Redesigning Our City's Streets

 Should Cleveland Implement Standardized Street Designs?

The answer to this question depends on how much you think road safety is a priority; my answer is yes. While there are a variety of street widths in Cleveland, there are certainly ways in which we can standardize designs based on the right-of-way width. For example, residential streets are generally narrow, while commercial streets are usually the widest. As such, it would be possible to standardize the number of lanes and bike/pedestrian amenities for each street width. From an efficiency perspective, this significantly simplifies the way in which street designs are implemented.

In this post, I’ve created a few examples of standard street cross-sections that provide space for multi-modal transportation and also allow for increased safety. The widths I have chosen here are 50, 60, 80, and 100 feet. Of course, there are many widths in the City of Cleveland that are not represented here, so minor modifications could be made to fit each unique scenario. 

Residential Streets

Almost universally in the City of Cleveland, the rights-of-way for residential side streets are approximately 50 feet wide. Below, I have created a cross-section of what a typical residential street should look like in order to promote road safety and the use of multiple transportation modes. 

In this example, you can see provisions for both sufficiently wide sidewalks and tree lawns, in addition to on-street parking on one side of the street; this parking should alternate sides to slow down traffic. Speed limits on residential streets should be reduced to no more than 20 miles per hour so as to ensure safer bicycling. Generally, bike-specific infrastructure should not be necessary on low-traffic, residential streets; however, road markings and signage may be present to denote the use of certain roads that are designated as bicycle boulevards. 

Commercial Streets

Commercial streets should realistically have more dedicated infrastructure for bikes, as well as wider sidewalks, in many cases. This section will look at three different widths for residential streets - 60’, 80’, and 100’. In these examples. Speed limits on these types of streets should be set at 25 miles per hour or lower, promoting safety. 

In the example above of the 60’ street, a two-way parking-protected bike facility has been added to help separate bicyclists from high traffic volumes. One example of a commercial street that fits into this example is Fulton Road, which is generally 60’ wide between Franklin Circle and Clark Avenue. This street is already a much safer alternative to W. 25th Street for bicyclists, but adding protected infrastructure would be a major benefit to the corridor and the residents who live along it. 

On medium-width commercial streets, which I’m defining here as 80’ wide, there is space to expand sidewalks and add a dedicated turn lane along the length of the roadway. Wider sidewalks enable placing amenities in the frontage zone along the buildings, including benches, planters, and other amenities. The two-way bike lane is also preserved to ensure safer travel. This width of the street is much more likely to support bus service than streets of the previous width. An example of a street in Cleveland that is 80’ wide is Prospect Avenue. 

Finally, this example of a large commercial street shows that there is enough room to create a 4-lane road (this should really be the maximum number of lanes. In this case, adding a center median in the road helps to decrease crossing distances, which is really beneficial for pedestrians. Also, the sidewalks can be significantly wider, supporting sidewalk patios and other uses that need a greater amount of space. Here, the two-way bike facility has been converted to a raised track that runs at sidewalk level. This is definitely the safest type of bike facility. Additionally, this road width has no on-street parking. I did not permit parking in this configuration because this street width would be the highest volume, and allowing parking on these types of streets generally causes a lot of congestion and blockages. An example of a Cleveland street of this width is St. Clair Avenue. 

Improved Designs Aid Safety

One of the most important factors in creating safer streets is lowering vehicle speeds. While many places simply try to do this by lowering the speed limit, design elements must also be introduced to enforce the desired behaviors. This is a feature throughout the typologies I have introduced above - building streets with narrow travel lanes forces drivers to be more careful, thereby lowering speeds. Increasing the separation between cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians is also incredibly important in attaining safer streets. 

Thank you for reading! The blog will be taking a 1-week break, but will be back on 9/22!