Providence North Main Street Task Force-Monday, May 20, 2024-5:30 PM

Right under the big screen. There's a little sign up. That way you have your name for the record and everything. And the second thing is... And I think...

Oh, we get to request from people who watch it remotely if we could go around and say our names our friends from the office,. And I'm from the office,. We had some write out today, so very excited about that. Great. Yeah.

And, yeah, I just wanna say, you know, thank you to to everyone that that was able to come out during the day, and then people,

you know, took a time from

their their day job. And I think it shows, you know, how serious the issue is. And, you know, just... I think it would be great to to bring everybody together and be out there at the same time and experience, you know, a lot of issues that, you know, that we were able to see firsthand and kinda go through the crash data. Also, you know, appreciation for the VHP consultant that RIDOC has on board to help the the issues, and they they helped us conduct a bunch of RSAs, so they have a lot of experience with that.

And I think this was the largest... And it's a turnout we've had for an RSA, which, you know, can be a challenge, but I think it worked really well, you know, with with with how it went went ahead and set up. And and, yeah, you know, we're gonna spend a whole day going through everything. So, yeah, really just wanna appreciate that. And those that don't know me, I'm Sean Raymond.

I'm at RIDOT. I work in the office of safety. So with that, I'll kind of kick this off.

She is. Sure. My name is Crystal. And I think someone's like,

So the formula is a little different than what typically, you know, I probably have we've done in the past where,

you know, you know, we

develop the draft RSA after conducting it and, you know, it is reserved for the the members and the members in this case to to review and, you know, provide comments. And, yeah, know, there might be a few iterations before it's finalized. So I just wanna note that this is just a draft. You know, it did go out recently, and all the stakeholders, members will have,

I think, till about the end

of the month to to review it and and comment on it, and and, obviously, we'll we'll go from there. But I just wanna point that out as... That this is just a draft.

Is this controlling? No. That doesn't work.

So, you know, the purpose of this presentation is is to really kinda go over high levels, the, know, the first draft of of this report, and then, you know, begin... You know, collect some some feedback now. Obviously, you have you have a few leads to to provide that, you know, written to, know, get sent in right to Kristen. And just our our progress to date, you know, some of the things that, you know, we've been able to implement, you know, even prior to RSA and then, you know, since the RSA was conducted. You know, for those that aren't familiar, what RSA is, it's a a road safety assessment that's conducted with a multi...

Multidisciplinary team. So, again, not just not just traffic engineers. You know, we represent some from other stakeholders, RIPTA, fire, police department, awesome highway safety that we have in attendance tonight that that look at the behavioral side of of issues. You know, we're kinda bringing all those stakeholders together and, obviously, in this case, members of the task force as well, you know, to participate, you know, walk the corridor or or areas in question, come up with recommended enhancements that go in person from from very near term, immediate term, near term, and then, you know, longer term enhancements, you know, that could be implemented both on the engineering side, the EMS side, enforcement side, and and other behavioral side issues. Know, typically, you have a team.

You have, like, the design team project owner. I think in this case, we have a lot of owners. Right? We have... You know, DOT does does own and and maintain a decent portion of of the roadway at Providence, you know, maintains, you know, that that southern portion just pass only street intersection.

And then you have other ownerships like median. You know, we have parks. You have other stakeholders, the sanitary, all all people that are that that view, you know, North Main Street as a very important important roadway. And and a lot... What happens is a lot of this information is taken once the report is finalized.

You know, things things can be done, improvements can be done through maintenance forces. Other improvements require a project or or or to help, you know, be conducted by by... It could be another stakeholder. Right? It could be another stakeholder.

Could be a on on on something. Also, I mean, safety can be a lead on something. So it's feasible that you can be a lead on on something. It's... And I think that's what makes RSAs successful too is that it's not just...

It doesn't under... Fall under one roof necessarily. It's it's a collaborative effort, and, you know, people are brought in from the beginning. So this kinda goes through... This is, like, you know, Federal Highway.

They're the ones that kinda help create what RSAs are, and this kinda goes through the steps. So you identify location, the RSA team. We've done all that. Startup meetings, performed field review, done that. Now it's analyzing and reporting on the findings.

That's where we are now presenting the findings. We're also doing that now, and and we'll continue to do that, you know, the draft, and then you finalize it, incorporate the findings, you

know, through

various lines. So, you know, the extent of of this RSA started, you know, the southern limit of Boney Street, and it went north to to Annemarie Street, which is just over the the Pawtucket City line. So the improvement areas, you know, this was definitely a multimodal approach, and and these are kind of the high level areas that we might... We're gonna discuss more today is, you know, signing and striping enhancements, ADA, obviously, very important and critical, safety and efficiency, improving the quality of of of the network and and quality of life, you know, of all the all the users using it. And then, you know, the geometric aspects, are there geometric enhancements that can be made, you know, at at many of these intersections and along the corridor itself?

Again, you know, I wanna stress the behavioral side is is is just as important as as the engineering side, you know, education opportunities, enforcement opportunities, and there's a lot of enforcement that's already been taking place, you know, over the last several months. And any legislative initiatives that can be undertaken as well to to make improvements in not only on North Main Street, but elsewhere in the city and state. So with that, I think I'll hand it over to the. Better than I.

I'll move over here so that there's enough room to show up here too. So, again, my name is Kristen. I'm... Was the consultant that's supporting on this. So one of my goals when I made this presentation was to try to make this this graph report a little bit easier to digest.

This is kind of like the standard template for the... For RIDA RSAs, but this is not really a standard RSA. Right? This one is so much larger, and it has so many more levels of complexity than we deal with on a lot of other RSAs. So my hope with this presentation is to take this really thick report you have in front of you and try to break it down into kind of more bite sized pieces, particularly when it comes to some of the recommendations and the comments that we heard from the group that we mentioned.

So the goal here being, you know, for everyone to... As Sean said, the task force has till the end of the month to really, take this in and provide comments. Thank you to anyone that already has provided comments. I have already received a couple of of sets of comments, so thank you. But I hope this presentation kind of helps make it an easier to comprehend report and kind of helps inform those comments that eventually get you.

So as Sean mentioned, we kinda... I have this kinda broken down into, like, the multimodal improvements, which a little bit needs... You kinda need sort of engineering, and then the behavioral improvements, which starts leaning towards education and enforcement and legislation. So since our RSA on April 9, we've already... Working with Rideout at least, we've taken some of the recommendations and started to grab some of those low cost maintenance driven actions and also started putting a little bit effort into some of the due diligence type actions that we can get done right away.

During RSA, we talked a lot about immediate term being, like, that zero to six months, say, by the end of the year, and then near term, maybe the next one to two years, and then long term, maybe beyond that two year mark. As Sean mentioned, there's things you can do with maintenance, and then there's separate things that are really a much bigger undertaking that are gonna require more substantive design and construction contracts and so on. So there's some need to talk about certain things. Targeting, another big issue when you think about those long lead items. So here on the immediate term improvements, part one, there'll be a second slide.

Sorry. I'm gonna try to not read you every last thing on this slide. I'm gonna try to make sure I get all the information for you guys. Some things should have already been taken care of, which we're kind of... We're already in the works in advance of the RSA, really.

Implementing an ex... Exclusive pedestrian phase at Northmead and Rochambeau, implementing leading pedestrian inter... Interpol, leading through interpol at all signalized intersections, meaning the pedestrian gets that advanced to get out into the crossing before any vehicles, any concurrent vehicles move to make... To give them better visibility. And updating all vehicle clearance times at all intersections, where the benefit of that is it should hopefully make drivers feel comfortable

with the amount of time they have

to cross the intersection and discourage things like red light running. They hopefully discourage the aggressive driving and things inside. So vehicles would feel like they have to rush and make speedy decisions. So those things are all set. Moving into the in progress.

Has several work orders in the hopper already to refresh speed limit and parking restriction signage out there. So the idea being that, you know, signage is how how drivers maybe take us to the road. You know, hopefully, all drivers and all really road reasons are kind of operating, understanding the savings. I understand this data, and I understand that I'm not a web tech here. I am a web tech here.

So just doing those refreshes

hopefully ensures that everyone is kind

of a buying adviser. There's no uncertainty about what's allowed or not allowed. And I think one thing we've heard a lot about on the RSA is the parking restriction side. This frustration about vehicles being charged much because of the crossings. And so we, you know, wanna make that clear that where parking is prohibited, open up those sight lines, and try to ensure that pedestrians get adequate visibility...

Get the necessary visibility. Also on the hopper, it's... We're gonna be... Ryda and the city of... Oh, this one's Ryda.

Ryda will be implementing North Main Street at Olney Street exclusive pedestrian phase. We had a lot of conversations about the frustration from not being able to get across only string efficiently and how the timing of the lights was not conducive to the. So that one is also all set with the work order. There's also a no right turn on

red coming for Rochambeau.

No right turn on red is something that is... The MUTCD, which guides how traffic control devices, signs, signals, payment markings are implemented. The the no rate trend on red will be installed at Rochambeau likely next month.

And that was voted at the state traffic. Yeah. The months.

The months are getting by. Going by quick. And then another opportunity for a no rate to move on red on North Main Street would be at Boney Street because of that, we've also had a successful pedestrian base. As a signage item, I believe it's something we should work with province DPW on. Just...

Ashland mentioned there's a lot of state board, so the juris... Or the jurisdictions mix. Yeah.

Right. She can go the way to to to. Yeah. We have to go use that. We use the signage and sidewalks.

Yeah.

So the exclusive should be implemented next month. So right at that point, it's like then as far as goes, it would be a reasonable. The other two items I have down at the bottom here is a... We write out as a work order also on the list for tripping hazards. One thing that we just observed generally is the maintenance issues.

Right? So slightly maintenance issues that are designed for that things that probably don't go on the sidewalk, side posts that no longer have signs on, things like that. So we're calling those generally tripping hazards. So Rideout has a work order to get tripping hazards removed as best their jurisdiction allows, and then, you know, we communicate with DPW on some of our findings and work with them on web app where they can help address, like, items that are outside right at. The last item I have here on the in progress list is countdown pedestrian signal heads.