Six Lanes of Bullshit

I've been driving my car too much lately.

I perform in theater here and there, and need to travel between my centrally-located home east to Cleveland Hts and/or west to Lakewood, often within a half hour as my schedule dictates.

On my recent east-bound trips I travel the Carnegie gauntlet, which along with Chester, is the street everybody uses to hurtle through the decimated east side of Cleveland up to the Heights communities.

One of my contentions is that you don't need to accomodate high flow-rate automobile access for a healthy retail economy.

The high volume of traffic on these streets doesn't seem to be doing any businesses there any good. In fact, any businesses that do thrive, such as my optometrist have long since sealed off their street-side doors in favor of a rear parking lot.

Walking along these streets is quite unpleasant and unsafe since they've been widened as much as possible for automobile traffic at the expense of the sidewalk.

These streets have become the de-facto freeways ever since the Heights communities bravely stopped the extension of I-490 in the 1960s, which would have torn Shaker Heights in half.

A good history of the battle is documented here:
Bad Freeways

They're at it again, promoting the "Opportunity Corridor" as some sort of high traffic rate economic engine:
Six lanes of "Economic Opportunity"

How can they not see the affect high traffic rates have had on Carnegie and Chester Avenues?

Chester Ave is a particular disaster: a wide R.O.W. in a residential area, yet no consideration of Bicycles or pedestrians whatsoever.

Between Chester and Carnegie sits Euclid Ave.

This road was recently redesigned, in my opinion, brilliantly. It's 25 MPH, with one lane for automobiles, one lane for buses, and a consistent bike lane.

The bike lane had to be fought for of course, and ends too soon, before it reaches downtown from the east at around E 22.

Guess which road is experiencing commercial re-birth?

The 25 MPH, restricted flow one: Euclid Ave.


An acceptable exchange regarding the Opportunity Corridor is if they henceforth reduce speeds on Carnegie and Chester and build Chester Avenue into the marvelous boulevard it should be.