As Providence has revitalized its downtown, adding businesses and residents, but also more traffic and parking difficulties, Mayor David N. Cicilline and others have come to see good public transportation as key to the city’s future.
And in fact R.I. Public Transit Authority ridership has been rising, by more than 20 percent since Hurricane Katrina began boosting fuel prices.
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So when in a recent press release, the Sierra Club and Local 618 of the Amalgamated Transit Union reported overcrowding on several RIPTA routes, the news was met with concern.
“It undermines our efforts,” Cicilline said in an interview. “We want to encourage people to use public transportation, because it’s important to our environment, our economic development and our quality of life.”
The reason for the overcrowding is simple, RIPTA is cutting back on the number of vehicles on the road. For example, the trolley Gold Line, which runs between downtown and South Providence, was cut back by 25 percent this summer.
RIPTA says the cuts were needed to keep the trolleys in working order. But the Sierra Club and RIPTA bus drivers’ union say the result has been that during peak times, this and other lines are so full, passengers have to be left behind.
“It’s a busy line,” said Stephen Farrell, president of Local 618. “It’s not only a commuter line, but it’s what the [Community College of Rhode Island] school kids use from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.”
“We want to make sure people have access [to transportation] that is convenient to the user,” Cicilline added, “and if someone can be waiting for a bus and not get picked up, that shows that enough of an investment isn’t being put in.”
The Sierra Club and Local 618 identified the most overloaded routes as No. 19 (Plainfield Street), No. 20 (Elmwood Avenue), No. 27 (Manton Avenue), No. 28 (Hartford Avenue), No. 50 (Douglas Avenue), No. 54 (Woonsocket), No. 55 (Admiral Street), and No. 66 (URI/Wakefield).
Karen Mensel, spokeswoman for RIPTA, said that in the case of the Gold Line, “the frequency decrease was because the trolleys run on compressed natural gas, and they require extensive maintenance, and we need to make them last 10 years.”
Mensel also confirmed that “several routes in Providence, the Providence-URI lines and the 54” were being looked at by RIPTA due to overcrowding.
“Right now, we have people from our planning department riding the lines daily to see which buses at which times are having crowding problems,” she said. “They’re trying to figure out how many people are on the bus, and once they’ve collected the information and have it all measured, we’ll have to all sit down and figure out what the options are.” …
Mensel said RIPTA had added some trips on Aug. 26, including an 8 a.m. outbound trip on line 50, but the authority has had difficulties keeping up with the sharp increase in ridership.
“What happened is, when the gas prices were at $3 a gallon more than a year ago, we saw ridership surge,” she said. “We thought that after the prices went down, we’d see ridership go down, but it didn’t.” In fact, she said, ridership has gone up 21.2 percent since fiscal 2005.
This trend is not unique to Providence, Mensel added. “We’re not the only transportation department trying to figure out how to accommodate the new riders.”
But Farrell said the overcrowding “is the direct result of decreased bus frequency.” He added that “this level of service frustrates the riding public as well as the drivers who supply the services.”
The “common-sense solution,” Farrell said, is to put more buses on the road.
“This is a time we should be expanding service, not reducing service,” he said. “We’ve got to make a major investment in transportation. It’s an ecological responsibility and a quality of life issue. … “One of the keys to success is going to be that you can live and work in Providence and not have your own car.”
This spring, Cicilline formed the Transit 2020 Working Group – led by Donna C. Cupelo, Rhode Island president of Verizon Communications – to study what is needed to create seamless transportation throughout the city and the state. So far, he said, the reports coming back are that many modes of transportation will be needed to accomplish that.
“The successful cities have rail, streetcars and buses. I don’t think you can rely exclusively on buses,” Cicilline said.
