Kennedy Plaza plans more modest

THE R.I. PUBLIC TRANSIT Authority has reassigned bus stops near and around Kennedy Plaza to accommodate the construction. / COURTESY R.I. PUBLIC TRANSIT AUTHORITY
THE R.I. PUBLIC TRANSIT Authority has reassigned bus stops near and around Kennedy Plaza to accommodate the construction. / COURTESY R.I. PUBLIC TRANSIT AUTHORITY

On the streets surrounding the newly construction-fenced Kennedy Plaza, familiar faces wait in new locations for buses to neighborhoods across the state.
They’ve moved to Exchange Street and across Burnside Park as part of a $2.4 million rearrangement of the R.I. Public Transit Authority bus hub that city leaders expect will trigger the latest evolution of Providence’s historical central square.
The vision, outlined in a public presentation at the Providence Biltmore Hotel 15 months ago by the Downtown Providence Parks Conservancy, would make the plaza a popular public gathering place with new amenities and a better connection to Burnside Park.
Unfortunately, the work beginning now to disperse buses in the plaza represents the bulk of currently available funding for plans that, at their most grand, would likely cost up to $25 million.
As a result, municipal officials and downtown-parks advocates face a long road from the temporary construction headaches and workarounds confronting residents now to something that actually draws people to the city center.
Already the plan is drawing fire from transit advocates concerned about the disruption to bus service and architecture critics seeing a bait-and-switch from renderings from Union Studio architects unveiled at the Biltmore.
To these concerns, proponents of changing Kennedy Plaza say the original Union Studio designs have not been abandoned, but were always more concepts than plans. And rebooting the RIPTA bus terminal is an essential platform to get to those grander designs.
“When we gave our presentation at the Biltmore, we gave our vision of things that could happen in that space similar to other places that have improved,” said Cliff Wood, executive director of the Downtown Providence Parks Conservancy. “To do all those things would be cost prohibitive, and there were a series of visions that may not pass community muster.”
While it waits for the plaza to be rebuilt, the conservancy experiments with programs for Burnside Park and raises money through grants and donations for larger future plaza improvements. This fall it expects to begin work on a park walkway to Exchange Street with a $395,000 grant from the Champlin Foundations. And Wood said he is now organizing a group to advocate for another major project that would have a significant impact on the plaza: the $35 million bond referendum to build new RIPTA bus hubs at the Providence train station and in the Knowledge District (possibly at a new parking garage at the Garrahy Judicial Complex).
Although the current redesign of Kennedy Plaza long pre-dated the state-sponsored bus-hub idea, it may need the $35 million state-sponsored project to realize the city’s full vision.
So how do all these Kennedy Plaza plans fit together?
The current city project is the final part of the Downtown Circulator improvements, which began a decade ago, only four years after Kennedy Plaza took on its current shape.
There are currently four lanes of bus berths passing through Kennedy Plaza, and the plans being executed now will remove the two in the middle, cutting the number of berths from 16 to eight.
The bus berths being removed from the center of the plaza will be pushed out across Burnside Park, mostly to Exchange Terrace and Exchange Street.
Where the middle two bus lanes once were, the city plans to create a paved plaza with stands of trees. The light poles there now will be retained, but the large, green-roofed bus shelters will be picked up and taken away, replaced by smaller glass shelters along the perimeter.
The final piece of the project will be reworking the intersection in front of the Biltmore so Dorrance Street and Exchange Terrace can be made two-way.
While removing the center two bus lanes will create a potential gathering space in the plaza and make it easier to reach Burnside Park, the buses that now terminate their routes in the plaza will still do so in their new locations. The idling buses and passengers waiting for them have been seen as another hurdle to making the area more attractive.
The $35 million state bus-hub plan, which voters are being asked to approve in November, would change that. Buses from all over the state would still stop in Kennedy Plaza, but instead of ending their route there, they would continue on to terminate at either the train station or Garrahy/Knowledge District hubs. Bus pass sales and information now provided at the plaza terminal building could also move to the new hubs.
Aside from purely aesthetic issues, the primary concerns with the redesigned plaza are that it will place riders further away from their destinations and the current terminal building, and could ultimately create a more desolate, lonely expanse from what is now a bustling transit interchange.
“Importantly, it is not clear what benefit the city gets for all this,” wrote Barry Schiller of the RIPTA Riders Alliance in a letter to Providence Mayor Angel Taveras asking him to suspend the work. “We hear ambitious talk about remodeling Kennedy Plaza as a pedestrian space shared with buses, but it’s by no means clear that funding will be adequate for the plans that have been mentioned.”
Although the total number of bus stops in the newly dispersed Kennedy Plaza area is still being ironed out, Schiller said it appears to reduce the total number of berths by three at a time of growing ridership.
Schiller, who supports the state bus-hub plan, pointed out that, despite wanting to make the plaza more pedestrian friendly, the city has not slimmed down any of the automobile travel lanes on Washington Street and Fulton Street. To get to Burnside Park, pedestrians still have to cross the combined five lanes of traffic.
City Director of Current Planning Robert Azar acknowledged that bringing consistent activity to the newly fashioned plaza will be the major test of the plan, but said the city has faith in the conservancy to bring more features and users over time.
“These improvements were intended to be a start, and we imagine that as this plaza develops through public-private partnership, there could be opportunities for further development,” Azar said. “This has been a process of working with the conservancy. … I imagine any kind of new development in the plaza would involve public outreach.” •

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2 COMMENTS

  1. “Aside from purely aesthetic issues, the primary concerns with the redesigned plaza are that it will place riders further away from their destinations”. Now this is a silly and superficial statement. Of course, some people will have to walk longer to their destination, but some will have a shorter walk. Unless you have evidence that people arriving at Kennedy are ALL going to buildings fronting the Plaza, then this statement makes no sense. For example, if my destination is Providence Place or the State Capitol and state offices, then a new stop at the train station makes my walk shorter.

    The plain fact is that the current plaza is both dangerous and unappealing and to non-users of buses, it is an area to be avoided. For a great public space to work it must be devoted to diverse uses and not to one narrow and specialized use and one that involves several dangers to boot. Not accepting that changes are needed in the plaza and making excuses to do nothing is simply a self serving approach and does not represent progressive thinking.

  2. Writing to agree strongly with Obadiah2 that the space, if everyone agrees it is to be a public space (and really, is it not already?), needs to be devoted to diverse uses. It looks like a higher amount of money put into the project would equal a higher amount of usability for both commuters and those just hoping to enjoy some time outdoors downtown.

    I’m convinced that there is a healthy amount that yields attractive and appealing results both for RIPTA and for those hanging out around Burnside Park, and that whatever that amount is would in turn result in more time spent downtown, maybe at the nearby restaurants (of which downtown has so many of the highest quality), and likely more users of RIPTA to get there. All of this equals more money pumped into the economy, and more importantly I think, a more attractive place to live, work, or play.