The Bucket Blog

The Good

1. They Came to Us – It’s great that the meeting happened at all. DOT Director Jerome Williams ran point for uber-engineer Kazem Farhoumand, managing engineer Robert Rocchio, a traffic specialist and other support staff. On the Pawtucket side, D/Admin Harvey Goulet led Ed Tetzner of the mayor’s office and traffic engineer Mike Burns. Williams was very diplomatic and patient with a sometimes contentious crowd that grew to about 40 in the ‘theater’ in the Visitors Center. He stated several times the team’s openness to input, but he didn’t say anything specific. Goulet spoke for

2. We’re #1 – With the iWay project getting to the later stages and “Barrington” moving forward, we’re at the top of DOT’s priority list. Bridge 550 replacement is on an accelerated timetable. They secured a design consultant in a month-and-a-half when it usually takes 9 months. That’s a savings of 83% off the retail price. Reading between the lines, DOT is hoping to complete the whole project in five years, which is fast for a project of this scope. Also, one of the parameters of construction is that all three lanes will stay open and undivided (not 2 lanes + 1) at all times during construction.

3. 2-way traffic on Division St – It won’t be like it used to be. No left turn onto George from the 95 southbound exit is the major change. But looping around Garden St is no big. No trucks westbound on Division. No left off eastbound Division onto East Ave (the Mr. USA Cleaners turn). DOT treated us to some of their modeling software, which is pretty sophisticated. Sadly, it shows that Prospect St will see no improvement and may get worse. [I personally feel they need to increase the aggression factor of the drivers in their models. I watched the model for a while and the 'drivers' were much more cooperative than in reality, IMO.] Optimistic time table is between 2 and 3 months to implement this element.

4. New Bridge Solves Problems – The concept for the new bridge is an improvement. In addition to the three lanes each way, the northbound side will add two lanes, separated from the main traffic, to handle the George St on ramp/School St off ramp. The merge lane will be extended several hundred feet. The construction plan is totally boss: they build the two new service lanes and then replace the existing bridges. The last step is to demolish the existing northbound lanes and then “slide” the service lanes into the space where the demolition just occurred.

5. “Pedestrian Features” Will Return – The shutting off of the pedestrian traffic controls at the intersection of George and Division was an “emergency measure” to deal with the time frame to implement the posting. A fix is in the works.

The Bad

1. Why the Rush? – I’ve worked with engineers a lot. They don’t get worked up for no good reason. So for DOT to suddenly send this project to the top of the list means that they saw something in their recent round of inspections that they didn’t like, not one little bit. As I’ve said before, they’ve been all over this bridge for quite some time. Long story short: this needs to happen and fast.

2. Value Engineering – This is tech-speak for taking cost out of a job, and it’s all up on this project. For example, instead of a long bridge, such as is there now, they propose to build a GI-NORMOUS RETAINING WALL AT TAFT STREET TO FILL THE HUGE HILL BETWEEN TAFT AND PLEASANT. (See incredibly crude renderings below, views from the north and south on Taft with the river opposite the wall.

Pleasant St becomes a “culvert.” Really, they say, it’s gonna be nice. I think they’re dreaming the underpass under Memorial Blvd in Prov that’s got all the tiles and such. I’m seeing NYC subway tunnel. I pressed them for specifics, but they didn’t have anything specific to say. Similarly, big swatches on the eastern bank are to be filled, specifically, the area at the south end of the Apex parking lot where Water St used to go through. I had heard talk earlier about the possibilities of reconnecting Water St to help restore the natural flow of surface street traffic between the Main St and Div St bridges. This would ruin that. Plus, these back fill ideas block views and make the highway even more of barrier.

3. Even Fast is Slow – Super-rapid timetable for restoring the crosswalks: 3 months. Duration of fulltime bridge work: 3 years. Next meeting: 60 days.

The Potentially Ugly

1. The Design – In addition to ridiculous retaining walls, this bridge has the distinct possibility of being a piece of junk, ugly as sin, and no real help to the City of Pawtucket. Rushing through the design phase of a product rarely pays off in the long run. DOT is all good intentions, but when push comes to shove, they can always fall back on the I-ain’t-got-no-money riff. Director Williams, when specifically pressed, insisted that he didn’t have even a conceptual design drawing of what the bridge might look like.

The Optimistic Closing

Ever since I saw Michael Singer at New Commons, I’ve tried to keep an open mind about infrastructure projects. With vision, thing like dumps and power plants can be big positives for the places where they’re sited. DOT is clearly open to talk, but hamstrung for resources. The Michael Singer approach generally saves money. The possibilities for this project are wide open.

There were lots of great ideas:

• name the bridge as the northern entrance to RI
• solicit design concepts from the qualified members of the Pawtucket architecture/design community
• take into account the huge flocks of starlings that fly crazy circles around that bridge and roost underneath it
• keep an eye on air and noise pollution in the detour areas

Nobody said this, and I had already said enough, but I’ll say it here. This bridge stands directly beside an historic arch bridge. It was not lost on the group that a 150 year old bridge is coming to the rescue of 50 year old bridge that is ready for the trash heap. Even I am smart enough to recognize that the new 550 needs to echo or reflect or in some way recognize the clearly superior design.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Bridges, 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.