Urban Planning and Transportation Issues in Biggest Little State in the Union
Urban Planning and Transportation Issues in Biggest Little State in the Union
The Rhode Island legislature, showing its great capacity for procrastination, is scrambling like mad to pass a whole bunch of stuff before the current session ends. One bill that passed the Senate yesterday among the flurry was a new requirement for state businesses who subsidize their employees parking costs to offer RIPTA passes in lieu of paying their garage bills. Someone on Smith Hill is obviously reading the URBlog.
Sounds like a good plan to me. Will it work? I don't know, but it's worth a shot. Preferably there would be a support program to go along with it, to highlight the many benefits of bus commuting over highway traffic and to maybe convince suburban white folks that buses aren't nearly as scary as they think.
TrackBackSounds like a good plan. Providence's bus system is quite nice for a major city. The buses I've been on have been quite new and all quite clean. Has anyone ever discussed having them run later? A last run at about 5:30 PM on Saturday for the East Side isn't very encouraging of spending the evening Downcity...
Garris
June 19, 2004 09:40 PMI agree that for a mid-sized American city, Providence has quite a good bus system. I have found through experience though, that it lacks in allowing reverse commuting options. Inbound schedules in the afternoon even on very well travelled routes can become hourly or worse at the evening rush. If you miss an inbound bus from say Cranston at 5:30pm, you may find yourself waiting a while. This is of course because buses have been diverted to offer timely outbound rush hour service.
RIPTA has been working very hard over the last couple years to update it's very aging fleet. They recently took delivery on a number of new, cleaner deisel burning, buses. I've noticed a few of them on the streets over the last couple weeks. A good chunk of buses that have exceeded their useful life are being retired this year.
RIPTA is also scheduled to introduce SmartCard fare technology, much like NYCs MetroCard next year. There will be SmartCard kiosks set up at retail locations throughout the city and state making it much easier for people to buy monthly and weekly passes.
I think these improvements in fare collection, and improvements in the fleet will make riding the buses more attractive to more people. And as traffic continues to grow worse, more people will look to the buses.
The big work on the relocation of 195 happening in the next few years, causing traffic headaches throughout the region is a good opportunity for RIPTA to try to convert people to transit users. Hopefully RIDoT and RIPTA can team up to advertise public transit options during the peak of the road project.
June 20, 2004 05:40 PMCotuit,
Thanks for the info. A metrocard style system would be really nice, especially for people like my sister who use a disabled pass. And you're right about the inbound/outbound thing time-wise. All in all, though, it is a quite nice system and we're actually fairly lucky it runs as frequently as it does. Most medium-sized cities I've lived in have hourly schedules for all lines, all the time, at most...
Garris
June 21, 2004 09:39 AM