CLEVELAND, Ohio — If anything positive has come out of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s that it demonstrated a desire for more and better bike paths and trails in cities across the world, including Cleveland.
Two-wheeled ridership rose from Bogota to Paris, New York, Philadelphia and Houston, as distanced working reduced commuting by car and local governments turned underused streets into temporary bike routes to enable riders to spin to work or exercise in relative safety.
“It was like a simultaneous global brainwave,” Tabitha Combs, a lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the BBC in November.
Combs shared data on the pedbikeinfo.org web site identifying at least 365 metros around the world, including Greater Cleveland, where traffic lanes were allocated to bikes, at least temporarily.
Today, cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer take a year-end look at bike-trail planning, design and construction, including milestones coming in 2021 and beyond.
Local highlight
The local example of a street closing cited by pedbikeinfo.org was that of Cleveland Metroparks, which in April temporarily closed 5 miles of selected roads to traffic in its Brecksville, Rocky River and South Chagrin reservations to create more safe space for cyclists, joggers and pedestrians.
Beyond that experiment, 2020 was a “banner year of trail building, construction and planning,’' Brian Zimmerman, CEO of Cleveland Metroparks, told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.
Throughout the year, Metroparks and other agencies including the non-profit Bike Cleveland, the City of Cleveland, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA), Ohio City Inc. and Slavic Village Development, pushed ahead on projects that will add more miles of bike lanes, trails, and greenways.
Those connections will provide permanent safe routes for commuting and recreation, and add to the region’s attractiveness, livability and economic health.
But Zimmerman said he’s impatient for more progress, at a faster pace, specifically on building out the Cuyahoga Greenways, a 2019 plan that identified hundreds of miles of future bike routes across the county’s 59 communities.
The greenway would create a network of bike paths, trails and paths across the county. (SmithGroup and Cuyahoga County)SmithGroup and Cuyahoga County
The concept of the greenway plan is that localities would build pieces of the larger network as they repave streets or redesign rights-of-way identified by county planners. Zimmerman said he sees progress, but that he’d like to more, faster.
At this point, according to the greenway plan, the Metroparks Emerald Necklace includes roughly 100 miles of trails. An additional 165 miles exist outside the park system. But numerous gaps exist, and many communities are not well-served.
Picking up the pace
“Citizens should demand more,’' Zimmerman said. “They should demand more of cities and demand more protected bike lanes.”
(Protected lanes are designed to be physically separated from traffic lanes, making them safer and more inviting than striped lanes on streets shared with cars, or shared lanes that give equal priority to cars and bikes, known as “sharrows.”)
One hopeful sign is that a sizable core network is emerging around the Towpath Trail, the 101-mile path following the historic route of the 1832 Ohio & Erie Canal from Cleveland to New Philadelphia and Zoar.
A map prepared in 2019 by Cleveland Metroparks and Cuyahoga County's planning department shows 15 trails totaling 93 miles that have been or will be developed to connect with the Towpath Trail in the Cuyahoga Valley.Cleveland Metroparks, Cuyahoga County
Communities and organizations including Metroparks have planned at least 15 trails branching out from the Towpath in the Cuyahoga Valley. They’re creating a sub-network that would total 93 miles, above and beyond the Emerald Necklace. Some 51 miles of those trails have been built —and more are coming.
Here’s a closer look at some notable projects:
Towpath Trail and Canal Basin Park: Cuyahoga County is scheduled to finish construction next summer on the final sections of the Towpath Trail in Tremont and on Scranton Road Peninsula in the Flats.
The Towpath Trail is under construction at the site of the future Canal Basin Park.Steven Litt, Cleveland.com
Asphalt has already been laid for the northernmost section of the Towpath at Canal Basin Park on Columbus Road Peninsula, where Cleveland Metroparks and the City of Cleveland have designed trailhead improvements including grass, benches and trash receptacles that will be ready by late summer.
The park won’t include restrooms initially, but Metroparks will start construction after Labor Day to install 12 transient boat slips along the Cuyahoga River next to the park and it plans to accept reservations for the 2022 boating season.
The nonprofit LAND Studio has raised half of the roughly $500,000 cost of building an open air pavilion at Canal Basin Park. The pavilion is designed by Studio Weave, an architecture firm based in London, England, and LAND Studio hopes the project can be part of the first phase of park construction.
The nonprofit LAND Studio has proposed building the Forum project, an open air pavilion, as the first project at Canal Basin Park, where the Towpath Trail will be finished next year. The pavilion could follow in 2022, if LAND Studio can complete fundraising for the project. Studio Weave, LAND StudioStudio Weave, LAND Studio
Irishtown Bend Park: In early 2021, the Port of Cleveland plans to complete the engineering design for a roughly $40 million project to stabilize the sloping, brush-covered hillside east of West 25th Street that has threatened to collapse into the Cuyahoga River.
Linda Sternheimer, the port’s director of planning and urban development, said the agency hopes to put the plans out to bid in the fall of 2021, and to start construction by next winter.
In the meantime, momentum is gathering for development of a 17-acre park on the Irishtown Bend hillside that would include a half-mile section of the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail.
Irishtown Bend is an unstable, tree-covered hillside on the west bank of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio City. Cleveland Metroparks and other agencies hope to turn it into one of the most spectacular urban waterfront parks in Ohio. But first, the Port of Cleveland needs to stabilize the hillside and replace 2,600 feet of damaged or missing bulkheads on the river's edge. Jonn PanaJonn Pana
Sean McDermott, the chief planning and design officer at Metroparks, said the agency’s goal is to finish the Irishtown Bend trail section by 2024.
Within several months, Metroparks will demolish two vacant Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority office buildings atop the Irishtown hillside, opening up skyline views from West 25th Street for the first time.
Wendy Park Bridge: In January, Metroparks plans to use a crane to lift giant sections of the $6 million Wendy Park Bridge into position over the lakefront Norfolk-Southern railroad tracks on Whiskey Island.
The bridge will carry the Lake Link Trail — which will also include the aforementioned section at Irishtown Bend — north from the West Bank of the Flats to the historic U.S. Coast Guard station at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River.
Metroparks in 2021 will also complete the 1.25-mile Whiskey Island Connector, a trail heading west from Wendy Park to the Metroparks’ Edgewater Park.
Red Line Greenway: Paving is complete on the Red Line Greenway, a multi-purpose trail extending from the Lake Link Trail at Franklin Avenue and Columbus Road 2.25-miles south and west to Michael Zone Recreation Center Park, at West 65th Street and Lorain Avenue in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood.
McDermott said the trail will open in the spring, once landscaping has been completed.
Brighton Park: Metroparks completed paving for new paths atop the former Henninger landfill off Pearl Road in Old Brooklyn, just east of the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Landscaping will be completed in the spring in the 26-acre park, with extensive tree-planting, McDermott said. He said the City of Cleveland is installing signs directing trail users to local streets with connections to the Treadway Creek Trail and the Towpath Trail.
A bicyclist rode through the former Henninger landfill on Monday, June 15, 2020. The landfill will soon become Brighton Park, a 26-acre reserve with a trail connection to the Metroparks Zoo and links to the regional Towpath Trail.Steven Litt, Cleveland.com
Slavic Village Connector: Cleveland’s West Side is far better served by bike trails than the East Side, but the nonprofit Slavic Village Development and partners including Cleveland Metroparks, Bike Cleveland and the City of Cleveland are working on a solution.
A key moment coming late this year or early in 2021 will be the completion of an Ohio Department of Transportation study for a proposed $68 million rehab of Interstate 77 in the Slavic Village neighborhood.
The study will determine, in part, whether ODOT could make a strip of land available on the west side of the highway for a section of bike trail that would fill a major gap in a proposed 3.5-mile route connecting Slavic Village to downtown Cleveland, the Towpath Trail, Garfield Park and the future Opportunity Corridor boulevard, with connections to University Circle.
An aerial photo shows I-77, the downtown Cleveland skyline and the Job Ready Site in Slavic Village, in the middle distance. The proposed Slavic Village Downtown Connector Trail advocated by planners would extend along the west side of the highway toward they skyline.John Pana, Cleveland.com
Proponents of the connector are also discussing whether portions of rapid transit right-of-way owned by the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority east of Iron Court could help make those connections. McDermott said he hopes there’s a solid plan for those links within a year.
The Midway: The Ohio Department of Transportation this year turned down the City of Cleveland’s request for an $8.3 million grant to help fund roughly half of its plan to turn the center lanes of Superior Avenue into a dedicated bicycle pathway from Public Square to East 55th Street. The city did not respond to a request for comment for this story, but bike advocates say the city will continue to try to fund the project.
Lorain Avenue Cycle Track: Tom McNair, executive director of the nonprofit Ohio City Inc., said that roughly $10.75 million has been raised to build the proposed 2.25-mile Lorain Avenue Cycle Track from West 20th Street at the western edge of the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge to West 65th Street. The money in hand represents more than half of the cost. McNair said the city remains committed to the project, and he’s hoping it could be built by 2023.
Connecting Euclid to the lake: Cleveland Metroparks is working with the cities of Euclid and Cleveland on a bike route that will connect the Metroparks Euclid Creek Reservation to the Lake Erie shoreline over the next decade.
By late 2022, Metroparks plans to complete a $600,000 project to extend a trail a half-mile north from Euclid Creek Parkway at Highland Road in Euclid to Euclid Avenue. The agency has already raised $267,500 from NOACA for that project.
From there, the route will continue through land occupied by the now defunct Euclid Central Middle School, which will revert to ownership by Metroparks. Other sections will extend north through Cleveland to the lake.
A couple enjoyed the completed section of the City of Euclid's new lakefront trail.Steven Litt, Cleveland.com
Separately, the City of Euclid, plans to complete by the end of 2021 the second portion of an innovative ¾-mile lakefront trail that could become part of a more ambitious network of trails stretching the city’s Lake Erie frontage and into Lake County.
“Despite the pandemic it’s been a productive year for trail planning and fundraising,’' said architect Allison Lukacsy-Love, Euclid’s principal planner. “In the next few years, we’re going to see a lot more.”
The Link LonkDecember 27, 2020 at 08:53PM
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/12/coronavirus-pandemic-gives-fresh-impetus-to-global-bike-boom-including-trail-projects-in-cleveland-northeast-ohio.html
Coronavirus pandemic gives fresh impetus to global bike boom including trail projects in Cleveland, Northeast - cleveland.com
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