Hope Memorial Bikeway Opening - 2012.12.10

From the folks at BikeCleveland.

Holiday Bike to Work Day:

Celebration of the Hope Memorial Bikeway Opening (facespace page)

Help ring in the opening of the Hope Memorial Bikeway (the bike path on the Lorain Carnegie Bridge) this holiday season on Monday, December 10th from 7am to 8:30am for the Holiday Bike to Work Day Celebration. Stop by on your way to work, school, or just on your early morning ride.

In celebration Bike Cleveland and the Cleveland Bike Rack will be providing hot coffee and pastries to cyclists and pedestrians who cross over the bridge. We will be set up in the new promenade on the east side of the Hope Memor

ial/Lorain Carnegie bridge (across from Progressive Field). This is your chance to be one of the first to ride over the Hope Memorial Bikeway, which officially opens that morning. 

The Cleveland Bike Rack will have information on the Bike Station including their winter commuter parking services, ODOT will have information on the bikeway and enhancements that will be made in 2013, and of course Bike Cleveland will be there with membership info and t-shirts (this is a good opportunity to get a Bike Cleveland shirt for that special cyclists in your life for the holiday). 

We know it’s short notice so if you can't make it on December 10th, be sure to check out the Hope Memorial Bikeway next time you are headed east-west. We will also be planning a larger event in the spring to celebrate the lighting of the Guardians and other improvements along the bikeway.

Thanks to Councilman Joe Cimperman for helping provide the coffee (from Phoenix Coffe) and breakfast pastries (from BonBon Pastry and Cafe).

I have been watching the progress on the bridge for the past few (six?) months as I sometimes take that way to work (and also to drive by and see the bookbox) and have been getting more and more excited about how the bridge pedestrian + bikeway with the addition of the work at Ontario and Carnegie might just very well be a huge missing ling to connecting Ohio City back to downtown Cleveland.  (especially with the new signaled crossing on Ontario by Progressive Field (I typed Jacobs first, oops).

It is doubtful that I will ever be able to bike comfortably from Lakewood to Shaker Square (work), but I look forward to more cycling around and into Cleveland, east of the river is a place I rarely cycle. I am hoping to use the heck out of the new bikeway next year.