​Is It Safer?
A reconfiguration of the busiest intersection in West Warwick has some asking: was it done to improve safety - or as a land grab that flew largely under the public’s radar to help a car dealership on Route 2? Jim Hummel has been looking into the issue since construction crews began digging last summer.
WEST WARWICK - A reconfiguration of the busiest intersection in town has some asking: was it done to improve safety - or as a land grab that flew largely under the public’s radar to help a car dealership on Route 2?
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Thousands of cars pass every day through the intersection of Quaker Lane (Route 2) and Cowesett Avenue on the Warwick/West Warwick border. Last fall, construction crews hired by The Balise Auto Group eliminated a right lane ramp that had siphoned off traffic for nearly a century onto Route 2 south. It means that motorists wanting to go south on Route 2 now have to negotiate four lanes of traffic and pass through a set of traffic lights.
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The auto company is paying the Rhode Island Department of Transportation $130,000 for just over 14,000 square feet of state-owned land to fill in the ramp and build a stone wall, where it now displays cars in front of its Genesis dealership overlooking the intersection.
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“Is it safer? There’s no possible way,” said Peter Calci, a former longtime Town Council president and Zoning Board member. “The merging lane is much safer than creating a four-lane intersection where there was no need for it. Except for one single proprietary reason,” he added, pointing to the Genesis dealership.
“It’s crazy. I’m waiting for a major accident to happen there,” said lifelong West Warwick resident Alan Palazzo. “The safety (argument) was BS to sell the project,” he added.
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The DOT, and engineers who drew up plans for the reconfiguration, say the new intersection significantly reduces the chance of a collision between traffic going south on Route 2 and customers coming out of the Genesis dealership a couple of hundred feet from where the end of the ramp used to be.
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“The primary driver of the project was safety and that high-speed (ramp),” said Steven M. Cabral, president of Crossman Engineering in Warwick, which did a traffic study and drew up the plans for a multi-phase project to transform a series of lots for Balise going south on Route 2. The technical term for the ramp is a “slip lane.”
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“They were trying to improve access to the building,” Cabral told The Hummel Report in an interview last week. ““So the safest option was to reconfigure that little slip lane ramp.”
Cabral said talk of a potential reconfiguration dates to 2013. In 2016,Balise was expanding their car sales business in West Warwick at the corner of Cowesett Avenue and Route 2 (Cowesett Avenue becomes Cowesett Road as motorists continue east toward Warwick, after crossing Route 2). The company hired Crossman to develop a long-term master plan for several lots stretching south.​​
One of Crossman’s traffic engineers noted that Balise’s only entrance and exit at the time was a couple of hundred feet south of the slip lane from Cowesett Avenue and there were no options to move the driveway south because Balise didn’t own the land at the time; it has since purchased multiple pieces of property going south, including a gas station and another car dealership.
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Cabral said Crossman’s research found that the ramp dates to the 1930s when the area was largely wooded and agricultural land. He said Route 2 has been transformed with an explosion of commercial development and added traffic since the 1970s. And that was a problem for customers at the Genesis dealership, as the vehicles from the slip lane came at them.
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“Frequently, drivers (entering Route 2) were observed to be looking over their shoulder watching for southbound traffic and not observing the movements at the (dealership) driveway,” Cabral added.
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In 2019, then-Town Planner Mark Caruolo sent a letter to Cabral saying the town had no objections to changing the intersection. That set the reconfiguration in motion. Balise needed approval from the DOT and the State Properties Committee to buy the land and redevelop the intersection. Caruolo left his position in 2021.
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But it took several years for the plans to come to fruition, as it was a significant investment by Balise, which not only paid for the land, but the relocation of utilities on the previously-owned state land and changes to the intersection. Cabral said there were delays because of the relocation of those utilities.
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Calci, the former councilman, said he did not become aware of the proposed reconfiguration until a year ago - noting that the proposal had not gone before the Town Council and that the state representative and senator representing West Warwick did not know about it either. He also takes issue with calling the slip lane “high speed” as there was a yield sign at the end of it.
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Calci said he began digging after a lawyer working with House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi - a land use attorney - had come before the Zoning Board asking for permission to put up a Balise sign on state property. He later withdrew the request when Calci noted the sign would be on state land.
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Calci found the master plan Shekarchi had presented to the Planning Board Jan. 29, 2024 that showed a reconfiguration of the intersection. Shekarchi told The Hummel Report his only work on the project was presenting Balise’s proposal to the Planning Board, which approved it unanimously. Shekarchi acknowledged that he called the Department of Transportation before the meeting just to see what the status of the land transfer was, but said that was well into the process of the state selling the land to Balise.
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Calci said he believes if the Town Council, and by extension the general public, knew about the proposed changes to the intersection, it might not have happened. “I believe the public would have beaten it back,” he said, adding that he resigned from the zoning board last year.
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Calci said there are multiple slip lanes along Route 2 from Division Street in East Greenwich to the Cranston lane, many emptying out close to business entrances. The Hummel Report counted 11 along that stretch.
What about the traffic analysis?
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The DOT relied on Crossman’s analysis in deciding on whether to sell the land to Balise. The department’s chief spokesman, Charles St. Martin, in response to a series of public records requests and questions from The Hummel Report, wrote: “The old ramp created safety issues with vehicles traveling at a higher speed through the curve, which ended very close to the entrance of the business” - mimicking Crossman’s argument.
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St. Martin said the traffic analysis by Crossman showed an added delay of “only” between 14 and 16 seconds during the morning and afternoon peak travel times for drivers tying to get onto Route 2 south from Cowesett Avenue in the new traffic pattern.
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The traffic congestion was exacerbated last summer and fall during construction near Balise because the Kent County Water Authority was replacing pipes along Cowesett Avenue, resulting in backups of up to a quarter of a mile and multiple changes of the light to get through the new intersection. Warwick Police reported no accidents in 2024 under the old configuration through September; there were six accidents in October at the height of the construction, then none from November through last month.
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Calci takes issue with the town planner’s approval in 2019, saying he was relying solely on an analysis by a private company hired by Balise and not independent scrutiny from the DOT. The DOT’s St. Martin said it hired another company to review Crossman’s figures and analysis, but did not do any independent study of its own.
St. Martin said it is standard procedure for an applicant like Balise to hire a consultant to perform a study at its own cost. After a review of the traffic signal timing, drainage and cost estimates “no further traffic studies were determined to be necessary,” St. Martin wrote.
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St. Martin added: “RIDOT views the transaction as very positive for several reasons. It corrected a safety concern for drivers on Route 2 and those entering (Balise) at no cost to the state; it provided revenue of $130,000 to the state; it supported the business needs of the property owner, and it converted 14,265 square feet of state property to taxable property for the town of West Warwick.
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Palazzo said many residents in town have no idea why the intersection was changed. Motorists approaching Route 2 from Cowesett Avenue now have four lanes: two exit left and north onto to Route 2, one lane goes straight across Route 2 to Cowesett Road in Warwick and a fourth lane was created to replace the slip lane and allow traffic to turn right.
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Calci and Palazzo each say it has created confusion and trouble for tractor-trailer trucks trying to turn right onto Route 2, often forcing them to move over into the second lane from the right to complete the turn. And many motorists in the right lane, which was previously a lane designed to go straight, find themselves unexpectedly merging with a second lane of traffic if they want to go to Warwick on Cowesett Road.
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“If you’re a large truck heading from Cowesett Avenue toward Warwick, you can’t make that turn if you’re in the right hand lane,” Palazzo said. “Before you had the sweeping exit that seamlessly joined Route 2. There’s going to be a head on collision over there. It’s not a matter of if, but when.”
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Calci said there was a simple solution to the problem that could have avoided an entire reconfiguration of the intersection: replace the yield sign with a stop sign at the end of the slip lane, which would have forced motorists to halt while looking left at traffic coming down Route 2. And it would have given customers from the Balise entrance an easier chance of exiting onto Route 2.
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“It would have cost them a couple of hundred bucks for a sign and the labor to put it up,” Calci said.