what is your proposal then?

Do people actually show up to these? What's the age range? I've been to similar such events where nobody showed up, or everyone was in their early 20s and I was a decade older than everyone else there.

I live off of Messer and I find the the planters on the side of the road to be more enjoyable, as a driver, although sometimes irritating, as people think the road is too narrow when indeed, they have enough room.

Edit: The planters do make me scared to bike down Messer, although there are side streets that don't get as much traffic that I take instead.

Generally, I think they've been somewhat effective, though I know they annoy a lot of drivers. I also notice that for the most dangerous vehicles (large pickups and SUVs with high front heights which make it more likely a pedestrian will be crushed under the wheels rather than falling onto the hood), the speed hump "solution" is fairly ineffective; these vehicles' widths tend to be enough to adequately clear the humps without slowing down much. So, we're effectively slowing the safest vehicles, but still failing to stop the most dangerous ones.

Ideally, we do things like raised crosswalks and planting trees along street edges and doing road diets and then start separating out pedestrian, cycling, and vehicle uses... but I won't hold my breath (I will raise it with the city councilors I know, though).

The biggest problem is that it is a blocker road for people trying to get to and off of 95. Instead of dispersing into a street road network off of the exit, the presence of the North Burial Ground and the old Drive-In (now Job Lot etc.) effectively mean that all of this traffic has to come onto North Main and then use those choke points to get onto Branch Ave./Smithfield Ave to get to/off the highway.

The second biggest problem is that North Main itself is a stroad not a street. It was designed to bring traffic (auto and trolley) from downtown to the stores on the Pawtucket border quickly, when there were stores there. It is too wide and no matter how many 25 mph signs you put up noone is going to go that speed on that long straightaway with wide lanes. The road design itself induces speed. And you can tsk and tut the evil people who speed but road design is part of it, this is proven by nearly every traffic study.

The third problem is that Miriam is between North Main and Hope instead of North Main and I-95. Which in itself is just a figment of the real problem which is the Frankenstein approach to "planning" in most of the city (natural given the age and the fact that RI was wealthiest at the absolute worst time in US history to be wealthy, at least if you believe in urban living and fewer cars)

The fourth problem is that RI (to be fair it is not unique to here) traffic engineers think the way to solve every traffic light problem is to make the lights longer - this queues more traffic and makes it more likely that people will speed to try and make a light rather than get stopped for a full 2 minutes like at the Branch Ave light. A second problem this causes is traffic slugs, where you get a giant parade of traffic every turn of the light, which makes people on side streets jump at the opportunity to get on the road ahead of the slug.

A subset that falls under 3 of these is that people abuse the hell out of the right on red. Whether it's not actually stopping, not looking when they even bother to stop, etc.

Generally speaking, on top of all this, RIDOT is not interested at all in anything other than throughput numbers. At least, this is all they seem to talk about. So roads like this that are state roads are not going to get pedestrian attention. Noone likes sitting in traffic but noone talks about reducing the number of cars, it is all talk about letting cars get from place to place faster. Alviti would pave the entire state if he could tell people you could get across RI 25% faster.

For the record, the relevant city councilors all know how bad North Main is and talk about it all the time if you actually engage with them.

I think every neighborhood benefits from speed bumps, but the ones on Main by the Whole Foods make me feel like I’m about to total my car by going over them at 5mph.

I strongly oppose them. They slow down fire trucks and other emergency vehicles.

It isn't right it is this way but the fact is pedestrians need to assume as if every car is being operated by a blind or impaired person and their brakes just failed (but they don't even know it).

There's way too many drivers that are unsafe.

Yes, but I think there are better alternatives, including focusing on noise reduction.

Angry drivers are the problem, and until they face consequences for their actions nothing will change.

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I think, in practice, some of them have been ill-placed or maybe made a teeny bit too high but overall, it's a minor inconvenience.

Stella NA actually tastes like Stella

The city added speed humps to my residential street several years ago and it has made a hugely positive impact on deterring speeding drivers. I am grateful for them.

Obviously Milano’s Pizza, the highest quality place around town.

No more speed bumps this is lunacy. The ones on rochambeau just make people rip up smaller roads with worse visibility while punishing law abiding drivers but wearing down their car suspensions

It's just E.T cruising around with his boyz

This is unfortunately the second pedestrian fatality on/near Doyle in the last few months :(

https://turnto10.com/news/local/pedestrian-crash-accident-emergency-injury-car-struck-providence-rhode-island-doyle-camp-street-hospital-emergency-room

This comment is getting downvoted (not by me, fwiw) because despite what I assume the intended meaning was, the language of suicidal pedestrians vs homicidal motorists is off-putting and pretty perfectly illustrates the mindset that causes these pedestrian deaths in the first place. The car-centricity of our built environments is literally killing tens of thousands per year and yet we immediately (intentionally or not) blame or implicate the pedestrian and not the motorist/urban planner/city rep/state rep whenever a fatality occurs.

Origin Beer Project, out of buttonwoods brewery in Cranston, specializes in low ABV beerss. Their staple beer is around 2% ABV.

Narragansett has athletic run wild in cans

Botera, good quality and best deals/prices I've seen anywhere

It's not. But that took guts, kid.

No, the last thing we need is more police pulling people over for every little thing. It starts with educating the public

> this city is an absolute nightmare for anyone who doesn’t drive everywhere.

Same with East Providence. There is a vocal group that seems to have some sway that is against anything pro-bike. And after four years not much has been done by the mayor except to install speed cams - and they could have acconplished that goal with speed humps. Most of the pedestrian traffic signals I've seen don't work.

Damn. Smh