Reconstruction of busy downtown boulevard also includes bus island and narrowing road from three to two lanes

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The city is installing a unique bicycle lane on Fountain Street, a busy downtown boulevard, that will have bicyclists riding between parked cars and the curb rather than outside the parked cars.

And it is building its first “bus island” on Fountain, enabling Rhode Island Public Transit Authority passengers to get off on an island that leaves space for the bicycle lane.

A curbside bicycle lane of that type “is a first-of-its-kind in Providence and probably in Rhode Island,” said Robert E. Azar, city deputy director of planning and development. That configuration, he said, is called a “parking-protected bicycle lane” and already is a national trend in urban areas.

A curbside bicycle lane, according to Azar, protects riders from moving traffic and “dooring.” Dooring is the unexpected throwing open of a motor vehicle door into the path of a rider.

The net effect on Fountain will be to reduce from three to two the number of vehicular travel lanes. The narrowing of Fountain will discourage cars and trucks from barreling down the one-way street, endangering crossing pedestrians, Azar said Tuesday.

“You have to change the geometry to slow the traffic,” he said.

Activity would be stacked this way: On the east side of the street there would be a sidewalk and curb, then the 6- to 8-foot-wide bicycle lane, then a 5-foot-wide buffer zone identified by white-striped cross-hatching and into which a passenger-side vehicle door would open, and then a 9-foot-wide line of vehicles parked in the traditional front-to-back manner.

The bicycle lane is emblematic of a still-new concept in urban planning called “Complete Streets,” that promotes streets built to accommodate users other than motor vehicles. It calls for more attention to sidewalks, crosswalks, pedestrian signals and bicycle lanes.

While Providence has a reputation as a walkable city, especially in and around downtown, critics have complained that there has been insufficient consideration for pedestrians and bicyclists. At too many intersections, city planners conceded, pedestrians have been forced to dash across the street to avoid oncoming traffic.

As it has been, Fountain is 57 feet wide curb to curb, encompassing two 9-foot-wide parking lanes and three 13-foot-wide vehicle travel lanes.

Built out, Fountain will have for most of its nearly one-quarter-mile length, two 11-foot-wide vehicle travel lanes and the bicycle lane, with on-street parking still allowed on both sides.

The bus island — 40 feet long and 13 feet wide — will be located across the street from The Providence Journal building. Ramps on the island and the sidewalk will accommodate people in wheelchairs.

The work on Fountain marks the culmination of the $15 million Downtown Circulator Plan, which unfolded in three phases after having been laid out in an engineering study in 2000.

The plan was intended to give motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists more options to move in and around downtown. Among the changes were the conversion of major one-way streets to two-way — such as Empire and Weybosset streets — and construction of sidewalk “bump-outs” that reduce the distance that a pedestrian walks in order to get across a street.

A professional analysis projects that the changes on Fountain will slightly increase traffic congestion, lengthening by 8 seconds, on average, to 25.6 seconds, the time it takes a vehicle to get through Emmett Square.

"We consider any more delays for cars to be vastly offset by improved mobility for pedestrians and bicyclists," Azar commented.

Emmett Square is the little-known name of the six-way intersection at the northeast end of Fountain that is crossed by traffic bound for Route 95. It is where Fountain, Eddy Street, Dorrance Street, Exchange Terrace, Francis Street and Sabin Street come together.

A count of the number of vehicles that travel on Fountain was not immediately available.

Azar said there is no specific plan for more “parking-protected bicycle lanes” in Providence but that their installation will be considered as certain streets are repaved. He predicted there “likely” will be more bus islands created in the implementation of the Downtown Transit Connector, which would have the bus berths at Kennedy Plaza dispersed.

—gsmith@providencejournal.com

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