What could you do with hundreds of professionals in 220 hours? Apparently ODOT thinks between now and March 2, it’s not enough to amend electronic documents that can vastly improve the future for Greater Cleveland’s citizens. The documents, which include ODOT’s environmental impact statement, would allow thousands to choose to ride a bike or walk on the new Innerbelt Bridge and catch views of downtown on the way to an Indians game or to dinner in Tremont.

“When you design a bridge, you don’t design it just for cars you design it for people,” Cleveland Councilman Matt Zone told ODOT Innerbelt Project Manager Craig Hebebrand at today’s Cleveland Planning Commission. “Why should the citizens of Cleveland settle for second class? We should demand (a multi-use path on the bridge) from the design phase. We should demand something better. Let’s see what the prices come in. In Shanghai and in Portland they are designing bridges for people.”

Hebebrand said it’s too late from ODOT’s perspective to make any changes. “There’s no way to physically amend the documents to add the addendum in time.”

Planning Commission member Lillian Kuri, however, got Hebebrand to admit that there will be many addendums to the Environmental Impact Statement before the end. Adding an addendum to that EIS for a bike/ped multi-use path now should not be used an excuse, Kuri said.

Advocates agree, and we charge that we have 25 days, or 220 hours until ODOT’s imposed March 2 deadline. We also contend that where there’s a will, there’s a way. The comments from Councilman Matt Zone illustrate this sentiment; and given Hebebrand’s assertions, it is perhaps proof positive that the issue transcends ODOT and its usual bureaucracy, and so it’s time move up the chain of command.

“If there’s a need for $20 million, I certainly cannot promise it, but we can advocate for it because it’s needed,” said Martin Gelfand, Senior Counsel for Representative Dennis Kucinich. “With all due respect to ODOT, planning bridges in the 21st century is not the same as in the post war when the Innerbelt was built. We can call it the dinosaur era because we were so dependent on fossil fuels. I think we need to get out of that dinosaur era and bringing people back into downtown. So this signature bridge should include the cyclist and include the pedestrians. Don’t say no, say ‘how’.”

Kuri asked Gelfand and Rep. Kucinich to hold a meeting with ODOT and Planning Commission director Bob Brown, which Gelfand agreed to. Observers note that the meeting will be meaningless unless we figure out the explicit action that has to occur—an amendment or waiver to the EIS, which, by the way, happens frequently with cooperation from the right parties at Federal Highway Administration—and the right people have to be in the room to take that action.

“It’s now or never,” Kuri concluded.