There is a whole giant thing about how ebikes are making life worse not better for cyclists because of the top speeds and encouraging a preponderance of idiots who know nothing about how to handle a bike. I know the usual pedestrian and car crowds would say that is all cyclists but there is often a real difference.

I put ebikes in the same category as the motorized scooters. They straddle two types of transportation and our infrastructure is not really designed to accommodate them well, and the only real way to resolve it is to give a lot less room to cars, but that will literally never happen until I guess there are flying cars and only the poor people will be at street level anyway or whatever.

As noted many times before I just think in terms of driving something broke during the pandemic. People have come back far worse than they were going in. And as the reputation famously goes, it wasn't a high bar to begin with.

$10 million seems excessive but as noted it's false to state this is a cosmetic improvement only. They need to do the work, and to do it right they will need time and time, when you are working with heavy equipment on a highway where you need to close lanes, means money. The materials they are using are probably the lowest cost line item on the budget.

Now, if you were complaining about whether the retaining wall blocks were a great idea 20 years ago, and whether they were designed with proper drainage of if anyone thought about the root systems of the bushes they planted and how that might come together to shorten the life of these walls, you would have a point. And I also get that the sunk cost fallacy doesn't mean we shouldn't examine the mistakes of the past, but that doesn't mean this is some kind of vanity project. These walls have been on an accelerated decay for the past 3-4 years and need some kind of repair/replacement just for safety's sake.

I'm not sure if you are the downvoting everyone who doesn't agree with you type but I don't think you actually understand what the office of the Treasurer does. It is not the CFO.

I mean I guess the same old people will continue to just downvote the same things and I get it all the butthurt republicans of the state get downvoted to oblivion around here but shit are we going to talk about the actual questions or just whine about politics? What a useless forum.

As an honest question - do you think the treasurer really affects the actual choices for budget items?

I mean I guess you could argue McKee isn't a strong personality and that the legislature is just going to accept his budget so the treasurer in this instance could have a lot of influence - but generally speaking the job of the office is act as the bankers, not the CFO or whatever. The treasurer doesn't even control the Department of Revenue, that job goes to a political appointee of the governor. The OMB is run by the Department of Administration, run by another political appointee.

Yes, he got it through party affiliation.

I think the question of whether he can navigate spreadsheets is irrelevant. That's what all of the unelected people in the office take care of.

What is important is if he were planning on something stupid like putting the pension fund in the hands of FTX or something. Mostly he will probably just continue on with Magaziner's basic strategy.

He does have experience navigating public bankruptcy, which is something maybe as important as understand GAP rules.

Not sure whether you are just drumming up donations for the ACLU, but I think your black and white application here (any voter ID law is as bad as any other) actually purposefully ignores the work that people have been doing and continue to do.

The reason I mention this is that RI has indeed some of the most progressive voter standards that there are and a lot of people that don't just blather on the internet have worked hard to improve the system. Voter ID is required to cast a regular in-person vote, but *not* required for a provisional ballot. You can refuse to show your ID for any reason and still vote on a provisional. Is a provisional ballot a little bit of a pain compared to a regular ballot? Sure? But it's not preventing voting. As well, anyone can request a mail ballot which does not require an ID. And the state will provide a voter ID for no charge. Are these compromises, sure, but they are made not just to appease FOX news, they make the entire process run better.

Poll workers have an easier time with a scan system than with looking up registration rolls so Voter ID in this sense makes voting easier as it keeps the process moving. I know you will go ahead and say everything is bullshit but it also makes it easier to direct people to their proper polling place which actually does matter for things like city councils and state reps which are district specific nevermind for figuring out which polling places need more staff and booths, etc. So there is a lot of relief of burden on poll workers which is actually worth something. (note, my bias here as a regular poll worker (not this year needed a break after Covid year))

In general I think there is a monotony of convenience.

15 years ago when Trader Joe's was first coming anywhere close to RI it was pretty exciting because if you were a fan you didn't have to drive to Needham or Framingham to go. But in a way needing to make that trip made it feel worth more and be special in some way, and then you would have some Trader Joe's specific stuff in your pantry that you think fondly of because you are holding it for six months until your next trip or whatever.

With it just being there, it can pale in comparison to your regular old grocery store, though for footprint, I actually do think it is possible to make it a one stop regular grocery but requires some compromise - if you like fresh fish you are almost completely out of luck. If you have brand specific tastes, like in potato chips or yogurt, you are out of luck.

I'm wondering if this same thing would happen with other popular bigger box stores people are craving like a local Costco or IKEA or whatever else.

Whether it was for Trader Joe's, this development in general, or a complaint of some kind, RIDOT (or maybe the city but this is an RIDOT designed intersection) changed the timing and order of the light a couple of weeks ago and gave a big nearly unused chunk of time to traffic coming off of Benefit. It may unintentional and be a broken sensor or something that triggers the light but I went from not really noticing the time I spend at this intersection (staying straight on Wickenden/Point) to it making me annoyed every trip.

That said, 5-10 minutes seems pretty extreme unless you are only commuting at the exact peak hour and have to commute through the parking lot. Unless you are blaming Trader Joe's for 195 traffic that has existed since it was on the old route. Or you have a penchant for drama because you got annoyed one day. Which is cool I do it too. But I came through this (coming back from weird as shit November beach day on Saturday) at peak shopping hour and had no real problem getting off at 195. Maybe it's the lunch crowd? Though, I grabbed lunch at TJ's yesterday and didn't really observe this, and had lunch at Geoff's on South Main Friday and neither day did the intersection seem any worse than normal.

On Friday night it did look bad, but I think the construction crew mistakenly closed (or hadn't yet opened) the sidewalk so everyone was walking in the road where the safety fence already encroaches. Or people are just dumb and missed the sidewalk and decided walking in the road was the best option rather than figuring out the alternative.

To be fair, a huge part of this problem is that they are still building the apartments and the safety fencing pushes pedestrians into traffic. Which is pretty silly and someone maybe should have come up with something better like building a protected sidewalk for the interim (like finish the ground floor well ahead of the rest and add a standard scaffold with plywood that you get at every urban construction site to allow sidewalks to remain open)

You could argue that the planners should have gotten that construction done before opening the Trader Joe's but presumably there are the usual construction delays and TJ's wanted to get operating before the holidays.

Anyway, obviously the weather had a lot to do with it, but on my lunch break yesterday (went to Geoff's and ate on the bridge) saw no traffic problems from 195 or on Water St., but a ton of people walking with trader joe's bags. We'll see how Saturday goes I suppose. But, with this in mind I want to point out that on Saturdays any of the popular grocery stores are a disaster, with, sure, a notable exception for TJ's in Foxboro which you know, has acres and acres of parking for the Patriots/Revs, and so is pretty chill and easy when the Patriots aren't playing.

It's a really tough location because the NBC and all the remnants of the industrial waterfront make it hard to link this site to anything else other than up toward Newport Ave.

The best solution to provide housing and density would be something like 800 affordable housing units in the plaza where stop and shop was on Newport Ave then try to bring Newport Ave a little more development that is not "building with setback from street surrounded by asphalt" but I'm not sure you'll get any developers to bite.

Also the Hope Market is a food pantry IIRC.

You are making my point, not refuting it. You understand that right? The first thing all you people think of is "what does this mean for cars?"

Regardless, Trader Joe's only agreed to this development if they got a certain number of parking spots. You all know that there is a parking garage right? That's it not just 6 spots you can see in this picture or whatever? I am not privy to the details but I am privy to a lot of the basic negotiation that went on here.

At the end of the day Trader Joe's agrees with you, btw. They would much prefer to have the parcel to themselves surrounded by parking. They are not urban champions. I don't know where you got the idea that this was all Trader Joe's idea. But if we want better development then this is the type of thing we need to stop. And if it fails then that's my entire point about proving Proccianti right. Just pave over the whole fucking state so everyone has parking all the god damn time. It makes me fucking sick, to be honest.

Thanks for this I actually thought the 35 and 78 still ran through Wayland and the red bridge (like e.g the 33) but I hadn't looked in a while.

60 runs on much shorter headway than I thought. Feel like when I looked at it as a possibility for commuting to Newport it ran less frequently, but that was 15 years ago. I see it's a half hour even on weekends these days so that's better.

The density definitely got lower. Providence metro has increased population while Providence city limits has gone down. That said even the metro hasn't grown at anywhere near the rates of cities in the south and west.

On my phone so it's annoying to share links but you can look on macro trends and other places to see what I mean. Bear in mind most data lacks granularity since the census is every ten years.

The sad part about this thread is that it just proves guys like Procianti right when they say there is no point in doing urban development in Providence without acres of parking since RIers are so addicted to their cars you would think the state was the size of Montana and therefore it's nearly impossible to have a successful business without easy parking.

Of course there is also a good point here, by locating it within the miasma of that gigantic oversized for a million cars intersection that it is also not really well made for pedestrians or cyclists (the designed route for a cyclist coming from wickenden would be to take a right on south main then u turn onto South water then come back across point for instance), and with only the 92 bus stop anywhere close that it's also not a great urban design.

I'm definitely for it happy it is finally here, and will shop here and I actually don't have a lot of better ideas for where it could have been located other than other 195 parcels or maybe in the mall at street level where borders was long ago (also absorbing the restaurant space next door)

I don't think it is a huge mystery that 95 was intended to connect city centers (generally speaking all of the 2 digit highways are meant this way) and at the time remember Providence was still a large city in the US (in 1950 it was the same population as Miami for instance) so it wouldn't have been bypassed. Why the route was chosen to follow coastal CT probably has to do with port access.

The specific route in Providence was likely the subject of a lot of fighting. The S curves in Pawtucket were the result of keeping a few buildings instead of blowing through them. But you can imagine that it was always going to skirt downcity. The cricling bit around South Providence I imagine also has to do with Port access. Remember part of the reason for the interstate highway system was efficient movement of military supplies. So if you assume that they wanted the highway as close as possible to the working Port of PRovidence off of Allens Ave, and then wanted to go as directly North to Boston, the choice would be where it is, or to go through downcity. If you look at aerials of the city from the time this would have been a bit of a complex issue and honestly as much as 95 might suck now, running 95 like where Memorial Drive is now would suck more.

I think the story of the route through Pawtucket (Which honestly makes no sense in modern context) is more interesting. Why the sudden right turn instead of following, essentially, the train tracks? I assume this is because the mills were still busy and needing access to the railroad but you'd have to ask someone more learned than me.

*As a side note you might say "but 95 doesn't go through Boston!" which is true but there is an interesting history on this which you can google, etc.

To be fair, we did fight a Civil War once.

I am also heartbroken by this shit, but mostly because it is more of the same for the same old human race that has basically spent most of its time on Earth being shitty to "others" with brief periods of harmony. Not sure what it will take to get society to be more inspired by unity than activated by hatred.

The history is the big thing going the 770-810 range up to the 830s and higher.

My score was briefly 850 for a while, then I did two refis then I let my oldest credit card cancel itself (kept getting sold, I didn't activate it after getting three new cards in a year). Mine sit at 800 or so now. Nothing else changed other than my 25 year old card closing, and my oldest active account being only since 2014.

Seems really stupid, yes.

Kimi's looks pretty cool tonight if you like dancing too.

The Hasbro party is legit I only go the years I manage to think of an execute a decent costume well ahead of time.

Lincoln Woods Trail on AllTrails https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/rhode-island/lincoln-woods-trail

On this trail just about the most northern portion.

I suppose there may be a similar looking thing elsewhere in a different place but at the spot I mention is at least something really close to this.

Lincoln Woods

The fact that RIPTA gets stuck in the same traffic as cars really limits its attractiveness.

I live and work on the 1 (essentially) so I can take the bus with no transfer. Even ignoring the walking time to the stops and assuming I time it perfectly the bus takes 1.5-2 times as long as just driving (largely because driving I can avoid downtown where of course the 1 is obligated to go through college hill and downtown). Since there is some walking time and because of the bus being late that is more like 3 times as long in practice.

Which is to say I'm with you on having real BRT (not that the 1 would be a good candidate necessarily just saying)

The MBTA is famous for prioritizing big capital projects over system maintenance and improvements, and therefore would not surprise me if they participated in unrealistic ridership projections.

Dry summer wet fall has created the worst amount of fall tree pollen I've seen since moving here. I have a big cedar next door and a couple of white pines and every surface of the outside of my house was yellow green before this week's rain. It's been bad.

If we had a local train that ran in the gaps between the MBTA trains so that people could use it for getting to Providence or the airport it might have been worth it. As an MBTA only thing it always felt like a giant failure waiting to happen. I blame the MBTA as well.

Like a RI local train that went from westerly to Pawtucket (or even just Providence due to the line restrictions at Pawtucket) could get these stations more use. But it's not a guarantee.