On Aquidneck Island, momentum is growing for bicycling.NEWPORT — The third annual Bike to Work Day led by local advocacy group Bike Newport recently brought out hundreds of cycling advocates and supporters of a more bike-friendly community. Newport joined Providence, San Francisco, Denver and dozens of others cities across the country May 17 in hosting Bike to Work Day events that celebrated and promoted bicycling as a safe and healthy transportation alternative.

On Aquidneck Island, momentum is growing for bicycling, driven by a range of benefits presented by cycling advocates and tourism promoters alike, from reduced downtown congestion to community healthfulness. Local government is supportive as well. Bill Riccio, the city’s director of public services, has announced plans for bike sharrows to be painted on lower Thames and Spring streets in advance of the summer rush.

Bike to Work Day included a commuter breakfast, an awards ceremony and the release of a new edition of the island bike map. The day’s program, hosted by Bike Newport, AARP and Discover Newport, opened with a commuter breakfast at Washington Square with provisions donated by Jonathan’s Café, Empire Tea & Coffee and A Market.

Sponsor banners and tables alongside breakfast treats greeted 75 residents and cycling commuters who stopped by Eisenhower Park for a bite on their way to work.

“We go to communities, walk around, bike, to see that it’s safe,” said Deanna Casey, advocacy director for AARP-Newport  who works to advance AARP’s “Complete Streets” program (pdf). Walking and biking, according to Casey, make for safer communities where elders can “age in place” in livable communities where traffic is slowed or reduced.

Wearing bike helmet and walking his bike, Brian Hennessey, chief financial officer with People’s Credit Union, joined the festivities early.

“People’s is a community bank. We are here to serve the community,” said Hennessey, explaining why People’s Credit Union is a Bike Newport sponsor. Hennessey serves as treasurer of Bike Newport and is a lead sponsor of the inaugural Elliot Kaminitz Father’s Day Ride schduled for June 16.

“The goal today is to get people who don’t bike to work to give it a try,” said Bari George, executive director of Bike Newport. “It’s gaining momentum. Everything is within three miles here and it’s more more pleasant and less frustrating then driving in a car. It’s about encouraging people to choose a bicycle over a car for short trips in Newport.”

There are economic benefits to biking, according to George, who described the impact of new bikes lanes in New York City.

“There was a 49 percent increase in retail sales along the route,” George said. “That’s something our businesses understand here as well.”

The new bike map is twice the size of the previous edition, and now includes all of Aquidneck Island and Jamestown, with four designated bike routes from 11 to 45 miles in length, including Ocean Drive and a Middletown Beaches loop.

About 15,000 copies of the bicycle map will be available at sites across Newport, including the Newport Visitors Center, local bike shops, and numerous retail, tourism and hospitality centers. The map cover features an original illustration entitled “This Way on Bellevue” contributed by local artist Rafael Medina.

Along with the bicycling rules of the road, the new island’s bicycling map features a statement on sustainable living: “When we take care of how we heat our homes, grow our food, generate electricity and get around, we are improving the environment’s capacity to support future generations.”

Bike Newport presented the inaugural “Bicycle Friendly Business of the Year Award” to Kathy Staub, owner of Jane Pickens Theater & Event Center, for her support of bicycling and bike parking at the popular venue. The award was crafted from a reclaimed bike wheel by renowned local sculptor Howard Newman.

“I hope you’ll all ride your bikes to the movies,” said Staub in accepting the award.

A streetcar route between upper South Providence and College Hill would connect major activity centers in the city’s downtown core. Click for larger image.PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) and local officials are moving forward with their goal of bringing a streetcar line to the city, although there isn’t much optimism that funding will come through right away for the $130 million project.

At the recent monthly meeting of RIPTA's board of directors, Mark Therrien, the authority's assistant general manager of planning, called federal funding a "huge if." The U.S. Department of Transportation has never approved a first-time grant proposal for a new streetcar project, Therrien said.

Nonetheless, RIPTA and the city are pushing ahead as co-applicants on the grant in an effort restart the project, which has been dormant since the Providence Core Connector Study was released in March 2012.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's TIGER grant would provide $20 million toward the overall cost. Therrien suggested that only a portion of the project would be designed and built if they won the grant. The deadline for the grant application is June 3.

Initial plans call for a 2.5-mile streetcar route from College Hill through downtown and into upper South Providence by Rhode Island Hospital. Only about 10 percent of the design work has been completed.

“We don’t think the project is quite ready,” Therrien said.

Since it was announced in 2006, the streetcar project has been criticized for its cost. At the time, and during subsequent years, RIPTA and the city were struggling with debt problems and layoffs.

If the grant is approved, RIPTA would serve as the custodian of the funds, Therrien said, but the city would take the lead on the politics of raising additional money for the project.

Kennedy Plaza. The board heard a condensed version of the public presentation of the proposed makeover of Kennedy Plaza presented at the Biltmore last month. The project will occur in stages, creating mixed-use space for street vendors and public events.

“For it to succeed it has to be combined with other uses,” Cliff Wood, director of the Downtown Park Conservancy, said.

Oversight of the project was funded by a $200,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which the city received in 2011. A $2 million makeover of one of the plaza's intersections will begin this summer.

Randall Rose of RIPTA Riders told the board that the plaza redevelopment project will likely reduce the bus stops at Kennedy Plaza. RIPTA doesn’t have the money to build new stops elsewhere in the city to compensate for lost bus berths, Rhodes said

“There’s no upside to this plan (for RIPTA), just downsides," he said.

The state Department of Transportation (DOT), the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council and the Narragansett Bay Wheelmen have partnered to establish a new bike route to preserve the connection between Providence and East Providence during the Washington Bridge Bikeway closure.

The new signed bicycle route uses the Henderson Bridge and a new extension of Waterfront Drive in East Providence. The Henderson Bridge has bicycle lanes and signage, but no formal route had been identified to connect the bridge to the East Bay Bike Path following the Washington Bridge closure in July 2012.

“We understand the inconvenience the closure of the Washington Bridge Bikeway created for commuting cyclists,” DOT director Michael Lewis said. “We are pleased to partner with the Tourism Council and the Wheelmen in reestablishing this vital connection as work continues on the Washington Bridge.”

DOT and the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council — a state-designated tourism organization representing nine municipalities in Rhode Island's Blackstone River Valley region — each have completed projects in the past two years to guide cyclists. The Blackstone to the Bay Bike Route uses bike lanes and share-the-road markers called sharrows to connect one bike path to another, forming a continuous route from Woonsocket to Bristol.

The Blackstone Valley Tourism Council, with funding assistance from the Wheelmen, Rhode Island’s largest and oldest cycling club, designed and produced the signs for this new route. The new brown and white signs begin at the end of the East Bay Bike Path where it meets Warren Avenue and follow Waterfront Drive up to the Henderson Bridge. After crossing the bridge, the route follows Angell Street to Butler Street on the East Side of Providence.

“There are a lot of people that used the bikeway on the Washington Bridge to travel between home and work, or for leisure and exercise on a daily basis,” Blackstone Valley Tourism Council president Robert Billington said. “Having a signed alternative route now keeps this connection active, and allows riders to more easily travel between East Providence and Providence, and the East Bay to the Blackstone Valley.”

The Washington Bridge is a key link in the Blackstone to the Bay route and the East Bay Bike Path. DOT closed the former bikeway on the bridge to rehabilitate the structure and to build a much wider bike path and linear park. When it opens next year, it will feature a separate bikeway and walking path, scenic overlooks, park benches, flag poles, decorative lighting and landscaped planters. The project also calls for restoration of the historic, multi-arch granite façade of the Washington Bridge and two operator’s houses from which an original drawbridge was controlled.

The new linear park is known as the George Redman Linear Park, after the late East Providence resident who was instrumental in making the East Bay Bike Path a reality 25 years ago.

For more information, visit dot.ri.gov/bikeri.

RIPTA supporters rallied May 2 for a new funding formula for Rhode Island’s public transportation agency. (Kevin Proft/ecoRI News)

As Elmer put it, “RIPTA gets something, and DOT gets more.”

Elmer did concede that the O’Grady Bill doesn’t increase DOT’s budget as much as some other proposals, but said those other proposals haven’t been crafted into bills that the Legislature can act on.

The bill was held for further study.

Rally for RIPTA
Two days after the hearing, supporters of the O’Grady Bill rallied in the Statehouse rotunda. About 50 people amassed on the stairway leading to the House Chamber, many holding handmade signs.

“For too many years we have funded our transportation system unsustainably,” O’Grady told the assembled crowd. O’Grady called for a “safe, sustainable, reliable and predictable” funding model for RIPTA and said one key to competing with other states in the Northeast Corridor was a competitive transit system and reliable roads.

Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, chairman of RIPTA’s board, noted that ridership increased 10 percent from 2011 to 2012, and that RIPTA had cut all the waste from its budget. Avedisian said the next step needs to be to invest in RIPTA so it can better serve the needs of Rhode Islanders.

RIPTA’s board has voted unanimously in favor of the O’Grady Bill.

House Speaker Gordon Fox, who initially agreed to speak at the rally, didn’t attend due to an unexpected obligation. Elmer instead read a previously completed questionnaire from Fox that listed the speaker’s top priorities as job creation, marriage equality and “the creation of a predictable funding source for RIPTA.”

“We know that Band-Aid approaches do not work,” said Elmer referring to the stopgap measures taken in recent years to deal with RIPTA’s funding crisis. “The O’Grady Bill is not a done deal and that means that you have work to do this session.”

He called on rally attendees to contact the members of the House Finance Committee, Speaker Fox and their local representatives. “Tell them there is only one bill that creates a predictable funding source for RIPTA,” Elmer said, “and that is the O’Grady Bill.”

This bike had been locked to the stop sign in the background and was found with its lock cut. (Jack Madden)PROVIDENCE — Jack Madden had been seeing the red bike a lot lately. The bike was locked to the stop sign on the corner of Brook and John streets. But, when he passed the bike Monday, Madden noticed it was there but that the lock had been cut, so he took it into his shop for safe keeping.

Madden, owner of Legend Bicycle on Brook Street, had been hearing a number of complaints of bike-lock cutting occurring in College Hill and the Knowledge District. He had a hunch as to who might be doing the cutting. Rumors had been going around that the city's Public Works Department was cutting bikes locked to signs. So Madden put up a post on Legend Bicycle’s Facebook page asking if others had been noticing this trend.

Comments from his customers ensued. According to Madden, one had parked her bike on Point Street near Olga’s for less than an hour and returned to find the lock on her bike cut. Another claimed to have seen a public works employee on South Main Street last year cutting the locks of any bike locked to street signs.

There was much confusion and speculation as to why this was happening.

A call to William Bombard, acting director of the city's Public Works Department, confirmed what Madden and others had been suspecting. Bombard said that, yes, public works was cutting bike locks in some instances.

As to why?

“One of the staffers from traffic engineering noted locations where bikes were causing damage to signs, so he cut the locks so (the bikes) wouldn’t cause more damage,” Bombard said. “If the sign isn't that sturdy, or if there's an excessive number of bikes that are causing the sign to lose its structural integrity, rather than replace the sign, we cut the bike locks."

Locked bikes that are stripped of wheels and parts are often left for months locked to street signs. (Jack Madden)Asked if there was a less draconian way of notifying the bicycle’s owner of the violation, Bombard said he wished there were, but that, because bicycles aren’t registered and licensed as cars are, there is no way for the city to issue the owner a ticket.

When pressed that the lock cutting could be perceived as vandalism as opposed to parking enforcement and that the act of cutting a bike's lock made the bikes vulnerable to theft, Bombard was sympathetic. “If someone loses their bike it's not a small thing," he said. "I’d hate to see someone lose their bike.”

Bombard couldn’t say how many locks had been cut so far this year.

It is legal to lock a bike to a street sign, but cyclists who lock their bikes to damaged or leaning signs may be subject to lock cutting. Bombard said, “bikers should be cognizant of what they're attaching their bikes to.”

Madden is sympathetic to the city’s obligation to protect its property, but thinks the policy of lock cutting is misguided.

“While I often see bikes that are locked to street signs and falling over or sit locked to the same sign for months at a time and think, ‘I wish someone would take care of that.' If we want our city to embrace cyclists, we have to make our own good choices and be responsible for the perception of cyclists as responsible citizens,” Madden said.

But, he added, "I don't think that cutting locks without any warning and then simply leaving the bike sitting there unlocked is a helpful solution. It simply looks like vandalism and has a chilling effect on the perception of safety in this town.”

Sheila Dormody, the city’s sustainability director, said the city needs to develop a specific policy on the issue of bike parking and told ecoRI News in an e-mail that the mayor’s office has urged the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission to add this issue as an agenda item for its next meeting.

Bicycle owners who have questions should address them to the Public Works Department by calling 401-467-7950.

This is not Providence.PROVIDENCE — The city's Bicycling Master Plan emphasizes a paint-only strategy that lacks ambition and imagination. This was illustrated at the last Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) meeting when the height of excitement was a discussion of “sharrows” on Camp Street, a calm, residential street on the East Side that requires no amendments in order to qualify as bikeable.

BPAC has suffered the same fate as many progressive groups in the United States: it acts as its own worst enemy, constraining its vision to peripheral reforms before it even faces any opposition from outside. If the political process will inevitably whittle down cyclists' proposals, then cyclists should focus on making their initial demands bigger. Sharrows shouldn't even be on the table.

The most common excuse for BPAC's lukewarm approach is that more serious changes to the city's roads would be expensive, complicated and permanent. This doesn’t have to be so. An ambitious bike plan can strike at the core of Providence’s transportation problems while leaving the city the option to reverse changes if they don't work. The expense of experimentation can be minimal.

Philadelphia, which ranks No. 1 in the United States for per-capita biking, is a model for success. In 2011, the Bicycle Coalition there proposed a pair of buffered bike lanes on JFK Boulevard and Market Street. The plan required the removal of not one but four full lanes of traffic.

Bicycling Master Plan map. Click to enlarge.Rather than fretting about the permanence and expense of such a project, or suffering mini-panic attacks about what suburban commuters might think, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter's office sensibly experimented with orange cones and caution tape to test the effects of a road-traffic diet.   

Philadelphia's initial attempts to make Center City bikeable were less bold. The first east-west bike lane in Center City was a bike-bus share lane on Chestnut Street that resulted in confusion. The “shared” lane gave neither buses nor bikes truly prioritized access to the street. Cyclists who didn’t want to sit in unending stop-and-go traffic behind a diesel bus avoided the route entirely. Buses inched along without their own dedicated lane. The failure to create a critical mass of cyclists, and the periodic absence of buses between arrival times left a void, which aggressive taxis were gleefully happy to fill.

Providence's approach to bike infrastructure represents an even more tepid version of Philadelphia's Chestnut Street experiment.

Providence traffic stress map. Click to enlarge. (Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc.)By contrast, Philadelphia's buffered Spruce and Pine lanes succeeded because the move didn't require public transit users and cyclists to compete for the same road resources. Innovations such as timing the signals to 20 mph so that bikers got a consistent "wave" of green lights helped to calm traffic and make the route safer. 

The existence of a partial road block on Waterman Street near Brown University demonstrates how a temporary narrowing of the street for construction is enough to make drivers act with some civility. The speedway that Waterman Street becomes just a few short blocks beyond — from Hope Street to Wayland Square — shows that without changing the roads' construction, Providence's bike routes are little more than a hollow suggestion.

Concrete isn't necessary to change traffic patterns. All it takes is a little imagination and the willingness to experiment.

James Kennedy writes the blog Transport Providence. You can follow him on Twitter @transportpvd.

Rhode Island plans to install at least 30 public electric vehicle (EV) charging stations next year.

The state Office of Energy Resources (OER) is directing the project to expand EV use across the state. Building EV charging stations, the OER says, will create jobs, reduce pollution and “accelerate Rhode Island’s transition to electrified transportation.”  The charging stations are also part of a larger push to reduce petroleum consumption.

Currently, Rhode Island has seven charging stations. Eighty percent of the planned charging stations are required to be in public locations. At least three must be on state property.

The notice of public bidding (pdf) for the project was announced soon after the state added EVs to its list of vehicles that can be bought by state agencies and municipalities.

Contractors have until Jan. 15 to submit proposals. The new stations must be built by Aug. 15.

"This is a fantastic development for the state," said Scott Miller, vice president of ChargePoint, an electric vehicle charging station developer that plans to bid on the Rhode Island project. “Installing a public EV infrastructure has proven to lead to more EV sales in a particular area. Most EV drivers will charge at home, but they feel much more comfortable knowing there is a public charging infrastructure available to them.”

Funding from the federal American Resources and Recovery Act will pay for charging station equipment, wiring and construction costs. Charging equipment alone typically costs about $6,500.

The 240-volt Level II charging stations are the standard most commonly used across the country. Between four and seven hours are required to fully charge an EV, depending on battery cpacity and the existing charge. Planners of the project expect vehicles to be partially charged, thus requiring one to three hours of plug-in time at the new stations." The charging stations work for both fully electric vehicles and plug-in gas-electric vehicles.

The effort to build EV infrastructure has been a priority of a collaboration between Project Get Ready, Ocean State Clean Cities, National Grid, the state Division of Planning and OER. Through its "Top 50" initiative, the group advocates that new charging stations be built outside restaurants, shopping malls, parking garages, gyms, beaches and other locations where vehicles are often parked for several hours.

Rhode Island’s existing charging stations are at Cardi’s Furniture in Warwick, the Wickford Junction Commuter Rail station, the T.F. Green Airport Interlink, Schneider Electric in West Kingstown, the Turnpike and Bridge Authority in Jamestown, and at Nissan and Chevy dealerships.

Although U.S. sales of EVs have been sluggish since mass production began in 2010, they have picked up in recent months. New models from Ford, Tesla and Toyota have boosted sales, along with discounts on existing models from Nissan. Sales are still far short of a federal push for a million sold by 2015.

"This is a smart investment that will encourage more people to buy plug-in cars, and will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, air pollutants and our dependence on imported oil, while saving drivers money at the pump," said Al Dahlberg, director of Project Get Ready in Rhode Island.

Some compelling statistics were recently released by the Rhode Island Statewide Planning Program. These statistics and projections support long-term planning for transportation, land use, economic development, environmental policies and social justice issues.

These numbers are drafts for future reports such as Land Use 2025 and Transportation 2035 and subject to revision, but they offer insight into expected trends for the Ocean State.

Population in 2040
Rhode Island’s population is projected to increase by 17,537 to 1,052,567 by 2040 — a total growth of just 1.7 percent. The U.S. population is expected to increase by 23 percent during that time.

Providence expects a modest population increase to about 185,000. South Kingstown is expected to see the largest population growth. Warwick’s population continues on a downward trend.

The modest population growth in the state and decline in some cities and towns is largely due to the growth of an aging population and fewer people moving to Rhode Island.

The state’s birthrate is expected to drop from about 12,100 newborns a year to about 10,500.

The number of deaths is expected to increase from an average of 9,600 to 12,600.

The decrease in births and increase in deaths is largely attributed to the aging Baby Boomer generation.

Transportation
More people are riding the bus and biking to work. Fewer commuters are carpooling.

The average travel time to work in Rhode Island is 22.9 minutes. The U.S. average is 25.3 minutes.

Since 2010, RIPTA's fixed-route ridership has increased about 11 percent, and access to public transit has increased in minority neighborhoods since 2000.

The state Department of Transportation says public transit is chronically underfunded. Since 1995, six blue ribbon panels and commissions have failed to deliver a long-term funding solution.