I sincerely hope that the city planners and the Mayor’s office read this site.

It looks as if we’ve got another planning emergency. Unlike Wickenden Street with Fox Point, La Salle Square doesn’t have a similarly cohesive or vocal constituency. Perhaps L+A Landscape Architects or another local landscape architecture or urban design firm might be interested in developing some alternate schemes that could be presented to officials. Proposals by out-of-state professionals might not be received as well, but could be an option also. Maybe a local foundation would be interested in kicking in some resources to offset some of the costs of this work due to the prominence of the location and importance of the issue.

Will there be a hearing for the public to respond to these proposed plans.

Janette Sadik-Khan the NYCDOT commissioner might be another expert the city could invite to Providence. She was the individual that brought Jan Gehl to New York.

Sharrows and bike triggered lights would be fine if bike lanes are not appropriate.

My main issue is that bike accommodation (in my very limited interaction with ridot) is an afterthought. My other impression is that getting any change specifically for bikes in the city is very hard (a-la the 5-10 year discussion of the blackstone blvd bikepath) so it makes it a priority from my perspective to see it accounted for in plans for any new expenditure, especially in limited economic times. Hell, even route six in Seeconk has bike sinage both on and off the road where it was reworked near Lowes and the number of cyclist there is basically nil.

So when I don’t see sharrows added when the city re-stripes or reworks the sreets it just means that we are back to the “its too expensive for so few people” discussion which pits bikers against the powers that be.

It would probably be a good idea for the Planning Department to get some experts from around the country (and some Europeans while we’re at it) to come to Rhode Island and talk to RIDOT about the innovations they are implementing.

Looking at the plan, lane widths are anywhere from 11 to 15 feet. Making all the lanes 11 or 10 feet would give multiple feet back to the sidewalks in many parts of this project area and I think it is certainly an issue that should be visited before final plans are completed.

If the city is insistent on developing angle parking throughout downtown, besides the aesthetics addressed previously, it might make sense using the Seattle angle parking model, which reverses the angle. Rather than pulling into an angle parking spot, Seattleites pull ahead of the angled spot then back in. The advantage, other than brushing up on backing-up skills, is that there’s no blind spot created either entering or pulling out of a space, though you rarely see this parking option in the heart of downtown Seattle.

Another observation, RIDOT or the city actually designed some of the traffic lanes, both going in the same direction to be 15 feet wide each for parts of Fountain Street. This seems excessive. Rhode Island drivers aren’t that bad. The wider the lane the more speeding is encouraged.

Jef, your comment about defined bike lanes is reasonable, but on a one-way like Fountain Street there’s plenty of room over several blocks to create one. Further, if bike lanes aren’t fairly ubiquitous throughout downtown then drivers are far less likely to take cyclist seriously. The city and especially downtown needs to remind the automotive public that the street is not exclusively theirs.

I think what the city/RIDOT plan is, would be to have Empire end at a T-intersection with Broadway/Sabin. It seems a complicated intersection with a lot of light movements to get all the turns through.

Looking at it, I think that Broadway/Empire could be a two-way through street (sharing a light movement where they would have no turns, just straight into each other), and Sabin could end at a T-intersection. Sabin would then make Broadway/Empire turn red so Sabin could have a green light for left and right turns. This seems less confusing and easier for pedestrians to understand when it is their turn to cross.

In some areas of the redesigned 195 land, sharrows are being introduced. The sharrow marks that the road is a bike route and that cars and bikes should be expected to share it. I think in this area, as the proposed bike lanes on the west end of Broadway carry across the highway, they should transition to sharrows.

I don’t like the exclusive right turn lane from Broadway onto Greene because I’m generally against exclusive right turn lanes in cities (I don’t see the necessity) and it interrupts bike traffic flow. I would get rid of that lane.

Though as Matt says, if I were biking on Broadway and wanted to end up on Fountain, I’d use Greene to get there, a left off Greene is better than trying to turn left off Empire.

There are positive ideas in the plans, such as creating a larger building site for Fogarty Building, removing the Broadway/Sabin St. medians and narrowing the street, and enlarging the former police headquarters site. The 20’ walkway is a great idea and the former AT&T plaza could either continue as a landscaped pedestrian open space or become a separate building lot.

However, why when speed limits are 25 mph, is it necessary to design traffic lanes to be 12 or 13 feet wide? A 12 foot lane width is standard for highways with speeds of 55 or 65 mph. The proposed 10 foot wide sidewalks are not a groundbreaking improvement. They’re just the bare minimum. When street tree pits and street furniture are added the effective open sidewalk width will be something more like 6 or 7 feet wide, which is fairly substandard. When the city evolved the original sidewalks were narrow. There was never any expectation that downtown streets would be tree lined. The angle parking will visually dominate the streetscape with cars. Angle parking is something more typical of a suburban or small town main street, not a feature that would be expected in a central city. Even if this were an acceptable concept, the detailing with painted angle-striping over asphalt instead of landscaped curb bump-outs is crude and a poor choice.

Both plans are heavily auto-centric. Pedestrians seemed to be viewed are a marginal accessory and bicycles are irrelevant. Currently there are outstanding examples developed by NYCDOT along with Jan Gehl an architect from Copenhagen with New York’s new “shared streets” where pedestrians, bicycles, and landscape are blended beautifully as vehicles with few conflicts, inexpensively. Perhaps, DPD and RIDOT should visit Manhattan to see how these streets work or the maybe the city should hire Gehl as a consultant to get the best design for everyone.

I’m having trouble envisioning how the intersections will look with Empire 2-way all the way to Sabin/Broadway. That would imply to me that the triangular median would have to be eliminated to accommodate the left from Empire to Broadway.

To my mind, there is some improvement for cycling through the LaSalle square area if one were coming down Atwells/Broadway and aiming for Fountain. The no-mans land of merging traffic off Sabin and other traffic moving left should be simplified. Just having lane markings through that area could help immensely, along with narrowing the usable road width. I currently avoid this intersection and work my way over to Broad or Washington when coming from the west back into downtown or go down to Point Street and avoid downtown all together. Given the complexity of turning and traffic possibilities in that area, I’m not sure how bike lanes could be added that would increase cyclist safety and comfort without confusion as cyclists entered and left the bike lane to make turns such as Sabin to Empire or Empire to Fountain. Broadway, Greene, and Fountain, might not be a bad path for a bike lane, since Greene is one-way, easier to navigate the left to Fountain. Coming the other direction, I like Westminster, nice calm traffic without need for a bike lane, and under this plan left or right on Empire to hit Broad or Broadway/Atwells.)

Also, since they’re redoing the signals at these intersections, this is a great opportunity to ensure that a cyclist can trigger a light change without exiting the street. (assuming they’re not just timed lights, but demand triggered)

The city spent plenty of money putting up signs indicating bike routes but no on street markings that MIGHT get even a cursory glance from the typical motorist. It feels like a missed opportunity much like all of the re-striping done on waterman and angel streets.