If I were a young person today looking at a career path, I can't really think of anything more exciting and challenging than what we're experiencing in the world — in the convergence of the end, or the diminishing, of petroleum-based energy sources with the challenge of global warming. It's certainly on a par with the race to the moon.











how could we leverage this in ODOT land?
Susan Miller Says:Yes, yes ODOT needs reality check, an EXTREME MAKEOVER in fact. Meanwhile, it is ludicrous that with all this bikeway planning and funds being allocated in a city budget that also has to pay more for its urban street repairs than the overfed rural counties in Ohio are allocated for roads, that ODOT can say stuff like, "It would be dangerous and lonely for cyclists on the Innerbelt bridge, so we won't accommodate them".
Now is this Jackson talking out of both sides of his mouth, rubberstamping ODOT plans in advance of any final decisions while at the same time reorienting his city to be more bike/ped friendly? If it is, he wouldn't be the first politician to do so, but I want to have a higher opinion of Frank. He stood his ground pretty hard as a councilperson. Can he stand his new ground now?
Cleveland Master Bikeway Plan and Mayor Jackson's Capital Budget
John Gideon Says:I was elated to read the story about the almost $13 million in Mayor Jackson's capital budget for bike projects over the next 3 years.
The list of projects is impressive, including the plan to build a bike station downtown. But when one looks at it closely it appears that most, although not all, of the projects are off-road multiuse trails.
Which makes me wonder whether the list of projects was developed as the result of the creation of a comprehensive, city-wide, public-involvement-process action plan to make Cleveland friendly for bicycling. (I've been using this mantra to try to get Columbus to create such a plan; we seem to be getting closer to that reality with yesterday's action at MORPC to amend the Downtown Columbus Circulation Study contract to accept money -- $255,000 -- from Columbus City Council to do a comprehensive, city-wide, public-involvement-process action plan. Hopefully Columbus City Council will grant our request from last October to adopt a Complete Streets policy before the bike planning process gets underway.)
Then I noticed the link to the "Cleveland Master Bikeway Plan." Which took me to a map of Cleveland's existing and proposed bikeways.
A couple years ago I was told that Cleveland had developed a bike plan. I was directed then to the "Cleveland Master Bikeway Plan" which consisted, as far as I could tell, of this map.
It appears that the entire bikeway plan -- at least all that is available online -- is this map. I haven't seen a comprehensive plan that talks about the 4-Es of engineering, education, encouragement, and enforcement.
I was wondering if there is more to Cleveland's bike plan than this bikeways map. And was there a public-involvement-process to create public buy-in?
Of course, as everyone is always fond of telling me, a plan doesn't guarantee implementation. But without a public-involvement process to creat public buy-in and a sort of covenant between the government and the public that the plan will be implemented I don't have a lot of confidence that enough of the right kind of progress is going to be made. For instance, all of the planned bikeways are nice, but what about the need for bike parking everywhere? A downtown bike station is not going to do it. Where/what is the plan for bike parking?
So, the bottom line is, can you tell me how the list of capital projects was developed? Is there anything more to the plan than the bikeways map? A bike plan doesn't guarantee that anything will be done; but I don't know of any truly bike-friendly communities that have gotten that way without a plan.
Let me say that whatever the impetus for Mayor Jackson's list of bikeway projects you can bet that I'm going to use this list to shame the City of Columbus into doing a lot more.
Thanks.
John Gideon
Bikeway plan was publicly vetted
Marc Lefkowitz Says:John,
I spoke to Marty Cader, who works on bike and pedestrian issues at Cleveland City Planning, and will type in his response: