“Can I go to X?” is the question 2 Feet 2 Bucks has answered with “Yes” dozens of times, where X = place worth going out of your way to, to take a walk, short or very long. But “Can I go home after?” is, in a make-or-break sense, a more important question.
I field-tested those trips myself and made it home each time to write about it. However, the particulars of the homeward leg are so unforgiving, I should not have overlooked the chance someone in their excitement would head out before checking when the last bus heads home. If your day was ruined this way, you can partly blame me – but you should really blame the governor and legislature for cutting the RIPTA budget last fall.
And blame them some more if you checked the schedule and called it off because your route ceases running early, or if the stress of minding an infrequent schedule would spoil the fun.
Finally — although it’s understandable — blame no one but yourself if you always assume RIPTA can not possibly be useful, so you never bother to check and you turn out to be wrong. Yes, about 4 of 5 routes at Kennedy Plaza do not operate after early evening. But you only need your one route, and those running latest tend to serve the most populated places. Is yours one of them? I drew this card hoping to make you wonder.
Boston folks are already savvier than Rhode Islanders when it comes to taking advantage of transit: On Waterfire nights, the 11:25 train fills up. More could go home this late if Boston’s buses and subways didn’t close for the night when the last train from PVD arrives.
WaterFire is special, but “Can You Go Home” applies to games, shows, and other downtown attractions. I feel lucky when, after a hockey game, I stroll over to the stop and am soon rolling home. At that moment, how many of the hundreds in idling cars, queued up to exit garages they paid a lot to park in, could have been rolling home as well? Lack of transit savvy is costing them!
Lack of transit savvy is costing us all. The story of downtown businesses barely hanging on for as long as anyone can remember, is the story of a city built to run on foot travel and transit. It thrived until a lifetime ago when everyone assumed cars made transit and walking obsolete. Growing numbers of people do not assume that anymore, but local oligarchs and politicians don’t seem to have caught on. Their efforts to provide parking for every potential driver nearly destroyed downtown. Now, stubborn overreliance on car travel is directly to blame for a persistent upper limit on downtown’s prosperity. Crowds show up for regional events and then beat it. The rest of the time, driving and parking here is not worth the hassle. Our downtown, built for transit and foot travel, will be woven back into the city’s daily life and economy only when transit and micromobility are so functional that everyone recognizes the value of having somewhere fun to go without having to drive and park. This proven concept worked here before, and works today in hundreds of cities around the world. How can we begin to make it happen?
An easy first step is to get Transit App and figure out whether, how, and when you can go downtown and home again for WaterFire or other reasons. Do it for the kids. A bus ride sure beats being strapped yet again into the car. Even if you already know transit cannot serve your commute, you owe it to yourself to ascertain whether it can serve for recreation. If you try it and like it — or — if you can honestly say, “If the bus ran longer and more often, I might go downtown more,” make sure the business community and your representatives hear about it!
There’s more: Rhode Islanders may be slow to embrace transit for discretionary leisure travel, but along the northeast corridor and elsewhere are millions who do it avidly. Plenty of them would love to discover and explore RI on vacation if they knew how well RIPTA enables this, even in its pinched condition. If we are going to host tourists at all, let’s have them arrive and get around without adding to traffic. Perhaps oligarchs and politicians will notice when, instead of car rentals, gasoline, and parking, tourist dollars get spent at local hotels, restaurants, indie shops, artists, and cultural activities.
So please spread the fun: Think of every out-of-town friend or acquaintance who might enjoy meeting you for an evening at WaterFire, and mail a postcard to invite them!
Find a postcard retailer at 2feet2bucks.com/map-postcards