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Tag: NOACA

  • Cleveland Set for $4 Million Grant for 15 “Quick-Build” Bike Lanes Across City – Cleveland Scene

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    Cleveland Moves is, well, about to move forward.

    The city’s optimistic plan to install more bike lanes across the city, from West Park to Glenville, is slated to get a little over $4 million to support the effort as City Council approved an ordinance to apply for a NOACA grant.

    Fifteen streets identified by planners (and survey takers) as high-priority are set to see “quick-build” infrastructure installed—most likely those plastic posts used to separate car from bike rider seen lately on Prospect and Huron downtown — with the award.

    The “high-comfort bicycle and pedestrian improvements” would be paid for by a $3.4 million grant from the Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency, which scored the money from the Feds through a program designed to tackle poor air quality and car congestion.

    A city spokesperson said that the money—$4.3 million total including the city’s own match—signaled that Cleveland Moves was moving right along as planned.

    “This action reflects Mayor Justin M. Bibb’s continued commitment to building a greener, more connected Cleveland,” the spokesperson told Scene, “where all residents have access to safe, affordable, and sustainable mobility options.”

    Cleveland Moves was approved in April as a kind of once-and-for-all initiative to give Clevelanders the option of biking safely anywhere in the city without the ongoing threat of being sidelined by a vehicle zipping by.

    The city’s plans to put bike lanes on 15 street segments, as shown in red and purple. Credit: Cleveland Moves

    Survey data collected earlier this year gave the Cleveland Moves team, led by Planning Director Calley Mersmann, a method of pairing together crash data—details on where bikers were getting hit a bunch—and where Clevelanders actually wanted protection on city roads.

    They focused on 50 miles of streets, including lanes connecting Public Square and Lakeside, which pair with the city’s plans to remake the lakefront as a pedestrian-friendly area, along with a North Marginal Bike Trail set to link Downtown with University Circle.

    Those 50 miles also include:

    • East 55th Street from Opportunity Corridor to Broadway Avenue.
    • Ontario Street from Lakeside Avenue to Huron Road.
    • Lakeside Avenue from West 9th Street to East 13th Street.
    • Berea Road from Triskett Road to Detroit Avenue.
    • St. Clair Avenue from East 55th Street to East 101st Street.
    • West 44th Street from Franklin Boulevard to Bush Avenue.
    • Randall/West 41st Street from Woodbine Avenue to Bush Avenue.
    • Fulton Road from Bush Avenue to Park Drive.
    • Detroit Avenue from Berea Road to West Boulevard.
    • Jennings Road from Treadway Creek Trail to the Towpath Trail.
    • West Boulevard from Detroit Avenue to Lake Avenue.
    • Community College Drive from Cedar Avenue to Outhwaite Avenue.
    • Abbey Avenue from West 11th Street to Lorain Avenue.
    • Walworth Avenue from West 53rd Street to Junction Road.
    • Dick Goddard Way from East 55th to Horizon Academy driveway

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    Mark Oprea

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  • NOACA Wants To Pay You Money to Not Drive Your Car in October

    NOACA Wants To Pay You Money to Not Drive Your Car in October

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    Mark Oprea

    Electric cars outside Tri-C earlier this year, a part of NOACA’s region-wide attempt to dissuade Northeast Ohioans from using gas-dependent cars.

    Feel like making $200 just for riding a bike or taking RTA?

    Well, according to the Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency (NOACA), you have a good shot of doing so in October.

    For the second time this year, NOACA is partnering with Gohio Commute to incentivize Northeast Ohioans to curtail—or ideally, eliminate—the use of fossil fuels in their commutes.

    Meaning through cold-hard cash: NOACA is willing to literally pay you to bike, carpool, take transit, walk, scooter or just leave the car in the garage for the day.

    Throughout the entirety of next month, any car-owners over 18 in Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain or Medina counties can log their non-auto mileage on Gohio for a chance, at the end of October, to win Visa gift cards from $25 to $200.

    The motivation, of course is “to provide participants the information needed to make smart travel choices,” NOACA said in a press release, “to save money, improve your health and improve air quality.”

    Such an effort to bolster the area’s interest in non-carbon transport is a small notch in NOACA’s Climate Action Plan, a regional attempt to reach a national net-zero in carbon emissions by 2050, as set forth last year by the Biden administration.

    The attempt also fits into a Cleveland gradually becoming more amenable to alternative forms of transportation, as bike-and-walk-friendly projects come closer into view—like the North Marginal Trail Connector and the Cleveland Moves plan to beef up the city with safer bikeways.

    Which Gohio seems to been aiding. In their September rendition, 249 participants logged 26,461 miles of non-car commuting, saving presumably $12,000 in gas costs. And about nine tons of carbon emitted.

    Yet, with more than half of Cuyahoga County residents residing in the surburbs, RTA’s paltry reach to those on the fringe might not seem feasible over cars

    Heading from Strongsville to the County Building saves, Gohio’s map tells us, six pounds of carbon, yet it takes nearly an hour longer via RTA. (Or, you could just carpool with 11 others who signed up nearby.)

    Winners of that $200 grand prize will be announced, NOACA says, on October 31.

    Everyone interested can sign up here.

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    Mark Oprea

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  • ‘Unhealthy’ Air Quality Alerts Issued for Cleveland as Heat Wave Arrives

    ‘Unhealthy’ Air Quality Alerts Issued for Cleveland as Heat Wave Arrives

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    AirNow

    A radar report of the region’s air quality rating Monday morning, showing moderate levels of ozone pollution in yellow.

    The Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency issued an “Unhealthy” air quality warning for the five-county region on Monday morning.

    Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage and Summit counties will all see noticeable shifts in potentially harmful ozone content, NOACA said, which could cause coughing, sore throats and congestion for children, the elderly and people with lung disease.

    As of 11 a.m. Monday, Cleveland had a 69 air quality index rating, a composite score of polluting particles that reach ground-level. Sandusky’s was 70. Wooster, 65. Mentor, 69. And Youngstown, 63.

    A gas that could be toxic in extreme levels, ozone—bad ozone, not the naturally occurring gas that protects us from harsh sun rays—is caused primarily by emissions from cars, solvents, paints, industry and fossil fuels in general. Higher heat levels, like those slated to rise this week to near 100-degree levels, exacerbate ozone gas’s deleterious effects.

    NOACA’s late June warning brings to mind the Canadian wildfires one year ago, when harmful smoke made its way southward, covering Cleveland in a thick cloud of gray and brown. On June 27, 2023, Cleveland reported an AQI rating of 291, just 10 points away from a “Hazardous” alarm from the Environmental Protection Agency.

    The good news, NOACA announced in April, is that air pollution levels across Northeast Ohio aren’t slipping into the unmanageable.

    In the agency’s latest Air Quality Trends Report, NOACA listed pollution from ozone as “stable,” while listing pollutants from fine particle matter, like PM2.5, as “decreasing.” A trend, the agency says, that can be extended by cleaner energy production and an overall shift away from vehicles that run on fossil fuels.

    Regardless, Cleveland was ranked 4th worst U.S. city for asthma patients, according to a report published last September by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

    And human-driven climate change continues to make sustained periods of extreme heat more frequent, with heat being the number one-related weather killer.

    The city of Cleveland is operating six cooling centers this week. Details below.

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    Mark Oprea

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  • NOACA Study Details Dangers of Downtown Cleveland Streets, Paves Way for Solutions

    NOACA Study Details Dangers of Downtown Cleveland Streets, Paves Way for Solutions

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    Mark Oprea

    Cyclists downtown last summer. A recent study by NOACA teased bike lanes in Cleveland’s future.

    Last Friday, in a boardroom at the Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency, a team of transportation consultants from Columbus detailed the culmination of three years of studies done on the streets of Downtown Cleveland.

    The results, in a 45-slide presentation, clarified the area’s need for a makeover: To put roughly 80 percent of its streets on a road diet—shortening their widths. To build center medians on those like East 9th. To link bike lane pathways already in planning stages.

    “You can see a little bit of a network forming, but not a lot,” Steve Thieken, a planning specialist at Burgess & Niple, the firm responsible for the study, said at last week’s meeting, according to Cleveland.com. “Compared to peer cities, many have a more completed system.”

    What the end product of NOACA’s three-year Downtown Livability and Transportation Study does, besides acknowledge Downtown’s gaping lack of safe bike lane infrastructure, is two-fold.

    Besides laying foreshadowing framework for the City Mobility Plan, NOACA’s downtown overlook—which cost a quarter of a million dollars—will enable the Mayor’s Office of Capital Projects, and other departments, to pinpoint and better apply for state and federal funds that could, one day, pave way for actual construction.

    Which, the study pointed out, carries both elements of contemporary design and a glowing need to remake streets into safer transportation routes. Along with a meaty proposal for, say, throwing a center lane and bike path onto the four-to-six lane beast that is East 9th St., the study found that 40 percent of those surveyed regularly felt unsafe riding bikes or scooters.

    NOACA’s notch in Cleveland’s pursuit of more modern street design contributes to a growing narrative for what the city itself could look like in the next decade, as more gradually come further in line under a principle becoming more obvious: we need to right the wrongs of past planning decisions.

    Or, as a slide labeled “Untapped”in Friday’s presentation put it: “Many downtown streets are designed for rush hour and special event traffic, which can lead to higher vehicle speeds during non-peak hours.” In other words, infrastructure drives behavior.

    “People have to remember that streets aren’t only for automobiles,” NOACA President Grace Gallucci told Scene in a call Thursday. “And that’s how you have to discuss this with people for [these plans] to make sense. And I mean, people who are driving want to be safe too.”

    click to enlarge Where bike lanes are—and are not—downtown, in teal, blue and pink, a slide from NOACA's presentation last week showed. - Burgess & Niple

    Burgess & Niple

    Where bike lanes are—and are not—downtown, in teal, blue and pink, a slide from NOACA’s presentation last week showed.

    click to enlarge Where bike lanes and shortened streets could be or will be in Cleveland's future. - Burgess & Niple

    Burgess & Niple

    Where bike lanes and shortened streets could be or will be in Cleveland’s future.

    And just as long as NOACA’s been developing its study—and much, much longer in Greater Cleveland lore—ideas on which Downtown streets to overhaul have been gathering.

    As its study teased last Friday, those ideas are wide-ranging: six total cycle tracks on Downtown’s east side; a bike trail that runs from Public Square to Progressive Field; an East 9th Greenspace Corridor that links Downtown’s front door to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

    “Oh, that’s such an unpleasant experience,” Audrey Gerlach, the VP of economic development for Downtown Cleveland, Inc., a partner in NOACA’s study, said. “I don’t want to push a stroller, or a wheelchair [down East 9th], even as an able-bodied person.”

    “To me, this is definitely not an if but a when,” Gerlach added. “Consultants in town to study this is important—but we all instinctively know that East 9th is dangerous.”

    As for actually making East 9th safer, and not just more aesthetically pleasing with tree lines and median refuges (resting spots in the middle of crosswalks), only City Hall itself is in the jurisdiction to bring Downtown’s streets into the 21st century.

    Calley Mersmann, a senior strategist for transportation and member of the city’s Mobility Team, told Scene that the study she helped steer over the past three years has real world applications as far as bankrolling projects to enhance Downtown’s walkability. Mersmann suggested that the Mayor’s Office of Capital Projects, along with other departments, could leverage said study into grant funding from—ironically—NOACA’s own Transportation for Livable Communities Initiative. (Up to $2 million a year, though.)

    “Because this plan exists,” she put it simply, “we can tap into that.”

    As for the Mobility Plan, which could include a network of unified bike lanes across the city, that should be released to the public by early 2025.

    NOACA’s study …

    “This plan kind of took those ideas to the next step by instituting them as recommendations,” she said.

    Her colleague, and active transportation planner, Sarah Davis agreed. “It’s helpful to have that zoomed in perspective as we’re going into this citywide,” Davis said. “And to be able to focus in more specifically. That this is out there, and people are thinking about it.”

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    Mark Oprea

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