Broken Grate on River Road
Jan 19th, 2010 | By Mark Dieterich | Category: Uncategorized
One of our readers reported the following to a traffic engineer at DPW over the weekend:
I wanted to bring a situation to your attention that the City needs to fix asap, as it’s quite dangerous along River Road for bicyclists, runners, and walkers.
Yesterday I was bike riding with my son through Blackstone Park, along River Road near the red bridge. My son had a near-miss with a street runoff grate where one of the metal bars across the grate (sorry, don’t know the exact terminology) is actually broken, leaving a wide gap, large enough to swallow up a small bike wheel, someone’s entire leg, etc. The situation is across from “hockey pond.”
One other thing, the grates are parallel to the road and I doubt that these metal grates break very often but even if not, with narrow tires of some bikes they are a hazard, and have noticed this is an issue throughout the City. I wonder if DPW can make switching these grates to be perpendicular to the road something that happens with all future road repairs?
We will follow up with an update if there is any response. As to his last point, I’ve asked this very same question in the past. The grates are aligned in such a way as to maximize drainage from the road and, yes, this often means they are running parallel to the road and more dangerous for cyclists. The good news is there are more recent designs for storm grates, that are just as effective at capturing water, but far safer for cyclists. We should all be encouraging DPW and RIDOT to install better grates when they come up for replacement.
Nice photo. Notice one grate going perpendicular? Plows sometimes disturb grates and sewer covers.
You're not compelled to bike the in the gutter with cracks, debris, grates, potholes, runoff, sand. You ARE supposed to ride in right 1/3 of the travel lane.
Grates are an aberration that only exist because of cost cutting. There originally was a slot in the curb where runoff flowed into cistern. When they widened streets – badly – sometimes they substituted grates for the slots. What they should have done is reconnected new curb slot to cistern, but that would have cost extra.
There are about 4000 grates in Providence alone. Would do you think would have to pay the millions it would cost to repair them all?
Point Street at the new off ramp has a poorly designed grate installed as part of the 195 relocation. The grate occupies the entire 2' shoulder and is aligned parallel to travel. It's gonna bite some poor soul. Every time I ride by I tell myself to fix it… but I don't. Gotta go for a ride with a long crowbar.
Most grates cannot be simply turned 90°, since they are not square but rectangular.