Welcome to Free Range Rhode Island, also known as 2 Feet 2 Bucks Land: a world hiding in plain sight within the world generally known as Rhode Island. It was there all along, just waiting to be discovered and mapped. Rediscovered really, because Free Range Rhode Island largely coincides with areas that were well inhabited and interconnected over a century ago – before the automobile age.
These discoveries are fruit of a search for places where a Providence resident might enjoy changes of scene, out of town trips, the ocean, fresh air, some solitude – without traveling by car. Today’s map depicts what I have found so far plus what I hope to map out someday.
My search did take me places I decided not to include in Free Range Rhode Island for now. That’s because each inclusion had to pass two tests: “Could I uphold my Rhody pride if I recommend this excursion to an out of state friend?” and, “Is the scenic getaway juice (in my subjective personal estimate) worth the go-by-transit squeeze?” Too few routes actually lead anyplace where I would gladly tell a friend to get off the bus and walk around for the fun of it.
But a pleasant surprise became evident as I summarized my discoveries on this new map: Practically all the state’s most distinctive tourist-worthiness — believe it or not – is inside Free Range RI! Especially when ferries are running, Newport, Providence, East Bay, and Block Island provide travelers with abundant options for an authentic New England vacation (except mountains). Remote South County beaches and Beavertail are the only significantly popular RI must-sees that lie out of reach for a Free Ranger.
Weighing the go-by-transit squeeze is less straightforward. A frank assessment of RI’s public transit from the perspective of a resident who needs to commute to work, school, or appointments, is pretty bleak. Only some routes operate more than hourly, or after dinnertime. If you are not going to or from downtown Providence, you probably have to go there anyway to wait for a transfer. Commuters who rely on such service must arrive early and kill time before work every day or risk being late more often than the boss will tolerate. Reliability and time savings motivate most people to buy a car whether they can afford it or not.
Fortunately, the stakes are more forgiving for leisure travel. Low frequency service that fails for the daily rush suffices when you are off the clock. The Transit App tells you when a bus will arrive. A 40-minute wait is intolerable for commuting, but on a day off it blesses you with time to visit the library, grab coffee, or check out some shops. If you just missed a #19 from downtown to Neutaconkanut you can take a #51 or #54 to Lincoln Woods instead. An extra half hour wait on a bench overlooking Bristol Harbor at sunset is a feature not a bug.
A bus is slower than a car but traffic jams slow them equally. The time you save driving to Newport instead of taking the #60 equals the time you can spend looking for a parking space. Driving and parking for short trips about Providence is less fun and can take longer than a walk or a bus.
However, some bus trips take so much longer than a drive that even hardened transit veterans lose patience. Looking at you, #14 West Bay! It stops near some beautiful places but zigs and zags along tedious roads take over twice as long as a direct car trip. I show #14 and #64 from Kingston as thin lines only because airline or Amtrak travelers to Newport should keep them in mind as a complimentary lottery ticket worth checking. If you hit – one of the ridiculously infrequent buses is actually departing in minutes! – you can save the cost of an Uber!
An assessment of public transit from the unusual perspective of a leisure traveler or out of state tourist may seem irrelevant to serious transportation policy decisionmaking. However, their perspective reveals which areas are suitable for transit service in the first place — those where destinations and origins for transit trips are compactly situated along attractive, safe walking routes. A given bus stop may be theoretically justified by thousands of jobs and residences within a half mile, but if there is zero chance that half-mile walk will ever be someone’s favorite part of the day, forget about it.
Good news: The nearly impossible to obtain ingredient, indispensable for successful transit – places where a 15-minute walk is not a chore that makes you wish you were in a car, is what RI is incredibly lucky to have plenty of. Bad news: we are still wasting this.
Find a postcard retailer at 2feet2bucks.com/map-postcards/
Note: If you are one of the many people out there who helped me research and create a 2 Feet 2 Bucks map, ask one of these retailers for a copy and tell them it’s on me.