It requires a Rhode Island high school student to succinctly capture the state’s idiocy, or, more likely, its lack of giving a damn about people who rely on public transit.

Earlier this month, colleague Colleen Cronin reported on a group of transit advocates who had crowded inside and outside the Statehouse to make a last-ditch effort to get lawmakers to properly fund the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority. This has to happen every year.

Among those she spoke with was Cedric Ye, a RIPTA rider and advocate who takes the bus to and from high school. He noted that money was allocated for the Washington Bridge rebuild without requiring the Rhode Island Department of Transportation to complete an efficiency study.

Bingo. We have Bingo.

This year, per a stipulation placed on funding from Gov. Dan McKee’s fiscal 2025 budget, RIPTA had to conduct an efficiency study. It’s not yet completed.

Last year, the governor’s $10 million cash infusion into the agency, which the administration received from federal pandemic relief, came with the requirement that RIPTA complete such a review. Part of the $10 million, which was $8 million short to cover the budget of an agency the Statehouse has long shorted, was used to pay for the $412,000 review. Rhode Island loves to pay consultants to essentially delay meaningful action.

The RIPTA budget hole is now about $30 million deep, largely because lawmakers have long ignored the importance of public transit — to those who can’t afford a car or can’t drive, to mitigating the climate crisis, to reducing traffic congestion, to improving public health, to supporting the local economy.

Of course, as Ye astutely noted, when federal government money was sourced to rebuild the Washington Bridge, the governor placed no such restriction on RIDOT. If any state agency needs an efficiency study, it’s this one.

Make low-income people, those with disabilities, and high school students continue to beg for a ride. Make RIPTA perform an efficiency study, yet again, to imply to taxpayers and the greater public that the agency is wasteful and run inefficiently. Do nothing when RIDOT leadership allows a key bridge to crumble, beyond blaming everyone else but those in charge of the state agency. Keeping the RIDOT director, on whose watch this mess happened, as chair of the RIPTA board is the cherry on top.

Another governor and most of the Statehouse again squeezing public transit, because they don’t use it. Don’t care about it.

Previous studies of RIPTA’s operations have found lack of funding, not inefficiency, is the biggest speed bump.

Meanwhile, two of the 13 companies being sued by the state over the Washington Bridge failure have alleged the state concealed the true condition of the Seekonk River span before a rehabilitation project was put out to bid in 2021. They have filed a counterclaim in Superior Court, claiming RIDOT ignored a 1992 inspection report that recommended performing “additional radiographic and other testing to evaluate the strength of the key structural components of the Washington Bridge before any future attempts to rehabilitate the bridge.”

The Washington Bridge fiasco, not chronically underfunded RIPTA, is the state’s trifecta of appalling leadership, cronyism, and incompetence. In February 2015, then-Gov. Gina Raimondo nominated Peter Aliviti, a union official with limited experience in building roads and bridges, as RIDOT director. The Senate approved.

Since taking the job, Aliviti has worked tirelessly to move the bus hub out of Kennedy Plaza in downtown Providence, despite consistent objections from those who actually ride RIPTA. He also likes to widen highways to purportedly reduce traffic congestion, except study after study and the real world have proven that concept doesn’t work. He had the 6-10 Connector rebuilt like it was the 1950s.

A visionary he is not, but, sure, put RIPTA back under the microscope. It’s the easy way out of real leadership.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.