Last month, the Cleveland Planning Commission approved legislation to expend funds for designs for the Lorain-Superior Midway, a protected bikeway on Lorain Avenue between W. 20th and W. 65th Streets and on Superior from Public Square to E. 55th Street. Additionally, 11th District Congressional Representative Shontel Brown secured some funding for the Memorial Bridges Loop Trail in downtown and Ohio City, and Franklin Boulevard from W. 50th to W. 85th Streets reopened to traffic with new mini-roundabouts and a 25 mph speed limit.
Lorain-Superior Midway
The city has sought to create protected bike lanes on Lorain Avenue since at least 2013, and on Superior since at least 2017, but needed to cobble together the funding to make the projects happen. Now, the two projects are being rolled together under the banner of the Lorain-Superior Midway. With approval from the city planning commission on December 2nd, the Midway is now entering the design phase, and if all proceeds as planned the project would break ground in 2025 and open in 2026.
“It’s a network similar to the Indianapolis Cultural Trail that has a unified rider experience for people riding from east to west and vice versa across the city,” said Calley Mersmann, senior strategist for transit and mobility with the city of Cleveland.
The Superior Midway is expected to cost $25 million, with the design eating up $2.4 million. It would feature a two-way cycling trail down the center of Superior, with buffering on either side. A 2017 concept rendering shows landscaping and curbs providing a separation between cyclists and traffic. Cyclists who need to exit the Midway would need to cross a crosswalk. According to Mersmann’s presentation at the Dec. 2 planning meeting, the city has raised $18.1 million from Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) funds from the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) and is chipping in a match of $4.5 million, which together will cover the construction costs.
The Lorain Midway, originally called the Lorain Cycle Track, has been in the works for more than 10 years. Despite its name, the trail would actually be on the side of the road, where it would be buffered by an elevated sidewalk and curb. Mersmann said the city surveyed the community in 2022, and the majority of the 141 respondents (69%) preferred this design. Due to the width of the street, placing the bikeway in the middle was never seriously considered as an option (Superior is wider).
The cost of the Lorain Midway would be $30.2 million, about half of which has been raised so far. Funding would stem from CMAQ funds, NOACA federal transportation alternatives (TAP) funds, city road and bridge bonds, and the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). The city still needs to raise the funds to complete the project, and designing the bike lanes is the next step. This would allow the city to seek competitive funding from sources including the federal government, Mersmann said. The project does not yet have a construction timeline, since additional funds need to be raised.
Memorial Bridges Loop Trail
Happy holidays! In an end-of-year gift to Cleveland, 11th District Representative Shontel Brown helped secure $432,000 in funding for the Memorial Bridges Loop Trail as part of the spending bill passed late last year. The funds were part of 14 requests for Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23) in spending bills approved by the House Committee on Appropriations, according to a press release from Brown’s office. The trail would link existing paths along the Detroit-Superior Bridge, Lorain-Carnegie bridge (Hope Memorial Bridge), and Eagle Ave. The connection would be created by removing a car lane from W. Huron and Ontario between Superior and Eagle to create a physically-separated multi-use path along the southern curb.
It’s not clear how these plans would dovetail with Bedrock’s vision for closing a portion of Huron Ave. as part of the redevelopment of the riverfront behind Tower City. We’ve requested this information from the city, as well as the timeline for design, public input, and construction of the Memorial Bridges Loop Trail and what the full cost of the project would be. We will update the story when we hear back.
The trail was originally conceived by runners who frequently run the bridges as a loop. A feasibility study was completed in 2018 by Leadership Cleveland fellows. According to Bike Cleveland, it would “complete a crucial gap in Cleveland’s bike and pedestrian network and is the first step towards building a network of stress-free bike and pedestrian accommodations that connect downtown Cleveland to the neighborhoods.”
Franklin reopens with mini-roundabouts, lower speed limit
After years of planning and several months of construction, Franklin Blvd. from W. 50th to W. 85th Sts. in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood has reopened with a lower speed limit and mini-roundabouts designed to slow down traffic. The speed limit was lowered from 35 to 25 mph.
According to Mersmann, the city had long sought to lower the speed limit on Franklin, and it was a recommendation of the Franklin Blvd Traffic Calming Study. However, it couldn’t do so because the street met Ohio’s definition of a “through highway,” requiring a speed limit of 35 miles per hour. Now, because of the mini-roundabouts, “Franklin is no longer being defined as a through highway because it no longer has a continuous length of more than one mile between stop or yield signs,” Mersmann said.
Roundabouts are relatively new to Cleveland, and these are really small. The city said that cars should slow down as they approach the intersection, yield to pedestrians, yield to vehicles in the roundabout (the person on the left has the right of way), and proceed to the right of the center island until reaching their exit. Mersmann said that crews will return in the spring to install the final details, including high visibility painted crosswalks, bicycle sharrows, raised reflective pavement markers around the mini roundabouts, and rectangular rapid flashing beacons at key crosswalks. Construction on the remainder of Franklin between W. 25th Street and W. 50th Street will kick off in the spring and be completed this year.
“I think there’s a big mix,” said Detroit Shoreway resident Jamye Jamison, who sat on a planning committee to help design Franklin and advocated for raised traffic circles instead of painted ones, of drivers’ reactions to the newly reopened street. “Some people totally get it and navigate the traffic circles no problem, and other people are confused. But even if they can’t navigate them, everyone is going so slowly there haven’t been any crashes. So, if you’re talking about whether the traffic circles are making the intersections safer, I believe they are.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that the Cleveland Planning Commission approved legislation to expend funds to design the Lorain-Superior Midway, and not the design itself, and that the Lorain Avenue Midway does not currently have a timeline.
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