Providence North Main Street Task Force-Wednesday, March 19, 2025-5:30 PM

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Like I haven't been trying to.

Because that I feel like I've missed a lot of these recently. Oh, that could be good. Well, we're gonna get started in September. We're gonna do that for Wednesday, March 19. Chair

Angela. Present. Vice chair for Legion. Present. Lieutenant Brown.

Present. Marissa Lopes with accent. Rachel Peterson?

I'm here.

Peter Kamara is absent. Thomas Badweiss absent. Sarah Ingle? Here. Jessica Lance?

Here. Nate Ersa?

Here.

Sean Raymond?

Present.

Rosie Jaswan? Here. We have men present, and in three accent, have a blonde.

Awesome. Thank you so much. We're gonna hop right into the presentation because we have Avari and Prism on I think on Zoom, maybe.

I'm holding Brian right now.

Okay. So we

Right now.

While we wait, why don't we go around and just because I've gotten his feedback. We've talked about a fourth people. When they do watch the Zoom, which today, for people who watch the Zoom afterwards, you can't tell who we each are because they can't get a five words from it. So if we can just go around and you can say your name and what constituency you are, I'll model it. I'm Sue Erwa.

I'm starting with this task force, and I am a counselor for board three, which is the Morgan Hardiman side. Go next.

Sure. Bill Brown, Star Wars Police. Your name

is Sean Raymond, Avaya DMT.

I'm Rachel Peterson. I am a Board 3 resident. Hi, everyone. I'm Rosie Jaswell. I'm a Green and Complete Streets Advisory Council representative.

Angela Harvest, deputy city clerk. Vice President Kupauli, assistant clerk.

Kyle Lovato, director of policy management, city council.

Sorry. Tricia Pedriatti, policy analyst for the policy team on the city council, and I serve with the pleasure of assisting. Ruth Cochio, city solicitor. Thank you for being here. Jess Lance, director of special projects for the city of Providence department of planning and development.

Nate Urso. I manage traffic engineering. It's a division in the department of public works for the city.

Sarah Ingle, planning director at RIFTA and next neighbor at North Main Street.

Jenny Vivian, vice chair of the task force. I'm representing The Bronx and Spree's convolution.

I'm trying to understand what city is she booked.

I'm fine.

Okay. You're welcome here. How do I feel?

It's quite I'm ready.

Awesome. So thanks everyone for being here, and it does look like we have Brian on the line. So we wanna promote him to talk and lead agenda item one into the record, please.

Presentation by Avari and Prism on lighting lighting project. Presentation by Brian Woodberry Prism Street Lights.

Often, we've talked about this at prior meetings that there is a lighting project underway to increase so you can see this. It's been a long day. To increase lighting along with Main Street, which is identified as one of the one of the major safety. So I'm really excited for Brian. He's joining us today and also director of the main from public property.

He's been here. Kyle and Trish Tricia for all the work. So, Brian, if you can hear us and you wanna hop on, we'd love to hear a status update. I'm worried for everything that we really appreciate you joining us today.

Yeah. Can everyone hear me okay?

I'm brief.

Okay. My name is Brian Woodbury. I am the executive director of Prism Street Lights. I've been working, with the city on improvements, along the main North Main Street corridor. So I wanted to just give a a a brief update about where we stand right now.

Honestly, not not a lot has happened since the February since you guys' February meeting because we're kind of in that sort of planning and waiting for product to arrive and waiting for the weather to, you know, cooperate sort of long term there in New England. So so right now, we're just kinda doing a lot of background work. The the decorative streetlights that we are planning to put into the the median area between Olney and Doyle, Those those fixtures are on order. I was working with my contractor today to put together some pricing on the strategy for the installation of those of those fixtures. So the approach we're going to use is we will put in some sort of a control box there in one of those mediums because, as you know, it it is kinda one medium, but it's broken up by those sort of u-turn or or cut through lanes.

So we would put a control box in one of those medians that would essentially run a loop of power to all of those lights in in the median. This will simplify the the connection point with National Grid rather than having to connect each one of those individual streetlights or a string of them into a manhole and have to, you know, excavate the roadway in work in order to access, you know, multiple connection points. So that's the approach that we we are designing at this stage. Our plan is going to be to do what is called a a GPR on those medians. GPR stands for ground penetrating radar because there are gas lines and gas means present in those medians.

So we wanna be very, very careful not to interfere with that or any of the other electrical infrastructure that's located in in that median. So we are I should be able to provide pricing over to the city for that effort tomorrow. I did send over some preliminary quotes today for the proposed new lighting up near well, north of the burial ground. So what we're proposing there is to add roughly 36 new streetlights on existing utility poles. So more or less, anywhere you see a utility pole up in that area that does not have a streetlight will end up getting a streetlight with, you know, extra attention being paid for areas where there's crosswalks or additional foot traffic or, you know, utilizing the data we have for with for pedestrian or bicycle accidents.

So we submitted the request to Rhode Island Energy. It's probably been several months ago now to get permission to mount streetlights on those poles. We're still waiting for their permission. We do have a great deal of hardware on hand that we you know, an order that we placed when we started, the project, back last fall. So as soon as we start getting approval for those locations, we should be able to start installing those relatively quickly.

And, again, this is not something we necessarily have to wait for changes in the weather or the lift in the moratorium for excavation. Additionally, we are looking to add new wooden streetlight poles along the southbound lanes of North Main adjacent to the burial ground. So there are some existing lights there now, but the spacing is pretty wide. So we are looking to increase the number of lights along along that stretch of roadway. So as it stands now, we have 11 locations that we have requested for National Grid.

We are back and forth with them regarding the, you know, the specifics of where those will be located and how we plan on handling the installation. So, again, awaiting their approval, and they essentially have to go through an engineering process to make sure that, you know, our design based on where we plan to string the wires and make the point of connection. You have to make sure that the existing transformers and other electrical infrastructure will support the additional load. So that that's gonna be a little fluid just because we wanna we wanna make sure that we're doing it in the most aesthetic way possible, which, in my opinion, is stringing the the primary power line or secondary power line, I should say, parallel to the roadway so that you're not having a a line run across North Main you know, both southbound and northbound lanes of of North Main in order to access power at a utility pole that's on the northbound side. So that's that's what we're working on now.

Let's see. We do still have some outstanding, you know, power issues that we're continuing to try to work on with Rhode Island Energy. Those likely will start to see a little more progress come spring whenever the moratorium is list lifted for, you know, cutting concrete and asphalt. I was prepared to show you the Avari model. I'm not sure if my sharing my screen is something that we can manage or if that's something we best reserve for another time.

Yeah. The clerk for making sure that you have permissions, but you should be able to do that just because that kind of thing. Mhmm. And, Brian, while they're doing that, a quick question, Sue. What is the timeline for the Doyle only always say only wrong.

Sorry. The Doyle only what if pedestrian leather lighting. Like, when are you gonna date that that would get installed? Is that,

like, a

springtime? April, May situation, you mean,

Yes. So so, ultimately, at this stage, you know, we anticipate receiving the hardware for, you know, the actual actual fixtures and poles that we've ordered. We we anticipate receiving those probably sometime, I'm guessing, early to mid April. In the meantime, we will continue working through the the permitting process with both the city as well as the state. My contractor met with the electrical inspector for the city today and, you know, discussed the, you know, the plan there.

Okay.