Common Questions about West Bay Service Changes
Click here for details about the proposed West Bay Service Changes
There are three main reasons guiding the decision for building the Transit Center at CCRI.
1. Warwick Mall is privately owned and RIPTA does not have control over the layout or the infastructure built here. CCRI has been an enthusiastic partner in supporting increased bus service to their Knight Campus and building out a Transit Center to facilitate this.
2. CCRI will offer a more convenient and comfortable place to wait and make transfers. Located a short walk to the campus building, the new transit center will have expanded shelter and seating, better lighting, heating, and real-time bus arrival information.
3. Our ridership data shows that most passengers currently riding to Warwick Mall are transfering to other routes and are not ending their trip at the mall. The new CCRI Transit Center improves travel for all riders with better highway access at CCRI, a more comfortable place to transfer, and very high frequency service to Warwick Mall with no more than a 10-minute transfer to Routes 21, 22 or 30.
We are building the schedules to align bus arrivals at CCRI for easy transfers while minimizing the time you must wait at CCRI. As a new major transfer point, drivers will pause so you can transfer from other buses here.
As of November 1, 2021, RIPTA will eliminate transfers for passengers paying with cash. Passengers paying with cash will pay $2 per boarding. Passengers using RIPTA’s new Wave smart fare system, will pay $2 for one hour of unlimited rides. With Wave’s Earn As You Go feature, once you’ve reached $6 in rides in a single day, you automatically earn a Day Pass and can ride for free the rest of the day. Learn more about Wave at RIPTA.com/WAVE.
No, commuter parking will not be available for RIPTA riders. Parking at CCRI is reserved for staff and students. For ample parking, we encourage you to check out our existing Park-n-Ride facilities at Rte. 117, East Greenwich, Rte. 2 & Rte. 4, West Greenwich.
At CCRI, you will have new transfers to Routes 21, 22, and 30 for service as often as every 5-10 minutes to Warwick Mall.
No, all Route 14 trips will run local to provide more consistent service to more destinations and make the route easier to understand. Currently, there are six different paths a bus can take when operating service on Route 14. We are proposing to simplify this to only two paths: Providence ↔ Narraganset and Providence ↔ Newport. This will make it easier to understand where the bus will go and allows RIPTA to run service along the shared portion of the route every hour.
We would like to add service on Sunday to Route 14 in the future as funding allows. We are exploring additional sources of funding for improvements like this to West Bay service in the coming years. Your support is helpful and appreciated as we seek this additional funding.
We would also like to increase service span on Route 14 and allow it to operate later as funding allows. We are exploring additional sources of funding for improvements like this to West Bay service in the coming years. Your support is helpful and appreciated as we seek this additional funding.
Bringing Route 14 to CCRI will add around 10 minutes to each trip. However, the major benefits of this change are new connections to other West Bay routes and making existing connections more convenient. Some riders will gain a more direct connection at CCRI rather than having to travel the full length of the route to transfer at Kennedy Plaza in downtown Providence.
Yes, Route 14 will get you to the airport with a connection from Jefferson Boulevard over the Interlink to the airport terminal. Running Route 14 on Jefferson Boulevard allows RIPTA to provide all-day service on a street that only has limited service with Route 8X today. The streets in the area do not allow a direct path between Jefferson Boulevard and the airport terminal. For service directly to the airport terminal, there will be a new convenient connection at CCRI to Route 66.
We have recieved a number of comments about this and we are continuing to explore options to address the need for service on this part of Post Road.
At the moment, there is an imbalance of ridership between Routes 66 and 62 despite serving many of the same destinations. Instead of splitting bus service between the two routes and serving some destinations only once per hour, we will combine the two routes for service every 30 minutes to all destinations on Route 66. This is the same frequency of service as both Routes 66 and 62 combined, today. Simplifying the routes here also makes service easier to understand.
No, the existing frequency of both Routes 62 and 66 is every 30 minutes today. Both routes run every 60 minutes, where each trip of one route is followed by a trip of the other route 30 minutes later. We plan to combine these routes and schedule trips to maintain this frequency: a trip every 30 minutes between URI in South Kingstown and Providence.
These pre-pandemic supplemental trips on Route 66 were funded by URI. RIPTA currently does not have funding for these additional trips. The frequency of Route 66 will be every 30 minutes.
For riders currently using Route 62, we estimate an additional 5-10 minutes in travel time on Route 66 as compared to their trips today.
We are continuously working to improve our coordination with Commuter Rail schedules. This is an ongoing challenge as Commuter Rail schedule adjustments are made by the MBTA in coordination with their operator, Keolis, at times of the year that do not align with RIPTA’s three annual schedule changes. However, we monitor Commuter Rail schedule changes and, if possible, we make minor adjustments to our bus schedules to allow transfers to RIPTA routes.
Long routes like Route 66 are less reliable because of the delays they can pick up along the way. Splitting Route 66 into two routes allows for scheduling flexibility and improves on-time performance.
New peak hour trips on Route 29 will serve Strawberry Fields and Buttonwoods where Route 8X runs today. These trips will be scheduled around the same times as the previous Route 8X buses. This will allow you to transfer at the new CCRI transit center to Routes 14, 21, 22, 30 or 66 for frequent service to downtown Providence or Route 14 for service to Jefferson Boulevard.
There will likely be an impact to service along a portion of Post Road between Main Ave. and T.F. Green Airport. We are continuing to explore alternative service options for this area.
A smaller bus costs the same to operate as a full-size bus. Reducing the size of buses decreases the overall capacity of service on any given route and actually increases the cost of running service on that route, as we would need to run more small buses to prevent overcrowding. The alternative of right-sizing service to run small buses when we anticipate less ridership also results in higher costs as buses spend more time running without passengers to/from garages to swap them in the middle of service rather than running more trips in continuous passenger service.