European countries excel at bicycling thanks to strong policies, lots of investment, and a real commitment to replace cars with bikes, John Pucher and Ralph Bueler of Rutgers University report.

Berlin alone has built up its bike network to include 534 miles of completely separate bike paths, 37 miles of bike lanes on streets, 31 miles of bike lanes on sidewalks, and 62 miles of pedestrian/bike paths.

How does Cleveland compare to the world’s best bicycling cities?

The city’s 2010 Active Transportation Plan, which states the case for Cleveland to be in the next round of federal funding for non-motorized transportation projects, is aiming for a 180-mile bike network, including 30 miles of off-road paths and seven miles of bike lanes that exist today–the longest of which is the 3.5 mile bike lane on Euclid Avenue. The biggest chunk of the Cleveland bikeway is a proposed 99 miles of on-road bike lanes, bike routes and Sharrows (these are pavement stencils that help motorists and cyclists respect each other's lane positioning, especially where lanes are too narrow to share safely).

The centerpiece of the plan is the completion of the Towpath Trail extension into downtown Cleveland and a 29-mile City Trail Loop which will put an off-road path or bike route within a 10-minute bike ride of 62,000 households and 125,000 employees, says Martin Cader, planner for city of Cleveland.

The Loop is a series of trails in existing Cleveland parks and new, interconnecting bike routes and paths. The parks – Brookside, Washington, Luke Easter, Rockefeller, Gordon, and Edgewater – were all dedicated in 1890 and are sometimes called the Inner Emerald Necklace.

The City Trail Loop would effectively connect lakefront to the west and east sides of town. On the west side, the route goes south from Edgewater Park along West Boulevard to Detroit Avenue (past the Cudell Recreation Center) to the Brookside Reservation. Its on-road for a bit to the Big Creek connector (completion target date: 2010) which will connect the Zoo to the Towpath Trail. There, you’ll cross the river to the eastside on another proposed Towpath Trail connector to Washington Park. The park is the jumping off point for the Morgana Run bike path through Slavic Village where it connects to a route heading east along Aetna Road. That leads to Martin Luther King Boulevard by Luke Easter Park in Fairfax.

MLK is being cast as an important spine in the east Loop. In July, 2008 the city received the initial design for a Lake to Lakes Trail that would connect Lake Erie to the Shaker Lakes. The plans, which were developed by local design firm McKnight & Associates for nonprofit group Parkworks, call for the existing path on Stokes (by Cleveland School of the Arts) to connect to a new bike path on the north side of Fairhill (right next to Ambler Park) as it heads up to the eastern suburbs. The intersection of Fairhill and MLK (by the former Kaiser Hospital location) will be improved with full pedestrian crosswalks and treatments to calm traffic. The Lake to Lakes bike path will continue south along MLK to Shaker Boulevard where a new, wider bridge will be built. The city expects the intersection work and MLK bike path to break ground in 2009, and hopes the improvements will make University Circle to the inner-ring suburbs a legitimate commuter route, for both cars and bikes, Cader says.

This eastern part of the Loop will also benefit from the $220 million Euclid Corridor Transportation Project, including a much improved intersection at Euclid Avenue and Stokes Boulevard (by the Children’s Museum) that will connect cyclists more directly from University Circle to the path to the eastern suburbs. Also, a proposed improvement of E. 105th Street will help cyclists heading north from Chester Avenue connect with the 3.75-mile Harrison-Dillard bikeway which runs through Rockefeller Park. The bikeway connects at the lakefront with Gordon Park, which will be treated to a $260,000 renovation in 2008. Along with plans to remake Dike 14 into a nature preserve, plans to improve Doan Brook and the Cleveland Cultural Gardens bolster this area as a major attraction and recreational space.

When the 2010 Active Transportation comes to pass, biking around Cleveland will be much more attractive than it is today because of  a combination of greenways, parks and cycling facilities that can begin or end with a windswept view of Lake Erie along the 9-mile Lakefront Bikeway.

Links

• "Biking and walking: Our secret weapon?" by Neil Pierce
• Nation's leading cycling advocate calls Cleveland's 2010 Plan a "national model"