July 20, 2016 • 4:45 PM
Doorley Municipal Building
444 Westminster Street, First Floor
Providence, RI 02903[/alert]
Agenda
- Roll Call
- Approval of June Meeting Minutes (For Action)
- Olney Street Restriping – College Hill, Mount Hope (For Action) – The Department of Public Works intends to restripe Olney Street from Camp to Hope streets. DPW seeks comment from the BPAC at this initial scoping phase of the project.
- Allens Avenue Restriping – Upper South Providence, Lower South Providence, Washington Park (For Action) – The Rhode Island Department of Transportation has developed preliminary design plans for the restriping of Allens Avenue from Blackstone Street to New York Avenue. The City of Providence DPD and DPW seek comment from the BPAC regarding RIDOT’s preliminary plans.
- Francis Street Mid-Block Crossing – Downtown (For Action) – The Rhode Island Department of Transportation has developed preliminary design plans for a new mid-block crossing across Francis Street to improve pedestrian safety between Providence Place Mall and Station Park. The City of Providence DPD and DPW seek comment from the BPAC regarding RIDOT’s preliminary plans.
- Potential Improvements to Tobey and Ridge streets – Federal Hill (For Discussion)
- Potential Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvements to streets surrounding the new LINK District waterfront parks and Providence River Pedestrian Bridge – Downtown, Fox Point (For Discussion)
- Announcements and Staff Updates (For Discussion)
- Adjournment
I didn’t attend the meeting but wanted to comment on these items:
1. I heard that you all moved towards a sharrow going downhill and a bike lane going uphill for Olney. I understand the thinking on this (you can go faster downhill and don’t want to be in a door-zone) but I think it’s important not to just put a sharrow on this street in either direction. I can go 25 mph without breaking a sweat on Olney going downhill, but motorists still go around me on the left or right, sometimes aggressively. This is still going to happen if we don’t put protected bike lanes.
Olney is super wide and has really low parking usage. It should get the right solution, which is full protected bike lanes.
2. Allens: I heard that you all got an idea moving forward for a bi-directional protected bike lane. I hope people will call their councilpeople and ask that an equal amount of the road spending go to non-drivers per capita as goes to drivers (22% of PVD doesn’t own a car, so that would be 22%, or $9 million of the bond. That would be enough to pretty much transform the city in one fell swoop).
3. Not sure what was discussed on Francis, if anything, but again we should be putting a protected bike lane in, and the mid-street crossing could maybe be made out of the island that protects the lane. I think Francis ought to be brought down to two lanes, which would also provide additional room.