Bike Cleveland's push to add protected lanes to Opportunity Corridor gets a (mostly) positive response from steering committee

bike cleveland rendering_Opportunity Corridor.jpg

A rendering prepared for Bike Cleveland shows how protected bike lanes would look on Opportunity Corridor.

(Bike Cleveland)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - The city's leading bicycle advocate made headway Tuesday in a quest to have a protected bike path added to the design for the $331 million Opportunity Corridor boulevard, scheduled to be built between this winter and 2019.

Jacob VanSickle, executive director of Bike Cleveland, and a leading advocate for changing the design of the boulevard, shared his group's alternative plan Tuesday at a quarterly meeting of the Opportunity Corridor Steering Committee, the civic, governmental and community body advising the Ohio Department of Transportation on the project. (See VanSickle's presentation at the bottom of this post.)

The three-mile boulevard will extend east from the stub end of I-490 at East 55^th Street to University Circle at East 105^th Street. The idea is to help redevelop a blighted swath of the city's East Side and to better connect the rapidly developing University Circle area to the interstate highway system.

Instead of having bicyclists and pedestrians share a 10-foot multipurpose path on the south side of the boulevard, VanSickle said it would be safer for pedestrians and cyclists -- and far more up to date in terms of design -- to shrink the sidewalk to five feet and to insert an 11-foot, two-way bike path in the roadway, separated from traffic by a three-foot buffer.

VanSickle said the changes could be accomplished by adjusting the existing right-of-way acquired by ODOT for the project, although he did not have estimates on whether the changes would add cost.

VanSickle said that some 200 protected bike lanes, such as the one he proposed, have been built in U.S. cities, ranging from the widely acclaimed, eight-mile Cultural Trail in Indianapolis to more modest projects elsewhere.

"It's something that's coming on board across the United States with much more vigor than in prior years," he said. He also said such pathways are far more inviting to cyclists, which would support social and economic equity along Opportunity Corridor, where many households don't have cars.

In general, VanSickle's proposal received a positive response.

"The hockey player in me says you should go where the puck is going," Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle Inc., the city's oldest and biggest community development corporation, told VanSickle. "You're going in the direction Cleveland is going in a progressive way."

Ronayne said the discussion over making a late-in-the-game change to Opportunity Corridor's design reminded him of the similar debate over adding a bike lane to the Euclid Corridor bus rapid transit HealthLine a dozen years ago when he was the city's planning director.

"Whatever time of the game you enter, if it's important, it's important," Ronayne said.

But questions remained about how much the design change might cost, who would pay for it, and how quickly it could be incorporated into the project, which is divided into several construction phases, the soonest of which is beginning this winter.

The upshot is that Mayor Frank Jackson will probably have to decide the issue.

"There's clearly a difference of opinion here [on the design change]," said Marie Kittredge, project director for the steering committee. She said the proposed bike lane raised "serious questions" that need to be addressed by the administration.

"We'll provide notes to the city with a clear indication of urgency," she said.

Bike Cleveland's push to tweak the Opportunity Corridor design is strongly supported by Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, the city's nonprofit clearinghouse for foundation grants to neighborhoods.

Linda Warren, the senior vice president of placemaking at Neighborhood Progress, said that the changes proposed by Bike Cleveland would address workforce needs in the areas to be served by the boulevard, and make the project "a 21^st-century road."

The construction schedule remains a challenge. Construction is beginning this season on Phase 1 of the boulevard, roughly extending a mile south from Chester Avenue to Norman Avenue on East 105^th Street in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood. Work is scheduled for completion in 2017. Any changes would have to be a "change order," potentially raising the cost.

Designs for the Phase 2 section, from Quebec Avenue to East 93^rd Street, will go to bid in March. Designs for Phase 3, from East 93^rd Street west to East 55^th Street, are well beyond the preliminary stage.

Apart from the difficulty of changing the design, officials from ODOT raised the question of whether the steering committee wanted to take political responsibility after the agency presented a different concept to the public.

Chris Alvarado, executive director of Slavic Village development, said he would be comfortable making the change.

"There may be a slight tweak, but it's not so much a matter of kind as a slight matter of degree," he said.

John Hopkins, executive director of the Buckeye Shaker Square Development Corp., said he liked the idea of separating cyclists from pedestrians because he agreed with VanSickle that it would be a safer design.

But he said he had qualms about the three-foot-wide landscape buffer suggested in the Bike Cleveland design -- a concern shared by ODOT and several others who spoke at the meeting.

John A. Orlando, executive vice president of operations for Orlando Baking Co., which hosted the meeting, said he thought the bike lane buffer needed a wider shoulder to reduce the risk of accidents.

"What's the overall vision?" he asked. He wanted to know how the Opportunity Corridor bike lanes would fit into a larger citywide or regional bike network.

Deb Janik, senior vice president for real estate and business development at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, said it was essential to develop cost estimates and to find funding for any potential changes in the corridor design, should they become part of the project.

"I'm all for incorporating this if the city and residents say this is the way to go," she said, "but the last thing I want is that this great idea ends up on the cutting-room floor" because of lack of money.