The Bucket Blog

This is a Google search for “i-95 bridge task force pawtucket.” Other than Friday’s story in the P-Times and my own scribblings, I see no current or recently past info on this project.

I guess they never really claimed it would be an open process. A year ago I wrote that then-chief of RIDOT Frank Williams:

“stated several times the team’s openness to input, but he didn’t say anything specific.”

Now it seems there was a good reason. The squeaky wheels from the year-ago meeting managed to get a foot in the door and make enough noise that their concerns were addressed. And their concerns were aesthetic.

Don’t share those concerns, have other concerns like pedestrian concerns? Pound sand.

There is nothing on the city’s website about the task force or the process. Nothing in any of the papers. Nothing on the DOT site. So the only logical conclusions are as follows:

• This is yet more “I know a guy” development
• Some who were previously outsiders have now become “the guy” that people may or may not know
• These former outsiders are now indistinguishable from the administration
• There is ZERO support for the idea that ‘regular people’ should have input on an edifice that will, to a large extent, define their built environment.
• They are seriously deluded if they think that a tunnel (originally called a culvert) is going to be “…the opposite of the dreary, dark and damp environment that we have there now”. Tunnel less dark and damp than an open-air overpass? Perfect madness.

There is a great deal of concern about how this bridge will look from above and below, and from the water. If they think that their dream of bright and open tunnel will ever be any kind of reality for the people who would be walking there – and those people are predominantly poor and black – then I want a big fat bag of whatever they’re smoking!

From all indications, this bridge will satisfy a bunch of stylists and architect. And those of us who have to live with the results can go pound sand.

Now before you go telling me how inclusive and thorough you all were in your process answer this question: Did the word “stairs” ever come up in your meetings? If stairs connecting Pleasant St and Taft St were a part of your design, you’d have told us all about them.

That you have NOT mentioned this tells us how much thought you’ve given to the actual way actual residents will actually have to deal with their future “culvert”.

And, for the record, culverts are pipes that carry run-off from a ditch to a larger water course. That, my Pleasant St neighbors, is what DOT and the Task Force think of you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Bridges, I-95, Sidewalks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.