A big issue people have with biking instead of driving a car—where to securely park at your destination—is the focus of two initiatives where the city of Cleveland is making headway.

First, the long-awaited downtown bike parking station—a central location to securely lock up indoors and perhaps shower and change—may be released from legal limbo soon. Mayor Jackson's Law Department is looking into the agreement that governs the use of the parking garage at E. 4th Street in the Gateway District. The city owns the garage, but the current Community Development Plan would need to be altered to allow an organization to operate a bike parking station. The city feels the change would please the garage’s biggest customer, the Cleveland Cavaliers, who have also requested a change of the plan to put up signage. Initial results from the city’s lawyers were positive enough to clear a path for the city’s architects to review and revise initial plans, says Martin Cader at Cleveland City Planning Department. The next step is city council review and approval.

The downtown bike parking station might be the crown jewel of a city-wide bike parking plan working its way through city council. A proposal that would require all parking garages in Cleveland to install at least one bike parking spot (and associated bike racks) for every 20 car spots passed through Cleveland City Council committee last week and will go to full council for approval this summer, Cader says. The proposal was approved by the Cleveland Planning Commission in April. Read more here.

History would indicate that the strides in increasing the efficiency of transportation have been an enabler in a trend move goods and people apart from each other.  This trend has created a massive infrastructure with respect to the number of people that it supports.  

I’ll suggest that densely populated areas where compact infrastructure is employed currently subsidize the larger infrastructure by the ways that this infrastructure is serviced.  Roads, phone utilities, electric utilities, gas utilities and even the mail do not account for how much of the infrastructure the user actually uses.  The cost of installing and maintaining infrastructure is immense, we should reward those who conserve this resource, not penalize.

I usually think of transportation in terms of the automobile and bus, but transportation of utilities is also an issue.

Complete streets and transportation infrastructure should include features that effectively protect, prioritize and promote different modes of transportation. One key component that seems overlooked in Northeast Ohio is “smart” roadways, intersections and pedestrian crossings.

Pedestrian and bike signalization. Instead of pushing a button to activate a crosswalk or having a crosswalk automatically prioritize pedestrian crossing when no pedestrians are present, infrared crosswalk sensors are being installed in some areas. The infrared systems have two main purposes. They detect pedestrians (or bicyclists) waiting to cross an intersection and they detect when pedestrians are still crossing the street, preventing vehicle traffic.

Bike signalization systems exist that not only provide special actuation areas, but often a head start to clear an intersection.  Here is a photo of a prioritized bike signal and pavement bike actuator:

Well marked crosswalks, with active signage. Traditional bright yellow signs informing motorists that a crosswalk is approaching have been around for years, however, many communities are taking additional steps to make crosswalks safe by installing active light systems to alert motorists that pedestrians are in a crosswalk. Some communities in
Northeast Ohio are using this technology today, including some intersections in Crocker Park in Westlake, Ohio.  Why isn't this the standard rather than the exception?

Sample Installation:

Signal prioritization and advanced traffic detection. When traffic control devices are installed or replaced in
Northeast Ohio, it should mean more than installing new LED traffic lights and steel mast arms. Timing traffic light intersections was a leading practice 25 years ago, but sometimes appears to be the best we can do in
Northeast Ohio today. Installing signal prioritization and advanced vehicle detection systems would allow
Northeast Ohio traffic to move more efficiently – saving time and money while reducing pollution.

Signal prioritization allows buses and other priority vehicles to activate the signal before arriving at an intersection. RTA’s new HealthLine along Euclid Avenue has incorporated bus prioritization (but not prioritization for fire or
EMS vehicles). Many more heavily traveled corridors should be considered for this inexpensive technology.

Advanced traffic detection systems use multiple sensors that detect vehicle traffic from multiple lanes and direction of travel. Instead of signal timing or a basic traffic actuation loop, these sensor based systems, which are used in almost all intersections in California and Colorado, are much more efficient than new traffic control installations in Northeast Ohio. A recent West 25^th streetsignal replacement and timing project in Cleveland has improved the look of a number of intersections, but it has done little to effectively manage and improve the efficiency of bus and vehicle traffic during both peak and off-peak travel times.

Complete streets need to include best available technologies. If we want people to take the bus, ride a bike or walk, then as a community we must demand that the best existing technology and practices be integrated into
Northeast Ohio’s roadways and intersections to create a safe environment that promotes all modes of transportation.

If we want to reform the way Ohio Department of Transportation does business, we have to look at changing the models they use, says Surface Transportation Policy Project, a national non-profit working to bring us more transportation choices. The models that transportation agencies use often rely on flawed assumptions like energy prices remaining constant or that greenhouse gases will not be regulated, says Norm Marshall in his presentation, “Understanding the Transportation Models and Asking the Right Questions (pdf).”

Modeling has a seat at the table but facilitates discussion rather than ending it, Marshall writes.

If we want ODOT reform we need to discuss how models are used now to determine where transportation projects are initiated. We need to talk about the underlying assumptions which are contributing to the status quo (all of us paying for more highways and interchanges subsidizing ticky tacky houses on farmland). We can explore, for example, if travel behavior will be the same in the future as in the past? And is future land use really independent of future transportation service levels?

The flaws in the models start at the top. The Federal Highway Administration found that 61 percent of the miles driven in the U.S. are on urban roads, yet, nearly 77 percent of the 8,223,393 lane miles of roads in the U.S. were located in rural areas in 2000. So, why do we hear so many complaints about congested roads? It has more to do with our growing reliance on driving for daily tasks, STPP explains here.

One specific policy upgrade that ODOT should consider is reforming the use of the state’s gas tax which currently is restricted to only funding highway projects. In Oregon, state’s Attorney General ruled that, indeed, if you buy gas for your lawnmower, leaf blower, your powerboat, ATV or snowmobile you probably don’t plan on using them on the Interstate. It is legal, then, for the state to use that portion of gas tax revenues for non-highway projects. After the AG ruled, Oregon's legislature passed a constitutional amendment that allowed the state to create a fund to set aside the non-vehicle portion of the gas tax. That fund paid for a new passenger rail line. How do we do the same in Ohio, and fund a Lorain-to-Cleveland commuter train and probably have enough left to start the long-awaited Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati high-speed train? Read more here.

Transportation choice would ease the burden of beastly transportation costs for Ohio’s families. Take Columbus, for example, which STPP found has 0.09 miles of hourly transit service per mile of roadway—the lowest transportation choice in the nation.

What other ways can state policies help us get unstuck from this quandary of not enough transportation choice (which leads to fewer people, then, choosing to ride a bike, walk or take transit)?