This is Part 1 of a two-part series on how Providence and the entire Rhode Island region are making redesigns for a new era of diversified transportation options for people.
As Providence, RI embraces a vision of mixed-use transit-oriented development, residents miss the frequent and reliable service of streetcars. The city even received federal funding for a proposed shuttle-like, mixed-traffic streetcar route comparable to those now operating in numerous U.S. downtowns.
But rather than constructing such a streetcar route, the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority is taking an incremental approach to improving its transit system. Providence’s first step: using funds originally intended for the cancelled streetcar project to construct a new downtown transit-priority corridor that will connect the places people need to go and boost the system’s core capacity and reliability. Though it uses buses rather than rail, this approach will channel the real advantages of the city’s former streetcar network — one-seat trips, a central transit hub that is also a civic center, and high frequencies within the city center — and has the potential to become a successful model that other transit providers can follow.
Passengers board an eastbound bus at the beginning of its line in Kennedy Plaza. Image by the author.
As Providence evolves, its existing transit hub feels like something leftover from the city’s past
A map of Rhode Island’s interurban streetcars, circa 1924. Kennedy Plaza is located at the center of the city.
Kennedy Plaza, Providence’s existing downtown transit hub, has been the heart of Providence since 1847, when an intercity train station was built there. As the city blossomed during the Industrial Revolution, its growth was defined by the local streetcar lines that arced out from the plaza. The system of streetcars reached all quarters of Providence with high-frequency, well-connected service that helped the city more than triple in population between 1870 and 1910.
Though Providence, like many other U.S. cities, saw the quality of its transit service decline during the mid-20th century, it was left with a radial street network centered on Kennedy Plaza even after the streetcar routes were converted to buses and much of the population switched to using private cars. As a result, there are few practical crosstown routes that pass near the downtown employment center without also going through the plaza.
When the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) was formed in the 1960s, it was given a mandate to serve the entire state. As a result, Kennedy Plaza became a bus hub not only for the neighborhoods and suburbs of Providence, but cities and towns in all corners of Rhode Island.
Since then, Kennedy Plaza has remained the state’s transit hub, but downtown Providence has transformed around it. Several changes have affected the way people move around the city center:
- In the 1980s, a new intercity rail station (serving Amtrak and MBTA trains) was built a quarter-mile north of Kennedy Plaza, near the state capitol complex and the downtown shopping mall. The station replaced the older one at Kennedy Plaza, allowing for the removal of elevated downtown railroad tracks that many residents considered an eyesore. Residential development has recently sprung up near the station, which has become the 11th-busiest Amtrak station in the U.S.
- About ten years ago, an urban interstate highway was dismantled and re-routed, reconnecting the city center to the nearby Jewelry District to its south. As with the area around the capitol, the neighborhood has since received increased economic investment, including new university facilities and biotech offices. A major medical center is situated just to the Jewelry District’s south.
- The 26-story “Superman Building,” an iconic art-deco skyscraper that is often used as a symbol of Providence’s identity, stands immediately above Kennedy Plaza. In 2013, it lost its last tenant. Despite the city’s efforts, the building still sits vacant.
Following these changes, Providence’s downtown continues to grow more at its northern and southern edges than in its core. As a result, Kennedy Plaza’s location, situated between those two bustling areas, no longer matches the city’s mobility needs.
Yet due to the street network’s hub-and-spoke design, many transit riders are still forced to transfer at Kennedy Plaza. Thus, the plaza has become a place that people don’t really need to go, but transit happens to serve heavily. Accordingly, much of the general public associates it not with beneficial mobility, but instead with the classist, racially-charged stereotypes that are all too familiar to public transportation planners in the U.S.
A new bus corridor could make transit the nerve of Downtown Providence again
In the past decade, Providence’s leaders have taken steps to bring regional transit service into line with 21st-century demand.
First, RIPTA has considered an overall network redesign. But the radial street network left over from the city’s streetcar days, combined with curving rivers, highways, and steep hills, make it challenging for Providence to imitate the gridded network model that has been successful in cities like Houston.
Second, in 2014, the transit agency combined two routes that previously terminated at Kennedy Plaza into one run-through, limited-stop route called the R-Line. Increased frequencies, signal priority at intersections, a clear sense of route identity, and convenient transfers to other RIPTA lines at Kennedy Plaza, as well as to Amtrak and MBTA service at the train station, have helped the R-Line attract 8,500 daily boardings.
Third, also in 2014, the City of Providence received a $13 million dollar TIGER grant from the federal government, meant to cover about 10% of the expense of a new shuttle-like downtown streetcar. But due to concerns about cost — and possibly other observed issues affecting similar mixed-traffic downtown streetcar projects across the country — Providence has diverted those funds to a different, more mobility-focused project.
This project, called the Downtown Transit Connector (DTC), is a north-south transit-priority corridor through downtown Providence. It will start at the train station, run past Kennedy Plaza, go through the Jewelry District, and end at the medical center (see the photo at the top of this article for a rendering).
A map of the Downtown Transit Connector. Note the green line, representing the R-Line, and the dashed grey line, representing another corridor that could be suitable for a similar future project.
RIPTA is realigning six north-south bus routes’ paths through the DTC. Lines approaching downtown from the south, which currently terminate at Kennedy Plaza, will follow the DTC past the plaza to terminate at the train station. Similarly, lines approaching from the north will terminate at the medical center. This means that many riders who now need to transfer to reach their destinations in the north or south of downtown will be able to access those locations in a single ride.
With the combined services of the six converging lines, RIPTA buses will arrive to DTC stops approximately every five minutes — much more frequent service that the cancelled streetcar line would have provided — making transit a convenient option for people making short trips to the train station, medical center, or other downtown destinations. Additionally, realigning those routes will free up some space in Kennedy Plaza, helping city planners redesign it as a more versatile civic center while keeping it well-connected to the transit system.
Infrastructural aspects of the DTC project include components that will boost travel times and reliability (such as dedicated bus lanes — the first in Rhode Island — and signal priority), improve first and last mile connectivity (painted bike lanes, as well as racks designed for shared, dockless Jump e-bikes at or near DTC bus stops), and increase system capacity (intermodal transit hubs at each end of the DTC).
RIPTA will likely face some challenges, particularly in terms of branding, in convincing the many Rhode Islanders who are unaccustomed to riding the bus to give DTC services a try. But the project’s mobility-focused service and infrastructure improvements will help establish the DTC as a convenient transportation corridor that connects places people need to go..
Providence’s Downtown Transit Connector is just the first part of a modern regional transit system
RIPTA plans to build on the connectivity the DTC will provide.
A proposed east-west transit-priority corridor through downtown along Washington Street could become a second DTC, using the same techniques to improve service. Combined with the R-Line and the north-south DTC, this would make Kennedy Plaza into more of a crossroads (where many through riders can remain on the same bus) than a terminus (where all riders must transfer).
Beyond downtown Providence, a reassessment of the state-wide network might add secondary transit hubs in outlying neighborhoods and other Rhode Island cities, helping passengers get to their destinations more directly.
If the DTC proves successful, this incremental approach stands to shape transit investment across Rhode Island well into the future. What’s more, the design of the DTC and the tactic of using funding that had been designated for a streetcar could provide a model for downtown bus redesigns across the country.
Rendering at the top of the article is the DTC stop at Ship St./Waterfront Park is from http://www.ripta-dtc.com/. 1924 map is from http://www.vizettes.com/kt/ne-interurbans/ri/north-ri.htm. Map of the Downtown Transit Connector is from http://www.growsmartri.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Amy-Pettine-RIPTA.pdf.
For more of Mobility Lab’s recent articles on bus-system redesigns, see this one on Seoul, South Korea’s 2004 redesign, and our two-part series on Houston’s redesign.