When I first saw the plan a lot of alarms went off. I kept wondering how they thought this was going to make things better. Then I realized, I saw a lot of talk in those presentations about reducing accidents, but nothing about improving efficiency. When you understand the traffic engineers were probably presented with "please design something that will reduce accidents," absent another parameter to "also improve efficiency," this is what you end up with. Who cares about efficiency? And if traffic is at a standstill, bingo, fewer accidents. On paper, at least. In the real world, that probably won't be the case.

These engineers don't operate in the real world, so what do you expect? Another example is over in Jamestown, the entry onto 138 heading to the bridge is way too short. I know someone who brought it up to RIDOT, and some engineer got back to them saying they'd crunched the numbers and the entry was plenty long enough for the speed limit there. No kidding, genius, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize traffic is routinely traveling 10-20mph above the posted limit there, creating potentially unsafe conditions for vehicles trying to enter the highway. Their response when that was pointed out? That's not their problem, that's a law enforcement issue.

What I got out of that is that there's gonna be 25 acres of developable land available after this is all done. So thanks RIDOT, totally worth it.

Thank you, this looks like a great redesign - can't wait for it to be complete!