Cars and trucks travel more than 8 billion miles in Rhode Island each year, creating pollution and contributing to global warming, a new Sierra Club report says.
That translates into about 865,000 metric tons of carbon equivalents pumped into the atmosphere per year, according to a 2005 New England Climate Coalition report (carbon equivalents are useful for comparisons because there are other greenhouse gases that are part of airborne pollution from motor vehicles).
While one way to address the problem would be encouraging the use of mass transit, the report – authored by Tom Sgouros, editor of the Rhode Island Policy Reporter – shows that using mass transit in Rhode Island is increasingly difficult, often due to poor planning.
“Traveling without a car in Rhode Island means committing to scrambling over berms and guardrails between bus stops and destinations, walking across four-lane streets with no crosswalks, wading across marshy median strips, climbing over unplowed sidewalks, and more,” Sgouros wrote. “Bus stops are out by the road, with gargantuan parking lots to trek across before you get to the store. … And there is not a ‘walk’ button in the state that perceptibly changes the light when you press it.”
“In other words,” he added, “to be a pedestrian in Rhode Island is to be a second-class citizen, constantly reminded that your safety and comfort are rated far behind those of your fellow citizens in cars.”
He said that too often planning commissions and town councils allow developers to create plazas that make mass transit use difficult even though many comprehensive plans call for “commercial buildings to be next to sidewalks.”
“After all, few of them walk,” he wrote.
He said that municipal planners often understand the value of pedestrian-friendly development, but by the end of the planning process, “sidewalks get traded away for height restrictions or concessions on some tax stabilization treaty.”
He also chided “our state’s economic development agencies” for encouraging sprawl.
“The shape of our landscape is the result of dozens of different government policies, laws and subsidies,” he wrote. “From 1970 to 1995, Rhode Island’s population increased only five percent, but the developed land in our state increased by 47 percent.”
Noting Fidelity Investments’ and Alexion Pharmaceuticals’ locations in Smithfield, as well as “all the tenants at Quonset Point,” Sgouros said that it is becoming more difficult for workers to do without a vehicle.
“Every time the R.I. Economic Development Corporation finds a place for someone in Quonset … they are sending the message ‘If you want a job, get a car,’ ” he said. “The state agencies are pushing people out of town because that’s where the empty land is.”
(EDC spokesman Andy Cutler said last week that the quasi-governmental agency had not been able to review the full report and could not comment before PBN’s deadline.)
Sgouros said that automobile subsidies and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority’s dire financial situation are also part of the problem, and they highlight the state’s disregard for public transportation.
“Our state can afford to build new bridges for hundreds of millions of dollars simply to replace old ones that were not maintained well. But buses have to maintain the existing level of service,” the report states. “The message is clear: The state has not valued this kind of transportation enough to make service excellent.”
But the report doesn’t simply point out the faults of the current system.
Sgouros noted that while some of the problems, such as the state’s overreliance on property taxes, which encourage “unwise growth in rural areas,” will require broad changes and take time to implement, other solutions could be done almost immediately.
Some of those suggested fixes include creating bike lanes, putting bus schedules into a single book, providing at least a couple of late-night buses and rethinking the expansion of the commuter rail to make the stops more pedestrian-friendly.
He points out that the cost of owning and maintaining a car in Rhode Island, at $8,500 per year, is among the highest in the nation, and it stands in stark comparison to the yearly cost of a RIPTA pass – $540. And he later added that despite a state law requiring that companies with more than 50 employees provide bus passes “in exchange for parking subsides,” even the state doesn’t comply with the law.
“Rhode Island faces critical decisions that will determine the future well-being of the state,” he wrote. “Those that encourage our reliance on automobiles do damage to our health, safety and economy. A decision to encourage public transportation will save the environment, our quality of life and, not incidentally, a great deal of money for our citizens.”
