CLEVELAND, Ohio — A new Cuyahoga County plan envisions a unified network of bike paths, trails and bike-friendly roads across the county, its architects at the County Planning Commission said.
The Cuyahoga Greenways, highlighted in Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish’s state of the county speech last week, would connect established bike routes with ones currently in the works, and join them all with proposed routes. The plan has been percolating for a couple of years now, and was inspired by the Eastside Greenway.
“One of the first steps is to say, ‘Hey, we have a trail here and a trail here, why don’t we try to link these two together so we could have a more contiguous system,’” said Michael Mears, senior planner at the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission.
The project design, which was paid for by the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency’s Transportation for Livable Communities Initiative, maps out an 815-mile web across the county, which includes 122 miles of existing trails, 47 miles of proposed trails and 121 miles of proposed on-street bikeways, connecting to the Towpath, or the Cleveland Metroparks.
Building the system, one leg at a time, would involve the buy-in and financial support from municipalities across the county and regional organizations. There’s no timeline for its completion, and no estimate on how much it would cost to make it a reality. It’s unclear which portion could be completed first.
It’s a vision, but one that’s getting positive buzz among bike advocates and the county’s anchor city: Cleveland, where city traffic engineers say it’s now standard to think of ways to improve bike friendliness on all road projects.
“There is enthusiasm to make sure that all residents in all of our cities throughout the county have an opportunity to have the option to connect,” Freddy L. Collier Jr, director of Cleveland’s City Planning Commission, said. “I think there’s an enthusiasm around being able to have an alternative to getting in your car.”
“For me, it’s exciting to think of our bike facilities as not just standalone segments, like a mile here and a mile there, but thinking about it as a network. Because that’s really what’s going to help get more people out riding,” said Jacob VanSickle, executive director of Bike Cleveland, a biking advocacy group.
The greenways plan aims to attract more amateur bikers, people curious about biking, but who don’t feel comfortable riding alongside busy car traffic. That group makes up about 51 percent of urban Americans, according to a survey of residents of the country’s 50 largest metropolitan cities.
The greenways incorporated some bike friendly projects already cooking, including Cleveland’s Lorain Avenue Cycle Track, which would run along the north side of the avenue between West 20th and West 45th Streets, and the south side from West 45th to West 65th. It’s is set for construction in the next few years and is a collaboration between Cleveland and the NOACA, according to our report from 2017.
Also in the mix is the Midway, a proposal that would eventually constitute a system of “bicycle highways” running down the center lanes of more than 50 miles of wide, underused streets that once carried streetcars.
The first leg of the Midway would extend 2.5 miles along the middle of Superior Avenue from Public Square to East 55th Street. It’s also is set for construction in the next few years and is a collaboration between Cleveland and the NOACA, according to our report from 2017.
“Many municipalities had bicycle activity going on, which sped up into that greenway initiative. And we’re excited to see that it is starting to accelerate countywide,” Collier said.
The greenways planners also dreamed up proposed bike friendly routes, using insight from the community, previous studies and their own legwork to determine which roads could join the network. They view the plan as an adaptable guide for communities to use as they evaluate road projects and consider making their roads more bike friendly. Nothing is set in stone: the routes could change, and new ones could be added.
At least one project in the greenway plan converted a routine road resurfacing job into an opportunity to create bike lanes, set for construction in 2020, connecting a 2.7 mile stretch from Dunham Road to Tinker’s Creek to the Towpath. The project, which involves the village of Walton Hills and the city of Maple Heights, originally just set out to resurface the road. But the county offered to pitch in money to cover the resurfacing project, so the municipalities could pay for the biking improvements.
The story was updated to clarify that the Midway is a proposal that would eventually constitute a system of “bicycle highways” running down the center lanes of more than 50 miles of wide, underused streets that once carried streetcars.
Read a summary about the Cuyahoga Greenways below.
