Some key connection points are still missing in the network, but a great deal of the state is already accessible to riders.

10:55 AM EDT on Sunday, June 12, 2005

BY BRUCE LANDIS
Journal Staff Writer

On a bicycle, it's so quiet on the Blackstone River Bikeway that the birds sound loud. The river's rushing water is on one side, and the still water of the old canal is on the other.

The canal is a turtle hangout. Groups of three or four of them sit on logs along the bank.

The traffic noise is distant. Riding along, counting turtles feels like exactly the right thing to do.

The network of bike paths that is gradually coalescing across Rhode Island is still disjointed and far from complete; people who use the paths think they are already jewels among things Rhode Islanders have built for themselves, rather than inherited, like the Bay.

"Every time I do it, I realize how much I love the bike path," said Kelley Alison Smith, a Brown University graduate student who rides the East Bay Bicycle Path to work regularly from Riverside, in East Providence.

THE STATE DEPARTMENT of Transportation says it has built more than 43 miles of bike paths so far, at a cost of about $47 million. The state is spending about $7 million per year on bike and pedestrian projects, and DOT officials say they expect to keep that up.

Working with the Department of Environmental Management, the DOT says it expects to have about 60 miles built within the next three to five years.

The state's long-range transportation plan, Transportation 2020, says the eventual goal is "a 200-mile integrated statewide bicycle system," split about evenly between off-road bike paths and on-road bike lanes.

That would go well beyond the recreation the existing bike paths offer. It would amount to an alternative transportation system to let many people get to work and elsewhere without further clogging the roads.

Right now, the easiest parts are either built, under construction or planned. Officials, particularly in Providence, are facing the physical and political difficulties of the next steps: crossing urban areas and tying the pieces together.

THE PRICE of progress is outdated maps. The DOT's bike path map is two years old, and the department says it hopes to have an updated version shortly.

The bike path system largely radiates from Providence. Its major elements are:

• The oldest and the only completed one, dedicated in 1992, the East Bay Bicycle Path, has a toehold in India Point Park, in Providence, but mostly runs south through East Providence, Warren and Bristol.

• The partly built Blackstone River Bikeway runs north through Pawtucket, Central Falls, Cumberland and Woonsocket.

• The Woonasquatucket River Greenway goes northwest from Providence into Johnston and North Providence.

• The Washington Secondary Bicycle Path runs south and west from Providence through Cranston, West Warwick and Coventry to Connecticut.

Other sections, either planned or built, are scattered about the state, such as the William C. O'Neill Bike Path in South County and the Ten Mile River Greenway in Pawtucket and East Providence.

PEOPLE WHO USE the bike paths like them a lot. A 2004 study by the University of Rhode Island Transportation Center found that more than 99 percent thought bike paths are a good use of tax money.

Bike paths are a plus for the DEM and particularly the DOT, an agency blamed for potholes that aren't fixed fast enough and snow that isn't plowed soon enough.

Sally Turner, executive director of Groundwork Providence, a private nonprofit group encouraging bike use, said she thinks DOT Director James Capaldi "is very serious about it. They've put their money where their mouth is."

Several longtime bike riders agree. "I think they're doing a good job," said Howard Stone, author of Short Bike Rides in Rhode Island.

AS THE SYSTEM grows, it looks more and more like an antique transportation map. That's because old transport routes, particularly railroads, are perfect for bike paths -- they're relatively straight and gently graded.

"When they're on a rail bed, it's really easy," said Stephen M. Devine, chief of program development for intermodal planning at the DOT.

Best of all, old railroads form continuous rights of way that could be acquired all at once, or close to it, and go places that are just as useful now as when the railroads were built in the 19th century. They sometimes let bike riders penetrate densely populated areas without riding on the street much.

The East Bay Bicycle Path follows a former rail line, once the Providence, Warren & Bristol Railroad, down the shore.

The partially built bike path that will run from Providence all the way to Connecticut follows what was once the Hartford, Providence & Fishkill Railroad, a line built in the 1840s to connect Providence to Hartford and Danbury, Connecticut, and to Fishkill, N.Y., a few miles east of the Hudson River.

In some places, transportation history is stacked layers deep. The Blackstone River Bikeway follows the old Blackstone Canal, completed in 1828 and bankrupted when the then-high technology railroads were built a few years later. The same bike path also follows the Providence & Worcester Railroad, built in 1846-'47, in part using the canal right of way.

The absence of the old rail lines could have made the whole bike path project impractical, or at least extremely difficult.

There is no plan for a bike path heading south from Providence because there's no right of way available.

There might have been. Starting in 1832, the Providence & Stonington Railroad built a line from Fields Point, Providence, through South County to take travelers around the dangers of the sea off Point Judith. At Stonington, Connecticut, where the line ended, the passengers took steamers to New York. It probably would have made a wonderful bike path.

But unlike most of the other 19th-century railroads in Rhode Island, the Providence & Stonington lived on. A successor company went bankrupt in 1839 but survived. The line was connected with others at each end, and eventually became . . . Amtrak.

ALL THAT HISTORY behind the bike paths sometimes makes their names confusing.

State officials often refer to the bike path that will run from Providence through Coventry to Connecticut as the "Washington Secondary" bike path, referring to a more recent name for the Hartford, Providence & Fishkill.

But Rhode Island officials, wanting to involve the cities and towns, encouraged each community to name its own bike paths.

Depending on where you are, the Washington Secondary may be called the Cranston Bike Path, the Warwick Bike Path, the West Warwick Greenway, the Coventry Greenway or the Trestle Trail, the part ending at the Connecticut line.

The confusion is probably temporary. Nobody calls the oldest bike path the "Bristol Secondary."

In the long run, the bike path network will contribute about 50 miles of the East Coast Greenway, the planned 2,600-mile greenway from Maine to Florida.

But in the really long run, the bike paths may be no more permanent than the now-abandoned railroads. DOT officials say the state started acquiring defunct rail lines against the day when the rights of way might be needed again for some sort of alternative system, maybe rail again, to help commuters avoid increasingly congested highways.

Biking enthusiasts, of course, think that the alternative transportation system is already here.

However, although a crowd of about 100 riders was in Kennedy Plaza on the morning of Bike to Work Day, relatively few people bike to their jobs: only 17 percent of the bike path users surveyed said they rode or walked to work. Daniel A. Baudouin, executive director of the Providence Foundation and a bicycling supporter, guessed that 300 to 400 ride to work in the city.

ONE OF THE BIKE path system's toughest obstacles shows up at the end of Depot Avenue in Cranston, behind Arlington Farm & Pet Supply Co., just short of the Providence line.

That's where the Cranston Bike Path ends.

Toward Providence, the bike path ends in a dirt path and a tangle of brush and rubbish.

Not far beyond, the old right of way merges with the high-speed Amtrak rail line, heading into the city from New York and continuing north to Boston.

That's no place for bicycles, and state and city officials are still working on a route to carry the bike path into Providence.

"It ends in Cranston because we haven't found a good off-the-road connection to Providence," said Thomas Deller, the Providence city planning director.

ON THE MAP, most of the bike paths lead to Providence. But the city has little beyond a few signs and striped lanes to accommodate bicycle riders.

Only the East Bay Bicycle Path is really connected to the city now, by the walkway on the Washington Bridge. But a bicycle rider arriving in Providence near the foot of Gano Street finds no sign or other indication of the way to downtown or anywhere else.

"There's a big void there," Robert Smith, managing engineer in the DOT's design section, says of the city.

Top city officials actively support biking. Mayor David N. Cicilline arrived on his bike to host Bike to Work Day in Kennedy Plaza on May 20, and Deller, whose office has pushed bike plans, is a regular biker himself.

The city and state have had plans for years to connect at least three bicycle paths, the East Bay Bicycle Path, the Blackstone River Bikeway and the Woonasquatucket River Greenway, to downtown Providence. Officials say that it may take years to do it and that they will have to rely heavily on city streets both in Providence and in Central Falls and Pawtucket.

Providence's plans have met a series of setbacks. The city's goal has slipped from separate bicycle lanes sharing streets to bike lanes marked by painted lines and finally to bike routes mostly marked only by signs.

City officials say the DOT is even questioning signs as posing a threat of "sign clutter" on city streets. (The DOT says it's worried that too many bike signs could cause riders to wander off the main routes through the city.)

Blackstone Boulevard, on the city's East Side, is tree-lined with a park down the middle separating the wide traffic lanes. It is arguably the Providence street most attractive for bicycling, and many bikers use it.

Crossing one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the state, the Boulevard is also an obvious connector to a bike route coming south through Pawtucket from the Blackstone River Bikeway. The Boulevard runs south toward the Washington Bridge, where the East Bay Bicycle Path enters Providence.

From that juncture, Deller plans to carry the bike path west, through India Point Park to the Providence River, through the new Route 195 segment now in construction, to the park running north along the river, and then into downtown.

That would let bikers from both the East Bay and the Blackstone River sections get to downtown, eventually to link up with the bike paths entering the city from the northwest and southwest.

The Boulevard's neighbors, however, have repeatedly blocked its inclusion in any formal bike network.

There are also physical and bureaucratic problems that come with a dense city built with no thought for bicycles.

Deller said that the city hired a consultant to plan a bike system, only to discover in 2003 that practically all of the city's streets are too narrow to meet federal standards for bike lanes marked with painted stripes.

That means they don't qualify for the federal money that the state has relied on for the bike path system -- unless something else is sacrificed.

In some cases, Deller said, the bike lanes would fit, but "we would have had to eliminate all on-street parking, which is a problem." As a result, Broadway is the only city street now planned to get striped bike lanes.

Otherwise, Deller's staff has fallen back on using signs to indicate bike routes, contingent on the "sign clutter" question.

THAT'S NOT ALL that has stalled, or may prove impossible:

• Bridges: The DOT planned to include a bike path on the new Jamestown Bridge, but the towns at each end, Jamestown and North Kingstown, objected, and the idea was dropped. The DOT thinks the remaining six-foot shoulders leave the bridge "bicycle tolerant," DOT spokeswoman Dana Nolfe said.

The Pell Bridge from Jamestown to Newport, with narrower shoulders, is too narrow to accommodate bikes, transportation officials say.

On the state bike map, both the Jamestown and Pell bridges are marked "bicycles prohibited." To get their bikes across the bridges, riders can use Rhode Island Public Transit Authority buses, which mount bike racks.

On the other hand, the Environmental Impact Statement, a key planning document, for the new Sakonnet River Bridge between Tiverton and Portsmouth recommends a 10-foot-wide, two-way bike and pedestrian path on the south side of the bridge, with a crash barrier protecting it from traffic.

"It remains our goal to provide some type of bicycle/pedestrian linkage" on the new bridge, Nolfe said.

• Smithfield. The Woonasquatucket River Greenway, where segments will be advertised for bids this year and next, was to head north from Providence, following the former Providence & Springfield Railroad, built in 1872-73, to Massachusetts.

However, Smithfield officials repeatedly opposed it, the DOT dropped Smithfield from its plans, and the bike path will stop dead at the Johnston-Smithfield town line.