RIPTA bus No. 9, from Providence to Pascoag, serves Mineral Spring Avenue,
the Apple Valley Mall, Smithfield Crossings and, at its end point, Zambarano
Hospital.
Bus No. 52, the Branch Avenue line, will get you from downtown to Goodwill Industries, the Home Depot on Branch Avenue, and Bryant University.
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Bus No. 8 is the sole route serving Warwick’s Jefferson Boulevard, including McLeod Optical, the Citizens Bank processing center, Leviton Manufacturing and Kenney Manufacturing. And between South County and Newport, there’s just No. 64.
All these routes are on the chopping block, along with others serving American Insulated Wire, in Pawtucket; the Kent County Courthouse and a whole cluster of businesses at Routes 2 and 117; and many other major workplaces.
Downtown Providence will also be affected, RIPTA planning director Tim McCormick said in an interview, though it’s hard to tell how severely, because so many buses converge at Kennedy Plaza that you can’t tell which ones the workers at, say, the Federal Building or Citizens Bank or Textron are arriving on.
What’s clear, McCormick said, is that businesses have a lot to lose in the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority’s effort to close a $1.9 million deficit – especially those with large numbers of low-wage workers, who typically commute from urban neighborhoods and often can’t afford a car.
So far, however, the biggest outcry from business has been in response to another proposed cut: the Providence trolleys, considered a huge asset for tourism.
At a public hearing Tuesday, Daniel Peterson, general manager of the Providence Marriott, pleaded for the trolleys’ survival, saying they provide a “great experience” for the hotel’s guests.
“I can’t stress enough how much of an economic impact that has,” he said. “Anything we can do to save it would be great.”
George Donnelly, vice president of marketing for the Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau, said his agency is “very concerned” about the potential loss of the trolleys, which RIPTA says provided 771,521 rides in the year ending June 30.
The visitors bureau includes trolley passes in its “Getaway Package” for tourists, and it takes travel writers and other guests on trolley rides to show the city in a positive light.
“I think the trolley is one of those things that make the city charming, and not just another city from a tourism standpoint,” Donnelly said. “To lose the trolleys is not going to be good. … I hope that it’s not a dead issue.”
When it comes to regular RIPTA service, however, most of the people who’ve spoken out and called for the state to cover the $1.9 million have been individual users who are disabled or otherwise can’t drive, as well as advocates for the poor and elderly.
Ronald Barnett Jr., director of member services for the Neighborhood Health Plans of Rhode Island – the community health care network that serves more than half of RIte Care recipients – testified Tuesday that poor people’s access to preventive and routine care would suffer, and result in higher emergency care costs later on.
Michael Poindexter, vice president of student services for the Community College of Rhode Island, also focused his testimony on the impact on low-income students. And Lori Norris, executive director of Goodwill Industries of Rhode Island, testified that more than 60 percent of the poor, disabled and otherwise needy people her agency trains for jobs could only get there by riding the endangered bus No. 52.
McCormick and RIPTA’s outside supporters acknowledge that low-income Rhode Islanders would lose the most from the proposed cuts, but they object to the view of RIPTA service as almost a welfare program.
“Transit is not just for the people who desperately need it,” Barry Schiller, a former RIPTA board member and transportation chairman for the Sierra Club of Rhode Island, testified Tuesday. “It’s a benefit for the rest of the population, because it results in less traffic congestion and better air quality.”
McCormick, who oversees RIPTA’s commuter program for businesses, Express Travel, said Rhode Island employers are far behind their peers in taking advantage of public transit programs that reduce the need for expensive parking.
A new law may help change that: It requires employers with more than 50 workers who subsidize parking costs to provide subsidized transit passes as an alternative. With more pressing matters and a couple of other initiatives on its to-do list, however, RIPTA will probably not start contacting employers about the law until next year, McCormick said.
John C. Gregory, president and CEO of the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce, said the group will probably object publicly to the RIPTA cuts, because they’re “definitely an issue for some of our members; they’re having a hard time finding workers.” Many northern Rhode Island employers don’t have much to fight for, however, because they’re already underserved by RIPTA, Gregory said.
“RIPTA is in a tough situation, but it almost seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy: They cut the routes, they lose the riders,” Gregory said. “Try to get to Woonsocket from Pawtucket, even, it’s probably almost as long a commute, time-wise, as going to Boston.”
McCormick would be the first to agree. You can’t take a direct bus to CVS headquarters, he noted, you have to catch a connector in downtown Woonsocket. And Fidelity, Amgen and many other major employers, especially in newer developments, have no RIPTA service; “there hasn’t been the funding stream to support them.”
It’s a tough position from which to market RIPTA to employers, he said.
“I end up talking from both sides of my mouth,” McCormick said.
“One side says, ‘Please ride the bus,’ and the other says, ‘but it may not be there tomorrow.’”
