Enhance Clifton -- What we can learn from the neighbors to our North (part something)

Cycling in Montreal:

I was amazed by the access to bikes and the preferred treatment that so many cyclists were given. Bike lanes, bike roads, shared bike plans (Bixi), etc. It was amazing to witness and made me incredibly jealous. The city was also tremendously walkable, had a fantastic public transit system and phenomenal park system. More on that later, right now we are going to concentrate on cycling and commuting and what is planned for a major corridor in Lakewood and Cleveland.

Enhance Clifton:

I am going to just start this post off with a complete disclaimer before the attempts to discern my intent are misconstrued. I do believe that the ease of vehicular access from the urban core has destroyed our regional vitality and increased our operational costs (translating directly as a tax burden) beyond our current means. With that in mind let me begin by saying that I was hoping that the plans to enhance Clifton would be more aggressive.

Clifton Boulevard is currently 7 lanes of asphalt connected to downtown Cleveland by a slight change from an avenue to highway occurring at Lake Avenue. Clifton is the anomaly in the city of Lakewood, Ohio as it is the only main East/West Corridor that is primarily residential (in Lakewood), the other main corridors (Madison and Detroit Avenue) are primarily commercial or mixed use (residential/commercial). Clifton Boulevard also provides easy access to the suburb of Rocky River to the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway. My hopes were that any redesign of Clifton would accomplish the following goals.

1- Provide dedicated cycling lanes from Rocky River, through Lakewood to Detroit Shoreway neighborhood in hopes of connecting to Clevelands's Bikeway Masterplan.

2- Dedicate lanes to the 55 and 55F bus route which terminates downtown around Cleveland State University and is a hella faster way to get downtown then the #26 on Detroit to the Red Line.

3- Calm traffic so that the residential area north of Clifton (and Lakewood Park) could be more easily accessible from/to the commercial corridors of Detroit Ave./Madison Ave. Lakewood is the most walkable city around Cleveland which is one of it's greatest assets (for all ages, hence one of the reasons there is such a diverse age demographic).

In my opinion it would actually be just fine if Clifton were altered to provide only 2 lanes of traffic each way, a lane for dedicated parking on the north side (longer blocks) and dedicated bike roads (see slide show above for example) on the south side which would provide access/area for buses as the center median would become sort of a give/take area for turning lanes (where necessary) or lane shifts for bus stops.

The proposal for Enhance Clifton is not that aggressive. The only major changes are creating a planted boulevard median which will calm traffic on residential sidestreets which currently act as cut thrus for commuters (I use one that is going to be more difficult to get down, oh well) with the use of a mountable median (for emergency vehicles). A few bustops are going to be relocated and redesigned (yay!), nicer (more obvious) intersections for pedestrians as well as autos and some changes to vegetation (trees and such).

Overall the plan is very logically and does accomplish at least some traffic calming. Since there is no change to the parking on the street there isn't too much for anyone to get all upset about. The new exciting change will be the inclusion of legal U-turns as the central median will require some people to pass their streets or driveways due to the median. I don't know if Hummers can make the turn but a firetruck should be able to.

You can find the overall plan online here and make some comments, etc. as needed. The current plan includes parts of Clifton in both Lakewood and Cleveland.

As a side note when I used to take the #55 downtown for work I would do a traffic count of how many cars would pass and their occupancy. I remember that even during the school year (and I was waiting by a school) at least 92% of the vehicles that passed had only one occupant. I have to find that notebook so I can parse out the data.