When my wife and I relocated to New England, one of our key criteria was access to public transportation.

The easy access to buses and ease of bicycling made Providence’s historic Elmwood neighborhood an easy choice for us, especially with arterial north-south routes available on both Broad and Elmwood. In nicer weather, especially, my bicycle gets me downtown faster than any car and quicker than most buses.

What continues to puzzle me here is how a state that benefits nada from automobile-related manufacturing or the petroleum industry doesn’t have a first-rate public transportation system. We pump $1.5 billion a year outside our state to buy gas that provides no jobs, deprives us of dollars that would otherwise be spent supporting local businesses, and does nothing to build a transportation infrastructure for the future.

You’d think with all the corruption this state is historically known for someone would have been able to shift some graft toward creating light rail or bringing back the street cars that helped fuel Providence’s prosperity before we were all tricked into dependence on dirty, polluting oil.

Transportation choice is one issue that we can all agree creates prosperity for all of us, with a return on investment clearly demonstrated in city after city. With all the decaying roads and bridges all around the state, here’s hoping that Rhode Islanders can come up with some solutions now that our grandchildren will be thanking us for in the future rather than blindly following an asphalt path.

BEN JONES

Providence