There were meetings held last night on two projects aimed at drawing more people to cross the highway that divides the city from the Lake Erie waterfront.
One is a plan to revamp the West Shoreway in Cleveland that's been in the works for years. Crews are working to extend W. 73rd Street beneath a line of railroad tracks so that motorists can more easily reach Edgewater Park. There are already two bicycle and pedestrian connections.
The next step is slowing down traffic on the Shoreway, adding landscaping and extending a bicycle and pedestrian path alongside the road.
Amanda McFarland with the Ohio Department of Transportation said while there won't be any new traffic lights or intersections on the Shoreway, the speed limit is coming down.
"The current speed limit on this section is 50 miles an hour," McFarland said. "It is going to be reduced to 35 miles an hour. I know that sounds like a pretty big difference, however it's expected to just add a minute of total travel time to folks' commutes."
She said the right lane on each side of the road will close over the summer as workers perform maintenance. The eastbound exit to Edgewater Park and the westbound exit to Lake Road will also close for work this summer as well. The W. 28 th Street entrance ramp to Route 2 will close for good, she said.
On the other side of town, there's a plan to build bike and pedestrian paths along the East Shoreway.
These paths would stretch from Gordon Park at the north end of Martin Luther King Boulevard to Burke Lakefront Airport.
Bobbi Reichtell is with Campus District, a neighborhood development group for the eastern side of downtown Cleveland.
"It will give a ton of east side neighborhood residents access to lakefront parks through walking and biking that they don't have now," Reichtell said.
She said says she hopes the east side project will be able to secure federal funding.
