By Joe Baur
After years of construction, Cleveland’s Innerbelt Bridge Project opened this weekend to traffic following a Friday morning ceremony where the public was invited to walk onto the new Innerbelt to see some of the best views of the city skyline. Images from the day show attendees with wide smiles, enjoying what was temporarily an incredible pedestrian bridge.
Then, the Innerbelt was promptly given back to cars the next morning for drivers to curse and swerve, offering the misery that only highway commuting can provide.
With two years left before the project is completely done, traffic will head east and west on the new bridge while the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) works to demolish the existing bridge and build another new one in its place. This way each direction will have its own bridge.
The idea to give each direction a bridge was done, in part, in the name of sustainability. With fewer cars on each bridge, they will last longer. To me, that’s sustainability like throwing a bottle of Gatorade into the recycling bin once in a while is environmentally friendly.
Sustainable Alternatives
My question for ODOT is: Were any truly sustainable alternatives considered? $620 million is a hefty chunk of change to drop without any sort of discussion of alternative plans without batting an eye. In fact, I’m told this is the largest construction project ODOT has ever taken on.
That’s great ODOT is willing to take on big projects. But should their biggest project really be dedicated to an auto-oriented project when miles driven is decreasing, less people are acquiring a drivers license, and people want to live further from highways?
Downtown Cleveland is one of the very few examples we have of residential growth in this region. People are moving here to live in a dense, walkable environment where they don’t need a car. Yet we just rebuilt a massive piece of infrastructure that encourages people to live miles away from the city.
I can already hear the folks from Avon Lake, Westlake, or pick your exurb cracking their knuckles to fire off a response. I’ve seen it in other stories I’ve written. One comment from Nick Perry took on my thoughts against the Opportunity Corridor saying, “Adding this corridor will save me and many others time on their commute.”
He continues, ironically making my point in his explanation on why I-490 stops where it does at E. 55th.
“It was because rich people that lived near there at that time did not want a highway anywhere near their homes.”
Precisely. Because having a major interchange in your backyard isn’t necessarily good for property values. Otherwise Slavic Village today would be a housing mecca and Shaker Boulevard ground zero of the housing crisis.
Where’s Our Project?
In reality, alternative modes of transportation, like rail and cycling infrastructure, increase property values. I struggle to see the net benefit of an urban highway coming into the heart of our city. It certainly doesn’t make Carnegie and Ontario safe for neighborhood pedestrians and cyclists with traffic moving well above the posted 25 mile per hour speed limit. To the contrary, the Inner Belt largely serves folks in the exurbs to give them access to employment.
So I have to ask, ODOT: Where’s our $620 million transportation project for folks in the city without a car to reach centers of employment?
Yes, extending the Towpath Trail and the separated Lorain-Carnegie Bridge bike lane are great things linked to the Inner Belt project. But their respective price tags amount to scraps in the face of a $620 million highway.
Now, what would I have done if I were in charge of ODOT and gave people without a car a second thought? I would have scrapped the Innerbelt Bridge Project altogether.
(Cue collective gasp outside of the city.)
Removing urban highways have proven to stimulate economic activity and improve livability for residents. San Francisco, Milwaukee, New York City, Seoul, and Paris all offer examples in some form of how removing or simply not rebuilding urban highways has improved their respective cities. Traffic, not businesses, even disappeared in New York City’s case.
Now how would that look in Greater Cleveland? I’m glad those of you who haven’t already skipped to writing a caps locked-filled angry comment asked.
Behold what I like to call “Cleveland Restored.”
Cleveland Restored
What you’re looking at are two hypotheticals as to how I-90 can remain connected without the Inner Belt. From east to west, 90 can simply follow 271 south through Mayfield Heights to 480, the turnpike, and finally 90 again.
I’ve also taken the liberty of highlighting an additional alternative in yellow that instead takes 90 further south on 271, connecting to the turnpike through Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Why we ever allowed so many highways to cut through a beautiful slice of nature will always be beyond the scope of my intellectual capabilities, but that’s a subject for another day.
Either way, the end result is a protective rim around our urban developments. By limiting highway access to our neighborhoods, we will be prioritizing the kind of sustainable development that the next generation of renters and home owners are attracted to, thus bringing a modicum of Cleveland’s lost population back to the city.
I call the idea “Cleveland Restored,” because it’s a major step toward restoring Cleveland for its residents before the days of when highways gut our neighborhoods, like Collinwood, Tremont and Slavic Village.
For those who don’t like that idea, it’s well documented that urban highways such as I-90 and I-71 were huge players in contributing to Cleveland’s suburban sprawl and ultimately our historic population loss. So if your objection is simply that of personal convenience so you can live 25 miles away and drive to work in 30 minutes without stopping, well excuse me if I’m not ready to cue the sympathy violins.
Let’s Get Metaphorical
I’m always willing to admit that I’m not an urban planner. I can read experts with reasonable comprehension and regurgitate that information for you to enjoy or rip your hair out.
My point is ultimately that we need to talk about alternatives when faced with a $620 million check. Where are we heading as a city? We thought the Inner Belt was a good idea when we built it 60 years ago. But is a 1954 idea really still a good idea for Cleveland? If we’re going to attract the next generation of residents and businesses, we need to think about where we’re heading over the next 50 years. Reinvesting in old infrastructure that’s becoming less popular isn’t the answer.
Yes, the old Innerbelt Bridge needed to go for safety’s sake. But did it need to be rebuilt? I argue no. Perhaps in the end I would have been wrong, but halting highway construction in a state overrun by asphalt is a conversation long overdue in this town.
Mayor Jackson evidently made some comments at his mayoral victory party about a dream the late councilwoman Fannie Lewis shared with him. In essence, Lewis heard people screaming underneath a huge slab of concrete in her vision. The people, Jackson said, were screaming because they had to bear the burden of this concrete. That’s when Lewis reportedly told Jackson that it’s their duty as public officials to never add to that burden of the “huge slab of concrete.”
What a metaphor for the Innerbelt.
Joe Baur is a freelance writer, filmmaker and satirist with a diverse array of interests including travel, adventure, craft beer, health, urban issues, culture and politics. He ranks his allegiances in the order of Cleveland, the state of Ohio and the Rust Belt, and enjoys a fried egg on a variety of meats. Joe has a B.A. in Mass Communication with a focus on production from Miami University. Follow him at http://JoeBaur.com and on Twitter @BaurJoe.
2 Responses to “The Innerbelt Bridge: Searching For Multi-Modal Alternatives in a Concrete City”
William
Joe, I normally agree with most of your points, but this one escapes me. All of the neighborhoods property values bottomed out to just about nothing well before any serious talk of the corridor set in. Shaker Blvd (at least in Shaker Heights) property values are too high to have ever become ground zero for the housing crisis. Plus it’s not in Cleveland where just about every last neighborhood has been or going through significant decline (whether near an interchange or not), which has more to do with demographics, poverty, terrible schools etc., some of the very things that are not shared with most places that are near or far from an interchange. The neighborhoods along the corridor would be the most likely place to shrink/consolidate neighborhoods that are no longer functional, and only serve to drain the city. While I’m not necessarily in favor of shortening the commute for people that choose to live in the far out suburbs, I also believe that this road well only help to open up (and clean) land for future and tax generating uses. Bottom line is, Cleveland continues to shrink, with no chance of this area ever improving as functional and tax generating neighborhoods (and this isn’t a neighborhood that is going to come back). It’s best to redefine and not allow it to continue to be a further drain.
William
Above should be “Plus, its partially because its in Cleveland here just about every last ……. And when mentioning about property values on Shaker Blvd, I’m referring to the difference in housing stock among other things.