The Opportunity Corridor – Can We Do Better?

By Mansfield Frazier

When I posted what I thought would be my last entry of a three-part LandMind series on land use and who benefits, Angie Schmitt, a Detroit Shoreway resident and writer for Streetsblog (a daily news source connecting people to information about sustainable transportation and livable communities), was the first person to comment on the piece. Her observations were so incisive and intelligent I reached out to her to discuss the issue further. Our correspondence lead to the Q & A that follows.

Mansfield Frazier: Angie, tell me more about Streetsblog.

Angie Schmitt: Streetsblog is a national transportation reform advocacy group that is based in New York City, but I live in and work out of Cleveland. We’ve covered the movement to transform our cities by reducing dependence on private automobiles and improving conditions for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders. Our reporters have broken important stories about transit funding, pedestrian safety, and bicycle policy from day one. And our writing makes arcane topics like parking prices and induced traffic accessible to a broad audience.

You mentioned in your comment that you couldn’t believe this project – the Opportunity Corridor – was happening in 2013. Can you explain what you meant?

Sure. Let me give you a little background. The “urban renewal” era is considered the primary black eye of the urban planning profession. During this time period — the 1960s mostly — there was a government-led, nationwide campaign of “slum removal.” Many low-income, minority neighborhoods that were, in retrospect, thriving, were intentionally leveled in this campaign, often to be replaced by highways. Thousands of people were displaced, without remuneration. Some of those neighborhoods have never recovered.

With stop lights and a 35 mile per hour speed limit, planners have been careful to design the Opportunity Corridor to be less intrusive than a limited access highway. But I still can’t help but think that this project seems oddly reminiscent of the 1960s. In fact, I am surprised that any city in this day and age would propose a new highway through a largely black urban neighborhood by the use of eminent domain.

But this project is being described as a boulevard, not a freeway, right?

Although they are careful to call this project a boulevard — and the way it is being designed, I think it’s fair to call it that — its function is most certainly to extend the freeway system. In contrast, many cities around the country right now, from Milwaukee to San Francisco to, just recently, Niagara Falls, New York are actually tearing down urban freeways, recognizing that they drain the life out of urban neighborhoods and provide little by way of revenue return to cities. So many of Cleveland’s neighborhoods have already been carved up and profoundly damaged by urban freeways. An analysis by Dallas-based planner Patrick Kennedy found that Cleveland already has the fourth highest number of highway miles per capita of any city in the country.

Highways occupy hundreds of thousands — indeed millions — of acres in cities around the United States that don’t return a cent of revenue to their host municipalities. The homes and businesses that will be demolished for this project will represent a loss in tax revenue for the city of Cleveland. There is no guarantee they will be replaced. If they are replaced, it may be by businesses that do more to benefit distant corporate shareholders than neighborhood residents.

The project has been touted as one that will provide jobs. What’s your take on that?

Sure. Project sponsors hope the road will lead to new development along the corridor. But a lot of highway-side development is sort of inherently low-value to local economies — gas stations, chain retail establishments, which provide little more than a few minimum wage paying jobs and certainly no long-range investment in the community.

I understand this project is being sold as an economic development scheme. But I think it is a very dated one indeed. Highway expansions are the silver bullet projects of the 1990s. More enlightened local economic development strategies now focus on “placemaking.” Around the country more and more people are demanding walkable urban neighborhoods, as an alternative over the erstwhile ideal of car-centered sprawl. Adding highway miles in Cleveland will only entrench lifestyle patterns that are going out of style — and further the region’s dependence on expensive, imported fossil fuels. The healthiest cities — the Seattles, the Minneapolises — are taking the opposite approach … building walkable, active, integrated communities that produce economic opportunities for residents and city coffers alike.

What impact do you think the road will have on neighborhood residents?

I think this project raises some clear equity concerns. In the neighborhoods the highway will bisect, more than a third of residents do not drive or have access to an automobile. Not only will these people not enjoy the primary benefit of this project, their mobility may be reduced. The road will be fairly wide and fairly high speed — although it could definitely be worse — and represent an obstacle to those who travel by foot. Thirty-five miles per hour is the type of speed where, if a car hits a pedestrian, it’s likely to be fatal. And as we all know, a 35 mile per hour speed limit is an invitation to drive 45 miles per hour.

I think you, Mansfield, brought up a good point in your land use article for Cool Cleveland. Who is this road for? I do think the designers of this plan truly hope and believe it will uplift the neighborhoods it bisects. But primarily it will benefit suburban commuters and the Cleveland Clinic. The hoped-for benefits to the surrounding neighborhoods would only be incidental to the movement between the suburbs and the Clinic. Table scraps is really what the neighborhoods are being offered — the meal is for the people that “really matter” in our economy: suburban commuters.

Imagine, what would a transportation scheme look like that was truly designed to uplift these neighborhoods?

Are there other heath concerns?

Yes, there are. There will also be environmental consequences borne primarily by the residents of the neighborhood. Environmental Health Watch reports that 22 percent of black children living on the east side of Cleveland have asthma. Just to underscore the seriousness of that situation, 8 percent of these children eventually require hospitalization for this illness. Any project that channels additional commuter traffic through these neighborhoods will aggravate those problems to some extent — despite what ODOT’s rigged-to-support-highway-development models may say.

What do you think the city should do instead?

In my opinion, Cleveland — including the Cleveland Clinic — would be far better served investing the $300 million proposed for this project in improving transit service to the growing medical campus, as well as biking and walking connections. Not only would that type of solution truly serve the surrounding neighborhoods, it would contribute to community health and social equity and a degree of true integration between these major employers and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Whenever I take the Red Line to University Circle, I am blown away by how few University Hospital employees are taking advantage of that stellar transit amenity and how many instead choose to drive by themselves – taking advantage of the ample concrete provided to them on wide thoroughfares like Cedar Road and the massive parking garages the hospital has built. These transportation investments – wide roads, parking garages – serve as an incentive for those employees to drive, not avail themselves of the more environmentally and socially friendly alternative – transit. What I am trying to say is, constantly investing in infrastructure for cars and starving transit only produces more drivers and creates the need for more road infrastructure – it’s a vicious cycle, and it’s very costly.

Are there other hidden costs the average citizen might not be aware of?

Yes. Taxpayers foot the bill. The State of Ohio — which means my tax dollars and yours — should not be continually called upon to assume greater and greater financial burden to promote uninterrupted automobile access to a private institution — as we have already seen in Avon, Twinsburg, and nearly every new sprawl-generating interchange on our suburban fringes. There are far more efficient and economic alternatives at hand that deserve more serious consideration than they have received.

There is a whole field called Transportation Demand Management that is concerned with finding cost effective ways to reduce how many people drive to specific destinations. There are many cheap or even revenue-positive strategies that would benefit the Cleveland Clinic more in the long term than a new road that will simply serve as a funnel for an endless stream of automobiles.

For example, the Cleveland Clinic could use variable parking pricing – raise prices for parking during peak commuting hours – to encourage carpooling and transit use. They might also see big savings – in terms of their investment in parking structures – if they offered some very small monetary incentive to employees to bike or take transit to work. From what I hear, this company – which is ostensibly in the business of health – does not currently even allow part-time bike commuters to take advantage of a discounted parking rate. Instead they are asking taxpayers to intervene on their behalf. In my opinion, they should first exhaust their internal options.

$300 million is a very high price to pay to shave a few minutes off a suburban commute, yet we’ve made these kinds of investments so many times it’s as if we’ve forgotten that there are alternatives. How many times have the residents of the East Side neighborhoods that this road will bisect been asked to accept transit service reductions or fare increases over the last few years? Why don’t we in this region have the same sense of urgency about those transportation issues? What kind of economic impact would investing an additional $300 million in our local transit system have? Has anyone really investigated that seriously, how it would compare? Of course not.

Public funds for infrastructure projects are becoming more and more scarce. Indeed, we may have to borrow the money for this project from future generations – future Turnpike revenues. Before we ever invest $300 million in any project in this region – especially funds we have borrowed — we owe it to ourselves to ask, how will this project benefit not only our economy, but our environment, our public health, our social cohesion, future generations?

Thank you, Angie, for your very enlightening answers to my questions.

Read the rest of the LANDMind series here:

Part One: Billy Tell’s Last Laugh

Part Two: Planned Abandonment

Part Three: Who Wins in the Land Use Lottery? Not the People

 

 

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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