Peter Alviti is the longest serving cabinet member in state government in Rhode Island. He started as director of the state Department of Transportation in 2015, early in Gina Raimondo’s administration. Alviti has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for RhodeWorks, Raimondo’s ambitious effort to improve the state’s roads and bridges. But the RIDOT chief also has a share of critics. Some of them sounded off during a state Senate confirmation hearing this week, charging that Alviti is too focused on cars, and not enough on mass transit. What does he say about this? I’m Ian Donnis. This week, I’m going in-depth with Rhode Island’s director of transportation, Peter Alviti.
Transcript:
Ian Donnis: Welcome back to The Public’s Radio.
Peter Alviti: Thank you. Nice to be here.
Ian Donnis: Director Alviti. You’re the longest serving cabinet member in state government in Rhode Island. How much longer would you hope to serve as the state’s Director of Transportation?
Peter Alviti: I don’t know. You know, Ian, I came in when Governor Raimondo eight years ago asked me to take this position. I came in with no preconceived notion of how long I would be here. I simply came in here with a job to do and a mission to accomplish.
Ian Donnis: You certainly have firm support from Rhode Island’s political establishment in terms of your performance as director of the State Department of Transportation. But critics sounded off during a Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing this week, let’s listen to a comment from Cedric Yee, a high school student in Providence
Cedric Ye: Peter Alviti is a 1960s Transportation Director who is out of touch with what a 21st century Rhode Island wants and needs. But we will not achieve a 21st century transportation system to Rhode Island and we will not meet our Act On Climate goals if Peter Alviti is reconfirmed as director of RIDOT. His history shows this and we don’t and we have little reason to believe that he will change.
Ian Donnis: So certainly, I’m sure you regard your performance very differently. But if you’re doing as good a job as you say you are, why do critics such as this student, why are they so unhappy with you?
Peter Alviti: I don’t know. I think I think if they took a look at the performance and what we’ve done in all of the areas this young man was talking about. I think they’re misinformed. I think that if you look at for example, in the area of transit, we’re responsible at DOT for railway transit and ferry transit services. RIPTA is a separate agency from us, they’re in charge of transit. They may or may not be doing a good job, but we at DOT are sure as hell doing a good job with our rail transportation: trains are running on time. We’ve renovated two of the older South County train stations in the last eight years. We’ve completely revamped and re-organized the Wickford station to be semi-functional, it was absolutely non functional eight years ago. We’re doing about $24 million worth of improvements to the busiest train station on the Northeast Corridor, which is our Providence station. We’re expanding that and we’re making improvements to make it even more pleasant for people to take the train there. And we just opened a brand new train station at Pawtucket and Central Falls. We did more in the last eight years for railway transit in the state, then had been done for decades prior to this last eight years. So I don’t know where they’re getting their information, but it doesn’t line up with reality there.
Ian Donnis: Well, nonetheless, it’s not just a high school student saying this Scott Wolf of Grow Smart Rhode Island, he’s been around for a long time. His organization has a lot of prominent Rhode Islanders on its board. He testified that Grow Smart is very concerned about RIDOT’s “20th century auto centric transportation priorities for Rhode Island,” especially when a greater use of multi-modal transit offers economic, environmental and other benefits. So he’s not convinced that RIDOT is doing enough for multimodal modal transit is Scott Wolf, right?
Peter Alviti: No, he’s absolutely not right. And I’ve said that on a number of occasions. I don’t know where Scott Wolf gets his information from because with regard to our multimodal and, for example, bike and ped kind of investments here in Rhode Island, prior to eight years ago, there was no bike mobility plan, there was none. There was no long term funding for bike path and pedestrian kind of infrastructure. And for the first time ever in the state of Rhode Island. We created a 10 year plan, eight years ago that included over 200 millions dollars investment in bike and ped improvements in this state. And we’ve just upped that in the current 10 year plan. There is now $30 million at $300 million over the next 10 years that we will be investing in bike and ped improvements. Now, Scott and some of his colleagues that are on Grow Smart have actually made the recommendation at some point. I don’t remember when it was, but I recall them making a statement that we should be spending half of RIDOT’s capital budget for these active transportation kinds of facilities. And I will tell you that we are not going to do that. I think that’s really irresponsible. Right now, according to our counts, and according to the data we have, about 2% of Rhode Islanders are availing themselves to active transportation modes. I see it would be irresponsible for us to take half of our capital budget to devote to the benefit of 2% of its users.
Ian Donnis: There have been a couple of highly publicized episodes recently in which people have been struck by cars including Superior Court Judge Richard Leicht. Some people see this as a crisis for pedestrian safety in Providence and in Rhode Island. Let’s listen to a comment from a Providence resident named Shawn Sierra-Patev.
Sean Sierra-Patev: Trying to traverse really any of the DOT controlled streets or intersections in the city outside of a car is a hostile and dangerous task.
Ian Donnis: And here’s a comment from Val Reishuk.
Val Reishuk: When we talk to DOT about pedestrian death, we don’t get compassion. And we don’t get that forward thinking we don’t get 21st century leadership.
Ian Donnis: So director Alviti, first off on how does Rhode Island compare to other states on pedestrian injuries and deaths? Are we worse average or something else?
Peter Alviti: Actually, the most recent ranking for Highway Safety and pedestrian deaths, okay, or all deaths on our highways, pedestrian and vehicular deaths were about seventh in the nation from the top, from the top, not seventh from the bottom. We’re seventh from the top in terms of the safety that we do. We have great safety programs that are yielding much benefits to the people in Rhode Island. I don’t know who these two people talk to that they say they talk to at DOT and didn’t get compassion. But let me tell you something, Unless these people actually experience the tragedy of losing someone, they should not use these kinds of unfortunate tragedies that are happening to families here in Rhode Island for some agenda that they may have. We don’t do that at DOT, we take these – we take these highway deaths and pedestrian deaths very seriously. We take every accident very seriously. And in the case of the ones that they cited, our eyes are certainly on that we’re waiting for. We’re waiting for some of the data to come back from the police findings on those accidents. And we will act rest assured we will act accordingly to what we find in those police reports.
Ian Donnis: Another big issue facing Rhode Island in the world is climate change. Some people like Michael Kearney from Providence, say the state has to be more proactive in facing climate change on transit related issues. Here’s his comment.
Michael Kearney: Mr. Alviti said earlier that he’s waiting for change on non car transportation. That doesn’t make sense. We can’t wait for people to use bike lanes and transit that don’t exist.
Ian Donnis: So what do you say to the argument that the state needs to be moving more quickly that your department DOT needs to be moving more quickly with a plan to prepare for the requirements of the Act on climate.
Peter Alviti: So we’re doing that. With regard to the part of the transportation system that we are responsible for. We’re certainly doing that. We talked about the train station improvements that we’ve made. We’ve I’ve talked to you about the $300 million now that we have in projects ahead of us and we’ll provide you with a list of those projects that are two arms length of projects that we have coming up and about nearly 200 million just in the last eight years that we have spent already on making bicycle and pedestrian improvements. So I think their comments, while may be well intended, are even in the most favorable light, very ill informed, I don’t know where they’re getting their data from or where they’re getting the information with regard to bus transit. RIPTA is a separate agency from us. We don’t control their budget, we don’t control their management, we don’t control their operations. And we don’t control their capital improvements. That’s entirely under the control of RIPTA it’s separate agency from us. So if they have a problem with what’s happening, and by the way, for the densest state in the country, we’ve got maybe a 3% usage rate of our transit system here in Rhode Island. So that’s a symptom of a much bigger problem that I think should be addressed. But they need to talk to RIPTA. About about those issues.
Ian Donnis: The state’s truck tolling program is on hold right now due to an adverse decision in court if that decision is upheld. How will the state replace the lost revenue that was anticipated from tolling?
Peter Alviti: Right now the governor and the legislature are in the budgetary process, but in the budget in the budgets that are proposed, we’re covered for the next two years, with regard to the state year, with the state share of funding. Keep in mind, only 20% of the funding that we use for DOT capital improvements comes from Rhode Islanders, the other 80% is all federally funded. But that 20% is very important. And the tolls were about 10% of that. And for now, we’ve worked with the governor and we’re working with the legislature to make sure that the state share for the next two years worth of capital projects is fine. So we’re good for the next two years. During this next two years, there’s a bigger discussion that will be happening. I’ve already discussed with the governor, the speaker in the Senate President, the need for us to begin talking about how the gas tax revenue that is the primary source of revenue for transportation projects here in the state needs to be transformed away from a fossil fuel kind of dependent revenue stream to something that will be more sustainable, reliable and dedicated over the next 20, 30, 40 years. We’re already conducting studies, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and we at DOT are engaging in discussions with Syracuse University to help us determine what the gas tax — how the gas tax revenues will morph as the transition to electric vehicles takes place. And we will be making recommendations to the legislature and the governor about how we can change the composition of the revenue stream that supports transportation to make it more resilient in the future.
Ian Donnis: All right, we’ve got to leave it there. We’re out of time. Thank you for joining us director of the Rhode Island Department of Transportation Peter Alviti.
Peter Alviti: Thank you. Nice being here.
—
In the time after the 2020 presidential election, polls showed that a lot of Republicans bought Donald Trump’s false story about a stolen election. That made me curious about what the situation was like here in Rhode Island. Late last summer, I started looking into it. The state Republican Party had a different focus in the last campaign season, on pocketbook issues. But as I reported earlier this week, a local website offers a portal to a world of election deniers and conspiracy theorists. For the story behind the story of how I learned about this, and a lot more, check out my Friday TGIF column posting around 4 today on my twitter @IanDon or at thepublicsradio.org/tgif
That’s our show for this week. Our producer is James Baumgartner.
I’m Ian Donnis and I’ll see you on the radio.
