The April 8 total eclipse came and went in Cleveland without the traffic nightmare many were anticipating as traffic was light most of the day and, at worst, delays were comparable to usual rush hour traffic.
This the result of two years of planning, said Brent Kovacs, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Transportation.
"It's been two years of planning, working with county emergency management agencies, police, fire and state patrol, the Ohio Department of Transportation," he said. "Have good plans in place if a worst-case scenario did happen, but thankfully nothing like that did happen today."
That planning included not only conferring with other cities that had total eclipses in the past about the challenges they faced with traffic and parking but also applying lessons learned from Cleveland's experiences hosting other major events, such as the 2021 NFL Draft, 2019 Major League Baseball All-Star Game and the 2016 Republican National Convention.
Those plans included having police out to enforce traffic laws and ensure people were not parking where they weren't supposed to, and enforcing a prohibition on parking on the sides of the road, which not only can back traffic up, but present a real safety hazard, Kovacs said.
"If we're trying to all leave the same place at the same time, there's a lot of traffic on the road, and at the same time, people are tailgating, for lack of a better term, on the side of the road, it creates an extremely dangerous situation when you have cars going 60 or 70 miles an hour next to a vehicle that is completely stopped on the side of the road," Kovacs said. "It creates crashes. It creates narrow lanes to travel in."
Planners also made sure road crews were ready for any accidents or other problems and that lines of communication were in place to get them where they needed to be as soon as possible, he said.
For example, road crews were quick to respond when traffic started to slow down on eastbound I-480 in the late afternoon due to a car crash, which prevented the crash from becoming a bigger problem, Kovacs said.
"Our crews were en route to go help out with that crash scene as soon as we got word of it," he said. "That's what good preparation does."
Kovacs also credited a public information campaign with the day's success.
The campaign, which was designed to inform residents and visitors alike of what to expect in terms of heavy traffic and the need to plan ahead, come early and stay late at events, made a difference, he said.
"All those safety terms and key phrases were really important in helping motorists figure out the best course of action to enjoy today," Kovacs said.
He added that this public information campaign may have had an unintended consequence as many people appeared to work from home instead of coming into the city. And Kovacs said he was thankful for that.
"Thank you to everyone that could work from home or work close to home instead of traveling in the Downtown or out of Downtown," he said. "We definitely saw lighter than normal traffic, which was good because we had all the eclipse viewers in the various viewing locations trying to leave or come to those areas at the same time. So, without those folks that would normally be coming for work on the roads, it definitely made plenty of room for the eclipse viewers to get around town safely."
Overall, Cleveland anticipated 140,000 visitors for the eclipse with Cleveland police having expected close to 40,000 people gathering at two locations alone during Monday’s eclipse — the Great Lakes Science Center near Downtown Cleveland and at Edgewater Park on the city’s West Side.
