stick their necks out. We need to build a movement.”

to Bring Back a Streetcar System

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

The Portland, Ore., streetcar system operates seven days a week, and averages nearly 10,000 passengers a day. Rhode Island officials envision creating a similar public transit option in Providence.PROVIDENCE — City and state officials envision a streetcar system similar to the one Portland, Ore., operates that initially would connect College Hill to the hospital district.

This proposed “starter” streetcar line would serve as a circulator within a roughly 2-mile corridor in downtown Providence, according to the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority’s recently released Providence Metropolitan Transit Enhancement Study.

While alignment and operating plans will be finalized in the next phase of streetcar development, this “Meds to Eds” concept, according to the study, would connect Rhode Island Hospital, the Jewelry District, downtown and Kennedy Plaza.

At the Kennedy Plaza bus station, the line would split, with one line going to the train station and the other to Thayer Street, on the city’s East Side near Brown University.

In Portland, which has a population nearing 558,000, streetcars run on an 8-mile continuous loop that includes stops at the Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital, Portland State University and the Portland Aerial Tram. Each of the city’s 10 streetcars can carry a “sardine” load of up to 140 passengers.

Portland’s streetcar system began operating in summer 2001. The line operates seven days a week, and averages nearly 10,000 passengers a day, according to portlandstreetcar.org.

That city’s 8-year-old streetcar system has helped stimulate $3.5 billion in new development, according to those behind Providence’s bid to bring streetcars back to the Ocean State.

The United States features about 70 operating, under construction or planned electric streetcar systems. Such systems are typically powered by overhead wires, operate on tracks and share the road with other vehicles.

Providence’s metropolitan transit study concluded “streetcars are often the catalyst for new development, revitalizing existing neighborhoods and promoting public transit use by new riders.”

“Building a streetcar system in Providence would generate near-term economic stimulus from construction activity as well as sustained mixed-use development opportunities in areas targeted for economic growth,” according to the study.

The Providence study estimated a streetcar system would provide the city with a “huge economic benefit” and help develop some 3 million square feet of vacant land. It also estimated such a plan would bring about 4,300 jobs and 2,200 residents to the city.

A streetcar system in Providence would hardly be a new venture, however. From about the late-1800s to shortly after World War II, some type of streetcar system operated in the city.

It will be an expensive system to bring back.

According to officials, $76 million of the nearly $127 million it would cost to implement all of the study’s recommendations would go toward bringing back streetcars. How such a streetcar system and the rest of the recommendations would be funded remains unclear.

Officials are targeting 2015 as a possible date when the first phase of a streetcar system could be up and running.

“Investment in a strong, modern public transportation system is critical to our efforts to grow our economy and create jobs,” Providence Mayor David Cicilline wrote in a prepared statement that announced the unveiling of the study. “This action plan is the road map for building a 21st-century intermodal system to meet the needs of our workforce, support economic development and protect our environment.”

The Providence Metropolitan Transit Enhancement Study is the result of a yearlong effort to develop strategies to enhance public transportation within the urban core of Providence, East Providence, North Providence, Pawtucket, Warwick, Cranston and Central Falls.

The study called for more buses, more bus lines, more bus service, especially at night and on weekends, and new bus shelters, so waiting riders aren’t battered by New England’s sometimes-rough weather.

The study also called for more park-and-ride lots, reconfiguring Kennedy Plaza to eliminate several bus berths and make the plaza more pedestrian friendly, and, in the long term, institute rapid bus service.

“The recommendations in this study align well with Rhode Island’s published vision for economic prosperity and long-term quality of life,” John Flaherty, co-chairman of the Rhode Island Coalition for Transportation Choices, wrote in a prepared statement. “If we’re going to effectively compete in a 21st-century economy, capitalize on our compact development patterns and use limited resources wisely, investing in a comprehensive public transportation system is essential. The challenge ahead will be identifying the remaining federal, state and private resources needed for implementation and raising awareness of the urgency and economic development benefit of making these investments now.”

Still Chokes Rhode Island

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

The black carbon soot released from a diesel engine is nearly eight times more carcinogenic than all 133 air toxins tracked by the EPA combined.Diesel exhaust is listed as the most significant cancer-causing air pollutant in each of New England’s six states.

In fact, two counties in Rhode Island — Providence and Newport — are in the worst 20 percent nationwide when it comes to health risks from diesel pollution, according to Nicole Poepping, Clean Water Action Rhode Island’s new diesel campaign organizer.

“It’s a huge health issue,” said Poepping, the former project manager for Building a Healthy Newport Environment Coalition. “The city of Newport is actually taking more of a burden than that 20 percent.”

The streets of Little Compton and Jamestown, for instance, don’t feature nearly the same volume of diesel-powered tour buses and construction equipment.

Last year, two bills designed to curb the amount of toxic diesel exhaust spewed into Rhode Island’s air were submitted to the General Assembly. Both received much resistance from the construction industry, and both failed to gain lawmaker support.

A 16-member commission, though, was formed to “study the impact of and solutions for addressing diesel emission pollution from heavy duty vehicles.” The commission’s findings are expected in early February.

Health effects associated with diesel pollution are the worst in densely populated urban areas, such as Providence County, where proximity to such concentrated emissions sources as busy intersections, bus stops, highways and construction sites make the problem more pronounced.

Each year in Rhode Island, 50 premature deaths, 80 heart attacks and nearly 1,000 asthma attacks are linked diesel pollution exposure, according to Clean Water Action. All six New England states have childhood asthma rates higher than 10 percent.

Much of the diesel exhaust now spewed into the air is a toxic concoction of sooty particles and about 40 known poisonous substances, such as arsenic, benzene, formaldehyde and nickel. The Environmental Protection Agency determined seven years ago that diesel exhaust is a likely cancer-causing agent.

In fact, the black carbon soot released from a diesel engine is nearly eight times more carcinogenic than all 133 air toxics tracked by the EPA combined.

According to the Clean Air Task Force, 21,000 people die annually from illnesses linked to diesel exhaust particles. The microscopic size of these particles makes them an efficient means of delivering chemicals into bodies.

Diesel exhaust is easily inhaled deep into the lungs, which inflames tissue and increases the plaque that forms in arteries, contributing to heart and lung disease.

The Environment Defense Fund calls diesel exhaust one of the most dangerous and pervasive forms of air pollution. The EPA says reducing emissions from diesel engines is one of the most important air quality challenges currently facing the country.

Yet there are about 11 million diesel-powered pieces of machinery, including more than 2 million pieces of construction equipment, in the United States building communities, transporting food and taking us to and from work that lack pollution controls, according to the Boston-based nonprofit, Clean Air Task Force.

In Rhode Island, construction equipment is the No. 1 source of toxic diesel emissions — a problem, Poepping said, the state needs to solve.

Federal, state and local governments have taken some steps in the past few years to lower harmful diesel emissions.

Since 2007, federal standards have required new diesel engines to be fitted with filters that make them run 90 percent cleaner. But many of the 11 million or so diesel engines at work in the United States don’t feature such filters.

The same technology that makes 90 percent fewer emissions possible in post-2006 engines can be retrofitted on diesel engines built after 1993. The problem, however, is that because construction equipment is sturdy and reliable, it is typically in use for decades and there is a low rate of vehicle turnover.

Federal officials also are phasing in a less-polluting low-sulfur diesel fuel for on-road vehicles.

In Rhode Island, a 2006 law, which is less-than-rigorously enforced, was passed that prohibits diesel vehicles from idling for longer than five minutes. A year later, the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act was passed, which mandates that by 2010 all Rhode Island school buses must be equipped with advanced pollution control technology.

The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority already has retrofitted 50 percent of its diesel bus fleet with particulate filters.

Providence received a $565,000 federal stimulus grant this year to equip 42 city trucks with diesel pollution controls. Last year, Newport, Pawtucket, Providence and Warwick passed ordinances seeking greater enforcement of the state’s anti-idling law and calling on the state to regulate diesel emissions even further.

“School buses are well on their way to running much cleaner,” Poepping said. “Our concerns now are construction and municipal diesel fleets.”

Rhode Island’s Roadways

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

Traffic heads west on Route 195 in Providence during a morning commute. (Frank Carini/ecoRI staff)PROVIDENCE — The problem with the state’s transportation system came in the form of a chuckle and a shake of the head.

That was the response a man behind the glass at the Kennedy Plaza bus terminal gave when asked if the station had any train schedules. Providence Station is a fairly easy walk away but unknowing bus riders would have no idea that station is served by Amtrak and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).

A hub of public transportation in a metropolitan downtown makes no effort to connect their passengers with another important form of public transportation, even though its official name, Kennedy Plaza Intermodal Transportation Center, would suggest otherwise. There isn’t a single a sign that points commuters to Providence Station or even a mention that it exists.

However, the man behind the glass can sell commuters lottery tickets.

No train schedules at the bus station and few bus schedules at the train station may seem trivial, but to Barry Schiller it’s the first sign that commuters are second-class citizens in this nation’s car-centric society.

The longtime transit advocate, who has served on the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) board of directors and is currently on the state’s Transportation Advisory Committee, noted one of the reasons there is an ongoing debate about reorganizing Kennedy Plaza, which is nestled in the city’s financial district, as an example of how bus passengers sometimes are viewed in this auto culture.

“Some businesses in the area don’t like to have their clients dropped off near Kennedy Plaza because it’s ‘embarrassing,’” said Schiller, who has sat in on many Kennedy Plaza reorganization discussions and heard the stigma often attached to those who take public transportation.

The North Providence resident and frequent bus rider, though, does agree with those who believe Kennedy Plaza was poorly designed and in need of correction.

“There are few or no shelters and the island is narrow,” Schiller said. “There’s no pedestrian signs, and there are more lanes for cars than for buses.”

In fact, Schiller believes the somewhat-recent buildup of Providence came at the expense of pedestrians and public transit. He pointed out the rounded corner of curbs at many pedestrian-heavy  intersections, which allow cars to make right turns faster but do little for public safety.

“We made it fast as possible for cars to get through the city but we gave no thought about pedestrians,” he said as he recently walked from Kennedy Plaza toward Providence Place Mall. “The city was designed in a very auto-centric manner.”

Providence is hardly alone.

This nation’s public transportation system was hijacked in the 1920s by General Motors’ Alfred P. Sloan Jr., who, with the help of Firestone Tire, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum and others, created National City Lines Inc. to buy up and dismantle streetcar systems throughout the United States and replace them with GM buses.

Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines bought out more than 100 electric streetcar systems in 45 cities, including the United Electrical Railways Co. in Providence. Once purchased, electric trolley service was immediately discontinued, tracks quickly ripped up and wires taken down.

When Sloan launched the campaign that destroyed the country’s popular rail-based public transit systems, which were ever-present in and around bustling urban areas, only one in 10 Americans owned cars and most people traveled by trolley and streetcar.

Once the automobile and petroleum industries succeeded in decimating the nation’s mass transit system, the creation of the federal highway system soon followed. Taxpayer-subsidized road building, driving incentives and subsidies for the automobile industry ushered in the dominance of the car as America’s preferred mode of transportation.

Now, some eight decades later, transportation is responsible for more than two-thirds of the nation’s oil consumption and nearly a third of its carbon dioxide emissions. Life in the fast lane has taken its toll on the environment and the local economy, but it’s not too late to shift gears, according to those working to improve and expand Rhode Island’s transportation options.

“Our economy is seriously hemorrhaging because of our dependence on cars and foreign oil,” said Chris Wilhite, former director of the Rhode Island chapter of the Sierra Club. “It used to be that your car was the best seat in the house, but times have changed. I don’t enjoy sitting in traffic, I don’t love the pollution it causes, I don’t like the fact that the fuel we use is the focal point of wars and I don’t like the tax dollars we lose every year because of our dependence on cars.”

Wilhite said the Rhode Island economy annually loses between $500 million and $1.5 billion because there “isn’t a drop of oil or natural gas in the state.”

The local chapter of the Sierra Club and other Ocean State organizations, such as the Conservation Law Foundation, Grow Smart Rhode Island and Clean Water Action, belong to the Coalition for Transportation Choices, which is a partnership among private sector, advocacy and community agencies focused on enhancing transit in Rhode Island.

Since 2002, about 10 studies have been conducted concerning Rhode Island transportation issues, including the recently released Providence Metropolitan Transit Enhancement Study.

To make Rhode Island more energy independent and reduce pollution, Wilhite said “we need to go back to trolleys and streetcars.”

To do that, he said, “we have to build demand.”

During the past five years, public transit ridership in Rhode Island has increased at a rate of roughly 10 percent annually, according to a recent Sierra Club report. But the state’s current funding scheme for public transportation is designed to fail, the report stated.

“RIPTA has done a good job maintaining its buses and system,” Wilhite said, “but it’s not properly funded. And the way the system is set up, the less people drive, the less money there is for public transportation.”

In Rhode Island, about 9 cents per gallon of gas sold goes to RIPTA, even when the price of gas increases and ridership swells.

This financial formula barely allows RIPTA to cover the maintenance of its fleet, never mind generate enough money for it to expand its coverage area or even allow it to better market itself, Schiller said.

In fact, several independent audits have all concluded that RIPTA is a well-managed but underfunded agency.

Instead of relying on a funding stream that is linked to fuel consumption rather than price, state government needs to create a financing mechanism for public transportation that is sustainable and designed to grow with demand, according to the Sierra Club report.

Increased public transportation would reduce the state’s dependence on oil, would play an essential role in helping promote economic growth, would provide access to jobs and create vibrant urban centers, according to Wilhite.

“We need to expand and boost our current passenger service to what it once was. Providence was originally designed to connect neighborhoods with job centers. The city used to be covered in streetcars,” Wilhite said. “We need rapid transit that gets people across metro areas and into other metro areas. Cities and towns need to have zoning that encourages traditional neighborhood designs and the use of public transportation.”

Rhode Island is the second-most densely populated state, so even a modest expansion of RIPTA services promises increased ridership, Wilhite said. “These streets were built for public transit not automobiles,” he said from just inside a coffee shop on Westminster Street in Providence. “That is why our streets are all clogged up.”

Trains, streetcars and trolleys would help improve public health. A high amount of climate-change pollution comes from privately driven motor vehicles. Passenger cars, light trucks and sport-utility vehicles contribute about17 percent of total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the American Public Transportation Association. In New England, their contribution rises to 40 percent.

In fact, leaving the car at home just two days a week would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by an average of 1,600 pounds per year, according to the American Public Health Association.

Public transportation also would help lessen congestion. Since traffic always expands to meet capacity, there will never be enough roadway to solve the country’s traffic problems.

Rhode Island has learned that the hard way. Not long ago the state was forced to drop its traditional license plate numbering system of two letters followed by three digits to one of six digits because of a growing fleet of vehicles. Concerns also have been expressed that Route 95 and many Providence streets are at or over their capacity to handle traffic.

By getting people out of cars, public health is improved,  global warming reduced, air quality enhanced and open space protected, according to the Coalition for Transportation Choices.

Last year, transit ridership nationwide rose 4 percent, and overall,  Americans took nearly 11 billion trips via public transportation, saving more than 4 billion gallons of gas. But even with that increased ridership, the United States still spent about $700 billion on oil, of which nearly $400 billion was spent on petroleum from other countries.

“It’s time we build public demand for more public transportation and change the way we do things,” Wilhite said. “Let’s invest all that gasoline money we send out of state on energy projects like local wind that will benefit Rhode Island and not Houston, Detroit or Saudi Arabia.”