The City of Cleveland is collecting input on plans to redesign a portion of Franklin Boulevard on the city’s West Side.
The $3.2 million, six month resurfacing project spans from West 25th Street to around West 85th Street is set to start in April 2022. Both the City of Cleveland and the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) are collaborating on the project.
The goal is to make the area safe for pedestrians, cyclists and residents by controlling vehicle speed, said Cleveland City Councilman Kerry McCormack.
“The whole idea is, let’s build an environment on the road that doesn’t just tell people to slow down, but it’s engineered in a way that cars will slow down,” McCormack said.
Some of the redesign options being considered include traffic circles and raised crosswalks, McCormack said – options that do more than signage and paint to actively prevent speeding.
“Folks want to see substantial roundabouts that slow traffic,” McCormack said. “That is the main priority for folks that live on Franklin or around Franklin, is that it actually does the job of calming traffic and doesn’t just kind of go halfway.”
The current streetscapes heavily prioritize automobile users, McCormack said, rather than more vulnerable traffic. The redesign could shift that balance, he said.
But some stakeholders argue the design being presented now doesn’t go far enough to meet those goals. The curbs are smaller than initially proposed, said Ohio City Incorporated’s Chief Operating Officer Ashley Shaw, and roundabouts are missing things like landscaping in the center to force drivers to slow down and navigate around them properly.
“The roundabouts as they’re shown with signage isn’t enough to truly change the culture of the way people drive on the street. We want some physical things in the street,” Shaw said. “We were told that we were going to redesign the street in a way that forces drivers to drive safely and slower, and I don’t feel like signage and paint does enough to do that.”
Shaw and the community development group are pushing for residents to submit their concerns to the city on the project’s website, Shaw said. Ohio City Incorporated is also asking the city to commit to enacting the plan in full, she said, with consideration for those concerns.
“We’ve really been trying to get the residents that would like to see those elements implemented advocating to the city and sharing that feedback so we can see the full plan built,” Shaw said. “But we haven’t really heard from the City of Cleveland what they’re doing with the feedback.”
Bike Cleveland Communications and Events Manager Jason Kuhn said there seem to be ongoing conversations about how to make changes and meet the demands. But residents still need to make their voices heard, he said.
“There was lots of public input put into this, but it doesn’t appear much public input went into the design,” Kuhn said. “If you remove too much in terms of safety, the things left behind aren’t strong enough. It could almost make it worse.”
The plan has been subject to a lot of public outreach, conversations and online discussion, Kuhn said. But it’s still too early to say how much feedback from residents will end up making it through the entire process and into the final design, he said.
“Franklin in its current state sees a lot of speeding. There’s lots of collisions that occur along the corridor,” Kuhn said. “This redesign is an opportunity to really address that and make it a better, safer neighborhood street.”
The City of Cleveland declined ideastream’s request for comment on this story. The city plans continue collecting input through May 20.