And yet.

This is correct. As someone who currently monitors my meter in real-time using rtlamr2mqtt, I can vouch for the benefits of knowing your energy usage in real-time. I had a rooftop solar array installed recently, and I use real-time monitoring to see whether I’m generating excess energy, which helps me know when the best time is to run my clothes dryer or charge my car. It absolutely helps people make better choices around their energy usage, and I think it’s something everyone would benefit from if it was more easily accessible.

I know we’re a cynical bunch, but sheesh. Our current electric meter tech is very outdated. Right now they literally have to drive a truck past every customer once a month to read everyone’s meter, which is expensive and wasteful. Real-time energy monitoring is objectively better technology and it’s the right direction to be going in.

We have every right to push back on who should pay for it, but calling the technology itself unnecessary is Luddism.

Nah, those require a bribe donation to the RI Fraternal Order of Police.

Probably not much more than 10% actually.

You may even be able to take a RIPTA bus to the train station and leave your car at home. Some bus routes serve the station directly, others drop you at Kennedy Plaza but you can transfer to the R Line or walk.

That’s just GoLocal beating their usual copaganda drum.

Mon dieu, l'horreur d'avoir une communauté ! Au contraire, le fait que nous puissions avoir diverses communautés de personnes qui parlent différentes langues fait de nous une société saine et tolérante.

RIPTA is pretty reliable, if not always frequent. You can use the Transit app to see when the bus is coming.

Another option—that costs a little bit more, but might be faster—is to take the MBTA Commuter Rail from TF Green to Providence. You can either walk from the train station to Kennedy Plaza, or take one of the various routes that connect the two (including the R Line, which is currently free).

Cheaper doesn’t mean faster, unfortunately. It’s a local route, so it makes a bunch of stops along the way. That said, it’s scheduled to take an hour and 20 minutes to get to the beach from Kennedy Plaza, which is longer than driving but not as long as you experienced. Did your bus hit extra traffic along the way?

It’s worth noting that 45 minutes from Providence is also a fairly optimistic drive time during the summer season.

The service we do have is surprisingly decent. It runs on time and buses are clean. We just need better routes around the city and higher service frequencies. Both of which are included in the state’s transit master plan, which has been approved but not yet funded by the legislature. So if you want a respectable public transportation system, please let your reps know.

I wish it was less of a secret! I also wish it ran more frequently than every two hours.

RIPTA route 14 serves Narragansett Town Beach every 2 hours. (The schedule may change before the summer season.) Bus fare is cheaper than parking and you don’t have to drive.

You might be overestimating the overlap between PVDFest attendees and people who care about football

Great album.

There’s been construction activity in the former Joe’s American Bar and Grill space, which was empty for… seven years? I wonder if this is what’s going in.

Sorry, missed this part earlier:

> Where is Barber Hill Road? I could not find it on the map going east from the Summit General Store in Coventry.

It’s in Moosup: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Rk1pSf5Dfq2vWEGt5?g_st=ic

Basically the trail from Barber Hill Road east to Summit General Store is either gravel, mud, or brush. They’ve done some preliminary work on the RI side to get it ready for paving (see here and here but there’s no timeline for the actual paving yet.

She isn’t currently a CEO, though. She left CVS in 2018 and the Hudson’s Bay Company in 2020. All she does today is serve on a bunch of boards for various companies and organizations, which is usually only an advisory thing.

Aw, sad. Thanks for the heads up.

Yeah the areas nearest the border are the least developed, which on the plus side means it’s very rural and pretty, and on the minus side means none of the trails are very well-maintained at this point. That’s true in Massachusetts as well – the part of the Air Line/SNETT in Douglas state forest is in good shape, but it starts to get super overgrown between Douglas and Millville. I haven’t attempted that segment, but I have heard from folks who tried that it was rough going and you’re better off on the roads.

But Millville to Blackstone is brand new and great, and the path from Woonsocket to Pawtucket is beautiful. The plan is to connect all those segments eventually, again, as time and budgets permit.

I’ve done Willimantic to Plainfield to the Washington Secondary via route 14 and 14A, which is similar to your option 3. The problem with leaving the Air Line trail is that then you have to deal with all the terrain of eastern Connecticut: Basically all the ridges run north-south, so if you’re going east or west you have to go up and down hill after hill after hill. But if you don’t mind hills, those roads are fairly low traffic and have decent shoulders.

Moosup briefly has a nice paved trail, but only as far as Barber Hill Road. Between there and the Summit General Store in Coventry it’s pretty rough. RI and CT are working on paving the whole thing eventually as funding permits, but it’s slow going. You’re better off staying on roads through there.

The Washington Secondary is a fantastic trail and it’s literally all downhill from Coventry to Providence. Folks are right that it ends unceremoniously at the Providence line and you have to cut through either Silver Lake or the West End. Cranston Street sucks but once you get under Route 10 you can weave through neighborhoods. We did the Silver Lake route to Olneyville and then zig-zagged up the various segments of the Woonasquatucket River Greenway, which aren’t contiguous yet but are nice. They’re working on new segments all the time so this will get better in the future.

I don’t know why it never happened in the past, but I know that the folks currently in RIPTA’s planning department are working on improving signage.

Historically RIPTA hasn’t had the budget to do more than the bare minimum, and it shows in the meager level of service they run. RIPTA could be so much better than it is, but we need the state government to provide the funding to make it happen. If this is something you care about, talk to your state reps about it.

Good question. In another thread on the topic there was mention of a few towns participating in this program alongside Providence, but it didn’t sound like Cranston was one of them. Maybe you’re close enough to the city to qualify?

Thanks for digging that up. It’s a better deal out of the gate, at least.

Is anyone at the ProJo looking into how this deal came about? I gather from other outlets that a few RI towns were involved in setting up the CCA program, so it’s not just a Providence thing. But I don’t think anyone has yet touched on how the vendor was chosen, which would be interesting to hear.

That article conflates different subsidiaries of a corporate parent, which implies they’re acting in concert as part of some overarching strategy. More likely the different divisions are acting independently, and the parent company is little more than a diversified holding company.

Either way, it would be nice to have some actual facts instead of the innuendo GoLocal is peddling.