Veterans of the Battle of Boston Road were among the 145 people who showed up on a Wednesday night in Strongsville a few weeks ago to talk traffic.
I was there, as the Battle of Boston Road has been a story I've been following for more than two years. Traffic studies and infrastructure proposals sound boring and benign. But I was struck by how deeply this ongoing war against traffic has impacted the residents of Strongsville and its neighbor, Brunswick.
This battle is leaving scars.
Sue Mazzola was there. She lives on the north, or Strongsville, side of Boston Road, a two-lane, east-west road that divides the Cuyahoga County city from Brunswick, its Medina County neighbor to the south.
Mazzola’s home is close enough to Interstate 71 that she feared it would be lost to a state-mandated interchange until Ohio’s legislature repealed the law that would have brought the interchange in April.
Shrea Kellums, another soldier in the anti-exit effort, was there, too. She lives on the south, or Brunswick, side of Boston Road, within sight of where it rises to cross the highway.
They sat in the front row at the Strongsville Recreation Center to hear engineers lay out the focus points of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency’s I-71 Crossroads Regional Transportation Study.
Kellums told me she had one objective: that whatever solutions the study may recommend, “that it’s not on Boston Road.”
The opening salvo in the Battle of Boston Road came when Strongsville's longtime legislator, Tom Patton, inserted language into the two-year transportation budget in 2023 requiring the creation of an I-71 interchange at Boston Road.
Strongsville really wants a Boston Road exit.
City leaders and many residents say it will reduce traffic tie-ups and fender-benders along Strongsville’s crowded commercial corridor, State Route 82, and its I-71 exit, by giving Brunswick and North Royalton residents a highway access point closer to home.
The Strongsville folks say it would also take pressure off Howe Road, a two-lane residential road that parallels the highway and connects Boston Road to 82.
Strongsville's own study in 2022 found a Boston Road exit would ease congestion at Route 82, but not by very much and not for very long.
The Crossroads study will be the fourteenth since 1984 by either NOACA or the Ohio Department of Transportation to address traffic concerns in these two Cleveland suburbs. If you count that Strongsville study, it’s the fifteenth.
Grace Gallucci, executive director of NOACA, told the audience previous studies focused on “very specific infrastructure proposals,” primarily the Boston Road exit.
She said this study will take a wider view.
“What makes this study different is that it broadens the scope to look at congestion, mobility, and access from a regional perspective,” said Gallucci. Engineers will look at 10 hotspots they’ve identified, using initial traffic data, within a 27-square-mile area, not just the pinch points along State Route 82. “And it starts with a blank slate. All the viable solutions will be explored. We have no predetermined outcome.”
But what I noticed is Gallucci’s promise of a fresh start did not smooth the frayed nerves of Strongsville and Brunswick residents, who are still seething from the Boston Road exit mandate debacle. They're also frustrated by the many unsuccessful attempts to solve a problem that is wearing on them.
Strongsville resident Jaime Bedford attended the meeting with her parents, who live on Howe Road. She said the enmity was palpable the moment they sat down and started chatting with the people sitting nearby.
“As soon as we identified our location - ‘Oh, you’re from Brunswick, oh, you’re on Boston, oh, you’re from Howe Road in Strongsville’ - instantaneous disdain,” Bedford said.
“I had to calm my mom down because I'm like, ‘Mom, people here could have guns. Let's not play that game, let's not get people too riled up.’ This is hot. Hot.” She lengthened the word for emphasis.
Another Strongsville resident, Buck Wilford, said he noticed the animosity, too. He lives near Boston Road and, like Sue Mazzola and Shrea Kellums, was at every protest or city council meeting I attended while covering the interchange fight.
“It's kinda childish. It's like both are, ‘I want it by you,’ ‘No, I want it by you.’ It shouldn't be like that,” said Wilford. “It’s really sad.”
Brunswick resident Sue Krejci, who lived on Boston Road for 30 years, said she felt unwelcome in what is now enemy territory.
“Honestly I was nervous about coming tonight 'cause it's just been a lot of vitriol between communities and lots of comments about, you know, 'We should just block Howe Road off at Boston and then the Brunswick people can't use our roads,’” she said.
Krejci said when the state passed the law requiring the Boston Road interchange, it felt like “shots were being fired on Brunswick.”
She said the new study may succeed where the others did not.
“I like the way this is being approached. I feel like this is more comprehensive,” Krecji said. “Hopefully, it will bear more fruit and help us get actual solutions. And help our communities heal.”
That healing may only come if engineers find a way to reduce congestion without building a Boston Road exit.
Whatever the solution, I plan to cover it.
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