The view from the Idea Center

Have you ever had to change a tire by the side of a busy road? In my case, I’ve watched someone change the tire while I stood there, feeling useless. I also felt really vulnerable as cars and trucks swept past us, just a few feet away.

Of course, people are not meant to be standing or walking along a highway. But I feel just as vulnerable sometimes as a pedestrian on a city street.

On Euclid Avenue, a few blocks west of the Idea Center in Playhouse Square, I’ve often had to walk in traffic because the sidewalk was blocked by construction crews renovating the former Cleveland Athletic Club. I could have touched the cars as they passed me.

Cleveland Heights may be the only city in the country that has explicitly committed itself to making sure everyone can get past a construction zone safely and efficiently. It’s a provision in the city’s Complete and Green Streets policy.  The National Complete Streets Coalition, an advocacy group, highlighted the construction provision when it named Cleveland Heights’ policy the best of 2018.

“It’s one of the concerns about construction that nobody’s thought about before, and it’s something that Cleveland Heights put in its policy that nobody else did,” the Coalition’s Heather Zaccaro told me.

The Coalition bestowed its ‘Best Policy’ honors on Cleveland Heights in April. My story today digs into pedestrian and bicyclist accident data in Cleveland Heights over the last five years, recent national statistics on disturbing trends in pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities, and before-and-after images of one Complete Streets project at the intersection of Overlook and Edgehill roads.

See you, bright and early Monday morning on the radio,
Amy Eddings

Need to KnOH

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