Bishop: The Soft Under Belly of Rhodeworks - A Connector to Nowhere
Thursday, February 04, 2016
The largely ignored and intellectually bankrupt core of the Rhodeworks plan was best illustrated the last time the Governor and the Speaker appeared to be on the same page. They stood together under a dismal overpass outside Olneyville acting as if this were one of the state’s biggest problems. It is, not because it needs rebuilding, but because it ought to be demolished. Don’t count on the Governor to tell you that though, because it undermines her Rhodeworks gambit.
Much rational argument has been spilt over the efficiency of the Governor’s plan to replace these bridges in a forgotten corner of Providence with more of the same. Opponents of the tolls may have the better of these arguments and have offered comprises suggesting some additional funding as well as taking a harder look at the current budget. But they clearly don’t have the better of the political logrolling. This is perhaps best illustrated by the Speaker’s strong arm tactics with Hopkinton – essentially threatening a portion of their education funds if they don’t get in line on Rhodeworks.
There is nothing unusual or illegal about this; perhaps in RI it is not even unseemly. If you don’t like the bargain implied here, some say tolls for a judgeship – who knows, you have to campaign against those who propose it. This is logrolling, the consummate political bargain. It is how majorities are assembled.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTNot every bargain is bad – but this one stinks. And it stinks not because the Speaker may have horsetraded. It stinks because what he is giving away will be an albatross not just for the state, but for one of its most challenged neighborhoods. The very 6/10 connector that the Governor presents as the poster child for this program is actually the most glaring example of why the tolls are not needed.
Mom, Apple Pie and Bridge Repair
Opponents, fearing to be labeled as opposing safe bridges, haven’t debated the program itself, but how to pay for it. The Speaker is telling them they are loosing this argument. Not because they are wrong that tolls could expand – indeed with 10s of millions sunk into gantries it might be a dereliction of duty not to -- but because the Speaker has made a deal to pass the program. He has heard some of the debating points raised and takes some credit for cutting a few percent off the top and thinks he can strong arm his members through the vote and somehow promise them your votes to get reelected.
But there remains an argument that no proponents of Rhodeworks have responded to because they haven’t been confronted with it. What is being missed is that the program of repair itself is unnecessary, because the 6/10 connector is unnecessary. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other bridges to fix but even at its height the Governor proposed to borrow $500 million to be repaid with tolls, which is coincidentally the budget of state funds for the 6/10 connector! Yet the Governor says 90% of our bridges will be fixed which means that the rest of the problem can be corrected within budget. It is the massive expense for the 6/10 connector that is driving this toll debate.
The 6/10 Connector . . . Connector to what?
What was the importance of connecting 6 and 10 to begin with? And as this ‘Berlin Wall’ continues to marginalize the neighborhood of Olneyville, where the state and the city have lavished our money on private developers to little effect, what on earth could possess us to spend $500 million dollars on this squalid highway? That is rivaling the budget for the I-Way that connects New York, Boston and the Cape. Are they really serious that an inefficient link of a bit of Cranston, Johnston and west Providence deserves that kind of investment and the opportunity cost of marginalizing the communities where it has been brutishly established?
Instead of granting more tax rebates to the Struever Brothers developments that displaced so many local artists and jobbers, have yet to pay some contractors who renovated the buildings, and have yet to contribute any significant measure of taxes to the city after almost 15 years, the city and state could help these struggling developments by ending the cynical Rhodeworks program that would continue to wall off Olneyville.
Nothing could do more to help attract stable commercial and residential tenants to that entire neighborhood. The real folks who pay taxes and the gentrified swells who haven’t would all be better served by the state and city taking the 6/10 connector off the table – and the map – replacing it with a street scale Boulevard. That, more than tax giveaways, could help make this a neighborhood again with its culture and geography not struck off by a warren of dead ends with who knows what happening in the shadows.
DOT is said not to be hostile the idea. The Division of Planning, that is supposed to check that transportation priorities are run through an additional filter for cost, efficiency and citizen involvement may not be opposed. And that one action would solve the state’s bridge problems without a dime in tolls. So everyone knows what the right thing is to do here. Take the 6/10 connector out of Rhodeworks and fund remaining Rhodeworks priorites with existing road dollars and some enhancement of the diesel tax and truck registration fees.
Could it be this simple? Yes!
Is it possible? Where will all the cars go? As lifelong Rhode Islanders we actually remember when the 6/10 connector opened and everything was fine before that happened. For those of us who frequented Smith hill it seemed like a private highway for a year and thereafter for 30 some years it seemed like a parking lot. Will anyone really miss that? It is one of the worst pieces of highway engineering in the entire northeast, not even rivaled by the Thurbers avenue curve. On the 6/10 connector everyone sits staring into the morning sun on the way in and the afternoon sun on the way out. This monument to engineering without thought takes an enormous 90 degree turn south through the setting sun and immediately faces a divide and abrupt 90 degrees turn to the west for Rte 6. Meanwhile, the Disneyland-ride toboggan run of entrance ramps from Federal Hill and Harris Avenue, one of few odes to actual use by Providence residents, hopelessly complicates that weave.
There is no doubt that commuters can quite as quickly and as safely reach Route 6 at Killingly Street and Route 10 at the Niantic Industrial Park south of Cranston Steet by various routes. And the self organizing nature of traffic behavior, both as highways are added and removed will sort the traffic into trips not noticeably longer than any commuter currently experiences.
But the TAC (Transportation Advisory Committee) that ought to be sounding the alarms takes the cynical bureaucratic approach. The governor and DOT have tied the 6/10 connector to bridge repair, so nothing will happen until Rhodeworks passes. Then they will can consider alternatives . . . when, indeed, the alternative is really not to have Rhodeworks as currently conceived.
What is to become of Olneyville?
People can fairly ask how we would fund the improvements around Olneyville? It might be fitting to tap bridge funds to remove the old ones. But it is a cynical move to hold Olneyvilles future hostage to a bridge repair program when this is a community development program meant not as a competition between cars and bikes and buses but as the best of all possible worlds – and with apologies to Voltaire, it ought to be paid for accordingly.
The city is currently considering a circulator for Olneyville which is a separate project. The new Boulevard actually can build on that idea. These are transit improvements that aren’t backlogged bridge repairs and should not come from such an account.
The Boulevard can provide a cost effective experiment in bus lanes that aren’t inaccessible on a raised limited access highway as proposed for the 6/10 connector. And unlike trolley’s these buses can share travel with cars: picking up passengers in the Killingly and Hartford Avenue neighborhoods to the west, entering bus lanes to Olneyville and the Mall, and then returning to shared streets without the expense of overhead wires or limiting of their routes at either end of bus lanes. That is a transit improvement, you don’t fund it from bridge repair budget.
The project could merge 3 bike paths; the entire undertaking is a community development; and, if the commuter rail program in this state can ever survive the embarrassment of the 40 million dollar waste of the Wickford Junction station, Olneyville could get a rail station to access Boston to the north and the airport and URI(eventually) to the south. So an integrated thoughtful project would draw on trail funding, rail funding and community development grants.
All of this should be accomplished by a thorough transparent planning process that doesn’t wait to pounce on bridge funds extorted from truck drivers. Only the sadly cynical civil servants of our fair state could accept that the Governor is the emperor with no clothes; and instead of tellin her that she has proposed something stupid, let it happen and try to fix it on the back end.
We don’t recommend this as some kind of war on cars, the most important contributor to the American independent lifestyle ever devised. But building roads or bridges simply for the sake of building them is a bad use of taxpayers money, period. There are roads not built we still need, like the highway to URI and the Jamestown bridge from 95 that could contribute to the academic and tourist economy, not simply make-work laborers salaries. Why can’t the governor lead us to something we need rather than try to stuff something we don’t need down our throats.
Brian Bishop
The author, although not associated, recognizes important contributions made to discussion of the 6/10 Connector by the Moving Together Providence Coalition.
Brian Bishop is on the board of OSTPA and has spent 20 years of activism protecting property rights, fighting overregulation and perverse incentives in tax policy.
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