Greater City Providence

Walk Light!

Walk lights are getting installed at Dean and Atwells, Yay!

It is a little bit sad that I’m so excited about this, I mean, shouldn’t this just be fact? Not some great triumph of urbanism. Oh well.

Now, if we could just get the Dean Street viaduct rebuilt so one could safely walk over it. Baby steps.

Jef Nickerson

Jef is Greater City Providence's co-founder, editor, and publisher. He grew up on Cape Cod and lived in Boston; Portland, Maine; and New York before settling in Providence. In addition to urbanism, Jef is interested in art, design, and ice cream. Please feel free to contact Jef if you have any question or comments about Greater City Providence.

5 comments

  • I wish they would get rid of that right turn island. It’s not necessary and it’s one of the worst/scariest parts of crossing Dean on the north side of Atwells.

  • Me too. But they are making the triangle larger. You can just make out in the photo, that that walk light is actually in the street. When work is done, the curb will extend out around it, making the island larger and reducing the width of Dean Street there from effectively 3 lanes, to the 2 lanes it is designed to be. On the other side of the street there is a sidewalk bump out so the total distance one has to cross there will be reduced. Very welcome indeed as that crossing is vast on foot (especially when you’re not sure what color the light is since there are currently no working walk lights.

  • Not to mention they’re putting in all new signals and pedestrian signals at the intersection of Atwells and Eagle.

    The only bitch I have about them is they elected to use the poles with the huge footprints so it reduces the sidewalk on the southern side of Atwells to barely one person wide.

  • I haven’t been through recently, are they continuing with the misguided standard of putting buttons on the poles so that walk lights only signal when the traffic lights have finished their current “walkless” pattern?

  • I do not think they are putting those damned push to walk buttons on, but if they do, I swear, my brain will explode.

    Tony, I agree, those giant pylons are as annoying as all get out. I don’t see why they couldn’t use the same style we see downtown. Over on Broadway, some of the walk light foundations are placed right in the middle of the damn sidewalk.

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