Attendance:
Consultants
Bruce Mansfield – B&N
Neil Chase – B&N
Mary Cierebiej - HNTB
Paul Dorothy -Burgess & Niple
Matt Wahl- HNTB
Scott Buchanan- Burgess & Niple
Cory Grayburn - URS
Paul Alsenas -- Cuyahoga County Planning Commission
Michael Armstrong --Federal Highway Administration
David Beach -- EcoCity Cleveland
William Beckenbach -- The Quadrangle
Debbie Berry -- City of Cleveland Planning Commission
Jamie Blackson Baker -- St. Clair/Superior Development Corporation
Robert Brown -- City of Cleveland Planning Director
Millie Caraballo -- Cleveland Industrial Retention Initiative
David Coyle -- District 12 Deputy Director, ODOT
Tim Donovan -- Ohio Canalway
Ronald Eckner -- NOACA
Colleen Gilson -- Tremont West Development Corporation
Claire Kilbane for Timothy Hagan, Cuyahoga County Commissioner
Phil Hartman -- Ohio Motorist Association
James Haviland -- MidTown Cleveland
Craig Hebebrand – ODOT
Jamal Husani -- Cuyahoga County Engineer’s office
Howard Maier -- Director, NOACA
Joseph Mazzola -- Ohio City Near West Development Corporation
John Motl-- ODOT
Brian Newbacher -- Ohio Motorist Association
Scott Pollock -- Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority
Mark Ricchiuto -- City Cleveland Public Service Director (co-chair)
Dale Schiavoni -- ODOT
Michael Schipper-- GCRTA
Timothy Tramble -- Burten Bell Carr
Jerome Walcott -- Commission on Catholic Community Action
Thomas Starinsky -- Historic Warehouse/Historic Gateway
Matt Zone -- Cleveland City Council – Ward 17
Guest Sign-In
Sarah J. Beimers, Preservation Programs Associate -- Cleveland Restoration Society
Brian Cummings – Ward 15 Cleveland Councilman
Fred Findley -- Cleveland City Schools (CCS)
Bob Gardin -- ADCC
Ed Hauser – Cleveland resident
Lora Hummer -- ODOT
Jonathan Holdoy -- Cuyahoga County
Steve Litt -- The Plain Dealer Art & Architecture Critic
Robert Mascaxer -- Financial Management Association (FMA)
Laura Noble -- Downtown Cleveland Partnership
Bob Parker -- Baker & Associates
Jeff Pessler – St. Clair/Superior Development Corporation
James Pressler -- Director of physical development, Greater Cleveland Partnership
Ken Sislak -- DMJM Harris, representing Cuyahoga Community College
Norma Stefanik -- Cuyahoga Community College/Youngstown State University
Lester Stumpe -- Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District
Michael Taylor -- representing Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones
Kurt Weaver -- Financial Management Association (FMA)
Ned Whelan – Whelan Communications
Aubrey Sippola – Whelan Communications
Introductions around the table
Craig Hebebrand: ODOT has been focused on many parts of the transportation plan. On the Lakefront West ODOT, FHWA and the City of Cleveland met a couple of weeks ago to reach an understanding on how to proceed to negations with Michael Baker & Associates under contract to start the next phase of work around the first of the year for the Lakefront West. We have moved the start of construction from 2008 to 2009. regarding the Cuyahoga River Valley Inner Modal Connector, the study team now is gathering some additional information. We have asked them to go back and look in more detail at the material handling movements within the Valley. What comes in by what mode and what goes out by what mode, including the number of trips by each and the location that those come in and come out of.
Originally we concentrated on the salts and aggregates. Now we want them to look at other materials because there are a lot of other shipments that come in from manufacturing facilities in that immediate area. They are expanding all that information and reviewing soil bores previously done, including the recent study by EDP, so we can get a better handle on the slope instability problem on the west bank of the River between Columbus and Detroit roads.
The Opportunity Corridor Committee has recommended narrowing the number of Corridors from 4 to 2. This recommendation will be brought to public after the first of the year. What the committee looked at is keeping the roadway in the so-called Forgotten Triangle neighborhood, since that is the area where they are trying to activate the land, so the alignments to the north where there is existing development were dropped in favor of ones that stay within the Triangle.
For the Quigley Road Connector, we have filed tracings. We will start construction in the spring 2006 and will be substantially complete by the end of the year. Yet, there will be additional work that will continue through the spring of the following year.
On East 55th street, there are two projects:
The bridge work over the highway will start in 2007. The railroad bridge work over East 55th will begin in 2008. When we are done from north of the railroad bridge through, around, and over the interchange and around the curve toward Gordon Park, we will have 4 lanes, 2 bike lanes, and sidewalks. We will take the bike lanes and connect them to the Lakefront bikeway in that area.
While I was talking, Lora Hummer of ODOT passed out a letter. I will let Mark Ricchiuto talk about the letter that he and I prepared to set the stage for the next steps.
Mark Ricchiuto: Through our discussions, most of us here are not familiar with this detailed federal process and this is the first time for a lot of people to hear about it. So this is one of the things we wanted to do at this point because there is still a lot of confusion, particularly in terms of not only steps in the process, but where when and how does the public input play a role in the process. What this letter does is simply define the rest of the process from this point forward. The letter tries to explain those buzzwords the Federal Highway Administration uses, such as Access Modification Study. This explains what those different points are along the way, again to emphasize when, where and how public input takes place.
The other thing we noted, the second page of the letter along with ODOT’s Web site for this, explains the various mechanisms for public input so everyone is clear about it, as well as in the following paragraph after that on the second page. We state and make sure that we want public input to basically continue throughout the process until the environmental assessment ODOT has completed gets submitted to Federal Highway. So once again, we just felt it was important to specify in detail, in writing with explanations for a lot of these terminologies the Federal Highway uses, so everyone is clear about the process and clear about public input.
Lester Stumpe: Mark, are the opportunities before the Planning Commission? Is there something about how that is also public input, because that’s not really a part of that process? I’m trying to recall. Wasn’t there something signed between ODOT and the city about the city representing this long laundry list of issues and that it should be part of the public process? I’m just trying to tie this all together.
Ricchiuto: That’s a good point and I would like Robert Brown to comment on it and Debbie can add on too.
Bob Brown: Yes, there is a document that requires presentations to the City Planning Commission with public involvement, and that meeting is tomorrow at 9 a.m. in City Hall. Now, the Commission won’t be taking any action tomorrow, because it is the first time they’ll have ever seen this level of detail of the plan. This will be an informational presentation to the Commission, and then we will work out a schedule for ODOT to return to the Commission for future public meeting for further input and action. Debbie (Berry) would you like to add to that?
Debbie Berry: No.
Stumpe: All right, so that schedule will be addressed and made known on the Web site?
Stumpe: The Planning Commission actually picked out a large responsibility. There’s long list of unresolved turns coming out of the Scoping Committee. Is that process systematically going through, and will the Commission be able to deal with those concerns?
Hebebrand: Sure, that would be part of the Commission’s actions taken in tomorrow’s meeting.
Berry: Tomorrow is really the first meeting; there will be a series of meetings. The Commission hasn’t seen anything in about a year. Based on information, we’ll figure out where we need to go next as they address some of the issues specifically and answer questions.
(Not sure who is speaking) Yeah, talking to Tony Klein, he obviously is concerned about the number and complexity of issues, and clearly there will be series of meetings with the Planning Commission. This isn’t going to be a one- or two-meeting process. The focus for the City of Cleveland for the MOU was to insure the whole process came before the Planning Commission before it moved on. That was our central focus point with the whole thing. So, Lester, your point about the Planning Commission is a critical one in this whole process.
Paul Alsenas: Is it possible to integrate public documents on one schedule?
Hebebrand: That’s not a problem. We will go ahead and do that. In fact, we should have done that, but our focus was so specific around the Federal Highway process. That’s the only reason it was excluded. But you are right on target. We will do that so it will simplify things for everybody.
Hebebrand: Today starts a process of about 12 months of ODOT taking what we have learned over the last five years and balancing everything that we have learned about this corridor: the needs, the constraints, and putting forth a recommendation. In the next year, we will refine that recommendation and forward to Federal Highway. This meeting begins the feedback on that recommendation. In December, we will publish a rather large document. I apologize that it wasn’t available before this meeting. The document will be 400 pages. The editing has taken longer than anticipated. This document will be made available to everyone, on our Web site, and for anyone outside that would like a copy, CD’s will be available at the Cleveland Public Library systems as well.
With that said, Paul Dorothy will walk you through the recommendation. We have worked pretty hard with everybody since June, including lots of meetings with stakeholders so we better understood the issues that were raised in June and prior to June. We made numerous adjustments to the recommendation before bringing it to you today.
Paul Dorothy: We are going to start off by talking about some things that we have worked on since we last met, specifically an update to the safety study. We focused on the area starting with I-90 coming across the Carnegie Curve to the Trench out to the Innerbelt Curve. We broke that analysis down in the Central Interchange, from Carnegie to Superior, which is the Innerbelt Trench and from Superior through the Innerbelt Curve. I want to talk to you about what we reconfirmed with that analysis. One of the nice things: we were using two different data-sets for this update, now using 2002-2004. Previously, we were using 1998-2000.
The data-sets were fairly consistent in what they told us. There were some variations in where there were random events like where fatalities occurred, but when we looked at overall trends, they were very consistent. In the corridor I-90 from Ontario north to the Innerbelt Curve, we have ramp structures associated with that main line. We have 787 crashes per year on average in that section. That results in about 2 crashes per day in that section of the Innerbelt just north of the River.
In fact, that two-mile segment of I-90, which includes the Central Interchange and the Innerbelt Trench, ranks 1st out of 139 freeways in the State accident hot spot list. In other words, it is the most dangerous two-mile segment of freeway facility we have in the state and the problem we need to address. Injury crashes in this section of the Innerbelt represent 31% of the freeway crashes that we have out there. The statewide average is only 25.1%, so a big concern with this section of the highway is if there is a crash, more likely it will result in an injury than other portions of the state.
Let’s look at the injury crashes by segments from Central Interchange, Trench and Curve. With the average 31%, we can see the biggest contributor to that is the Innerbelt Trench at 34%, again with the statewide average at 25.1%. Some things that contribute to this crash problem are what we call geometric deficiencies. Basically we looked at the existing design and compared it against our existing date design status. We classified that any place there was a differential between the design standard and what was actually constructed out there.
Today we assigned that difference to one or two categories, either Primary or Other deficiency. A Primary Deficiency is something where we grossly do not meet current date design status. Example: the Innerbelt Curve, the radius of that curve is 453 feet, should be over 1,000ft. So there’s a big difference between what the design specs says it should be and what it is actually. Something like that is assigned a Primary Deficiency. One where we have a minor change, i.e., a curve radius of 270 ft., we have a 200 ft. radius, in that case that would be an example of an “other.”
Conflict point: that’s where you have one ramp coming onto the freeway, another ramp downstream from that coming off the freeway and traffic from the mainline that wants to get off versus traffic from the ramp that wants to get on the mainline. And those two movements cross themselves on the freeway. Those conflict points are very strongly associated with safety problems. We identify the number of conflict points in this study as well. As you can see, we have a large number in Primary Deficiencies and awkward points associated with the existing system. Those are directly attributable to the safety problems. We will talk about each segment in more detail and look for the primary causal affects due to the high crash rates and high injury rates.
Let’s take a little broader view of the crashes in the Corridor and when they are typically occurring. If this is midnight through midnight, all crashes assigned to one-hour period at the start of the a.m. peak, taper off during midday. Then we see a strong spike during the p.m. peak travel. About 34% crashes occurred in this portion of the Corridor between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Again, we can see, looking at the remainder of the hours, that it is a pretty large differential variance compared with the other hours during the day.
Question: Why is that?
Dorothy: A different style of problems, also, typically, p.m. travel is higher than a.m. peak travel. So the numbers of vehicles out there are basically higher. Dealing with total crashes in this area, we would expect this to be somewhat higher than a.m. peak, just based on the fact that there is more exposure. But this is much higher than we would typically expect.
Hebebrand: The other contributing factor in downtown Cleveland is such a major destination that in the morning, we have many departures from the freeway which are easier to navigate than evening when people are trying to enter the freeway.
Dorothy: One of the other contributors to go with that is the fact that we were only looking at crashes that were occurring either on the freeway or on one of the ramps. So crashes that maybe occurring on one of the associated arterials was not included in this count.
The crash summary -- What we see when we assign a cause to the type of crash is that 43% of the crashes are rear-end and 14% sideswipe. So, with 57%, more than half of those types of crashes are associated with congestion. As we know from the previous presentations on the level of service to the Corridor, we know that congestion is a reoccurring problem and is a contributor to these types of crashes.
Okay, I am going to walk through the project from the north to the south and will put all information together. We will talk about new safety information. We will talk about proposed improvements. We will talk about the traffic flow patterns. We will talk about the Historic District and residential properties.
The first section that we are going to talk about is the Innerbelt Curve. At the Curve section as we looked at crash summary, one of the things we found is that despite this section of the Innerbelt’s reputation, the crash rate of the Innerbelt Curve and the injury rate of the Innerbelt Curve is lower than both the Trench and the Central Interchange sections. We see the crash rate listed here for the various segments of curves. The regional crash average is 1.2 crashes per million vehicle miles of travel. The section of roadway to the east of the Curve has a significantly lower than the regional crash average rate: .48 - .51. The section where the Lakeside and St. Clair ramps are, the crash rates jumps to 2.9 in both directions. So approaching and leaving the Curve not many problems, but it is when you get into the Curve where those interchange ramps are having problems.
How do we correct the deficiencies that we saw there? First thing we talked about before, flattening the Innerbelt Curve, reconstructing State Route 2 interchange, reconstructing all street bridges that cross the Innerbelt Corridor. Some things changed the Innerbelt Curves since we met with you. Based on public involvement and our work with St. Clair/Superior, we made modifications to the Innerbelt Curve, starting with the extension East 30th up parallel to the alignment between St. Clair and Hamilton. That extension will allow traffic up East 30th to continue up to Hamilton and work its way in with the removal of the St. Clair ramps, allowing better access to the St. Clair/Superior area.
One of the things we heard is previously we had cut off the westbound State Route 2 access to the interchange Municipal Parking Lot, as well as, the South Marginal Road. One of the things we heard from folks is that it is a good route into the St. Clair/Superior area. So we’ve added this ramp here. It maintains the connection through to this loop and allows westbound I-90 to get off and come through this loop ramp down South Marginal Road and then work your way back in. Or you can come off here still eastbound State Route 2, down and across South Marginal across the alignment. The connection is still there. South Marginal across the alignment just will go down a little bit. Are there any questions about this alignment before I move on more discussion about traffic flow in that area?
Okay, we have talked about the fact that there’s a direct correlation shown by safety studies between the geometric deficiency existing system and the safety problems that we have there. We had 14 Primary deficiencies, we reduced that to zero. We have 42 other deficiencies, we reduce that to one. We previously had 5 conflict points, we reduced that to 2 as a direct result impacting and improving safety in this portion of the corridor.
Travel flow into and out of the neighborhood: Under the existing system, travel flows from eastbound I-90 to either the Superior access into the neighborhood or the Lakeside Avenue ramps. Coming westbound, you typically drive down East 55th, and you’re way into the neighborhood. The only change proposed is removal of the Lakeside Avenue ramps and the extension from East 30th up to Hamilton. Actually traffic patterns from the neighborhood. It takes the existing exiting pattern despite the existence of the ramp coming off of the Lakeside and East 26th area onto the freeway. It has a stop sign at the bottom.
Despite the existence of that ramp, most of the travel flow coming off Lakeside, most travel flow out there, is continuing down East 26th and utilizing the Superior on-ramp because it’s easier to get onto the freeway. Under the existing condition, we are showing that as a preferential flow coming out of the St. Clair/Superior area. There is no change in outbound travel flow to this section. The reason again: these stop conditions on ramps are not preferred by drivers because of the uncomfortable nature of having to come to a complete stop at the bottom of the ramp and then having to accelerate to freeway speeds before entering the system.
Any question on the curve before I move on to the Trench?
Alsenas: How would someone coming from the east have access to Burke Airport?
Dorothy: Westbound on I-90 when you get off State Route 2, there are many options depending on destination access to the Muny Parking Lot via the existing Muny Lot interchange. Other than that if you want to inter this area, go down East 9th Street get off, get on the North Marginal Road. We are not making changes to the State Route 2 Corridor. Changes to State Route 2 Corridor are being handled by the city’s Lakefront Plan and several changes have been suggested for access to that area as part of that plan. As part of this study, we are only concerned with maintaining access in the interchange area itself.
Again, we worked with the Lakefront Plan to ensure that our alternative that we have shown here will match with any of the alternatives that are currently being considered by that Lakefront Plan to make sure we have flexibility. The interchange is a high volume interchange, so if development does occur along the Lakefront, the interchange is able to handle it. So, this portion of the facility is designed to be able to handle both the Burke Lakefront Airport traffic and the potential future traffic. Additional changes are with the Lakefront Plan.
Stumpe: When you said that you considered land usage within the Loop, did you particularly identify the spaces dealing with storm water with respect to that?
Dorothy: We mainly looked at storm water requirements and our requirements for treating run-off. At this time, we have not done a detailed look at where we would site the storage facilities for that run-off -- whether it would be surface storage or most likely underground storage of some type. Again, we have not gone into any detail.
The other thing we have looked at is the interior of the existing loop. It is a terrestrial habitat area. As part of an on-going study, we paid more attention to the existing Loop ramp area because of our concern with the potential impacts in that area.
The Trench: Again, we did the same safety analysis for the crashes in the Trench area. We are talking about eastbound and followed by talking about westbound I-90. 71% of the crashes on eastbound I-90 are associated with 3 primary areas: The Chester Avenue on-ramp with its short acceleration and short taper lights. That first loop ramp that comes on is basically forced on to the eastbound Chester Avenue and to eastbound
I-90 loop ramp as it loops around and comes on.
It’s to merge in very quickly before the westbound Chester movement, which is using the ramp in the Northeast Quadrant, comes on entering the merge between Chester and Superior. The short weave between the Prospect Avenue on-ramp and the Chester Avenue off-ramp, we have 5.1 crashes per million-vehicle-miles in that section. The short weave is between the Chester Avenue on-ramp and the Superior on-ramp, so essentially the two weaves in that eastbound direction are causing significant crash problems.
In the Westbound direction, 74% problems are associated with two areas: 1. The short weave between the Superior on-ramp and Chester Avenue off-ramp. 2. The next weave Chester Avenue on-ramp and Prospect Avenue off-ramp. Between Chester and Prospect, we have 11.4 crashes per million vehicle miles. We all know that weave in particular causes us a lot of problems. That weave has a high safety problem, as well as a high congestion problem. It has a tendency to back vehicles around the loop ramp at Chester and back vehicles down Chester sometimes as far as East 36th Street. Again, there is a clear casual relationship between that short weave and both safety problems and operational problems on any given day.
Ricchiuto: Just to get a perspective. Obviously you would like zero crashes per million vehicle mile traveled. Is there an acceptable limit?
Dorothy: We typically compare these to the regional average with a sampling of that area. The statewide average is smaller, of course. Our regional crash average of 1.2 and we are typically trying to get below the regional average. Something that is close to 5 times the regional average is an area of extreme concern. Again, things like this clearly are the reason why this 2-mile section of roadway is ranked first on the hot spot list in Ohio.
We looked at two options for how to address the problems associated with this portion of the Corridor. When we came out of the last stakeholders meeting we had several, but have narrowed them down to two: First, the Minimum Alternative. We take the existing Trench System try to improve the weave areas by adding auxiliary lanes. These are lanes, where the on- ramp comes on and it stays as a dedicated lane until the next off-ramp and it goes off again. Sometimes those can help with capacity and alleviate some of those weave problems.
We remove the Carnegie Avenue ramp again, making as little change as possible to the connection points while making many geometric changes as we could in a very constrained area. What that resulted in, when we looked at level of service, we have failures within the Corridor. The Carnegie Curve from Chester Avenue back into the Central Interchange failed in the a.m. peak. Essentially it backed up the inbound traffic through the Central Interchange area causing the failure in that location.
The weave between and Chester and Superior, despite the auxiliary lane, was only operating a Level of Service E. In the westbound direction, the weave between Chester and Prospect, was also operating at Level of Service E. There should be no surprises here. Those are locations where under our current condition we are still having problems. In the p.m. peak, we see a failure on the mainline associated with the weave between Prospect Avenue and I-77 and the weave between Chester and Prospect backing up the Carnegie Curve area much as we see on any given day on the existing system.
On the eastbound direction, we also see failure of the weave between Chester and Superior. So this poor Level of Service for this alternative shows the inability to address any of the part of the 5 primary contributors to the safety problems in this section of the corridor. Again, this Alternative has significant difficulties.
Second, the Build Alternative that we looked at re-aligns I-90 slightly, by pushing the I-90 alignment about half an alignment to the east. Access is consolidated at Superior, which does not change as how it is present day and Payne and Chester as a split diamond. Traveling corridor both east and west to explain how those work. Coming eastbound, come out of the Central Interchange into Carnegie Curve, the first thing that is encountered is an exit to Chester. At Chester we can go left and right at Chester, or we through to a one-way frontage road that parallels the alignment to Payne. Left to right on Payne or back onto facility:
If you stayed on the facility eastbound I-90 after past the exit to Chester/Payne the next thing you will encounter is an exit to Superior. What we have done there is called braiding the ramps. We made it so we see the exit to Chester, followed by the exit to Superior followed by the entrance from Payne followed by the entrance from Superior. So what you see there are the two weaves that we showed causing us significant safety problems have been eliminated.
By removing access at Prospect and Carnegie and by braiding access Chester/Payne and Superior we have eliminated both of those high crash locations. By reconfiguring Chester we removed the third eastbound problem that we had that was our primary contributor, contributing to our 71% of our safety problems in this corridor.
Westbound, the first thing you encounter is an off-ramp to Superior. The next thing is an off-ramp to Payne. Again, down a one-way frontage road to Chester this time in order to get back on, turn to the right using the existing loop ramp coming back onto the alignment. You stay on westbound I-90; again, we see an exit to Superior, an exit to Payne, an entrance from Superior and an entrance from Chester. That removes one of the two weaves that was giving us a problem in the westbound direction in both safety and operation. By removing the Prospect ramps, we remove that second problem eliminating our primary contributing factors to both safety and operational problems.
I am going to talk about access to and from Carnegie as part of my discussion about the Central Interchange. I will talk about access to and from Prospect as part of the Trench. We looked at the Midtown Connector roadway, which is a two-way roadway starting here at Chester, down to Euclid, down to Prospect, on the westside and the eastside between Prospect and Carnegie. What this allows is north/south movement between the Prospect corridor and the Interstate facility.
If you are coming from the east, or desiring to go to the east, utilize this section of the connector to up into the Chester/Payne interchange area, which provides you access to I-90 in either direction. If you are looking to head either to I-77 or to I-90, I-71 and points to the south and west, the roadway takes you down to Carnegie. This brings you into the Central Interchange area here at East 18th and provides you access to either I-77 or I-90, which leads you to I-71 and State Route 176. So, full access to Prospect is provided via this new Midtown Connector roadway.
Question: How many lanes are those one-way connectors?
Dorothy: The one-way connectors are two lanes going both the same way. Also you are looking at additional turn lanes at the intersections, but typically two lanes.
Thomas Starinsky of Historic Warehouse/Gateway: Are two lanes going the same way? Curiously, is Prospect still on the table provided more access into Downtown, coming westbound getting off at Payne, do you use the Connector to get over to Prospect into downtown? How do I go home? Seems to me you are providing a way to get through there, but there isn’t a clear way to get back. Usually people like to go back the way they came. What if there are multiple events?
Dorothy: Return trip would be to come back up that same path. South Chester is two-way. Again, come over to this roadway, turn left drive up from Euclid to Chester, turn right, turn left onto frontage road and get onto the freeway. So pretty much a close return trip.
Starinsky: What about multiple events scheduled at the same time?
Dorothy: I’m not sure if any facility could handle multiple events. If we look at how our exiting system operates, what’s causing us problems with both congestion and safety is the large number of access points. Chester is backing up everyday because Prospect is interfering with the people trying to come on through Chester trying to get onto the Innerbelt. So by spreading these access points out and allowing cars to come on with an on-ramp or by on-ramp getting rid of the weaves, we improve operation of the mainline facility. While there are fewer points to get on or off, they operate significantly better.
Ricchiuto: Although you will never have a perfect solution to handle multiple events like what Tom described, will it be improved over what it is today?
Dorothy: It should be, yes. Again, if you look at how traffic control is typically done for these events, the traffic control is localized in the area of the event. Once you get out of that portion of the event and try to get onto the freeway, you are on your own. There are multiple people using those access points and this exacerbates the existing problems. We have tried to spread things out and reconfigured the freeway so you can get on and off easier. When we look at level of service in both of our peak periods, we have level services of D or better for the entire corridor for both the AM and the PM. That gives us a lot of additional capacity to handle some of these special events traffic. We have not modeled a special events or combination of special events, but there is plenty of capacity remaining in that system since it looks better under our peak conditions.
John Motl of ODOT: East 17th street will be extended.
Dorothy: There are multiple paths up to Chester at that point. Chester is a very robust arterial. The current problems associated with Chester have little to do with the design of Chester itself, but have to do with the failing weaves on the mainline freeway. So, get rid of those failing weaves on the mainline freeway and Chester, which is a very wide Boulevard with plenty of roadway capacity, gets to operate as it was intended.
Starinsky: Except for when you get below East 13th Street when Chester becomes more of a local road. When Prospect was in the mix, downtown stakeholders felt more comfortable with it. Now that you are taking it out, you are not really taking advantage of the fact that Carnegie is not providing any kind of access. I know you want to talk about this when you get to the Central interchange. It seems to be a part the idea of the mix.
Dorothy: We will talk about Carnegie, if you could hold that question.
Starinsky: Yeah, I only brought it up because I feel it’s part of the mix and we need ways to get in and out of the area
Dorothy: I would agree, but I’m trying to break it up into logical pieces.
Ricchiuto: One more on this point. What I heard you say, Paul, is that we haven’t really modeled or looked at the scenario of multiple large events in downtown?
Dorothy: But keep in mind there are few cities in this country that can handle multiple special events scheduled at the same time. You can’t design your system for that.
Ricchiuto: I’m not asking you to do that, but since this type of scenario does exist and we plan on improving, enhancing, and increasing the vitality of downtown, multiple events only exacerbate the traffic problem, I just want to make sure that the scenario that we end with, we are doing better than today and certainly not causing it to be worse than today. I’m not asking for it to be a perfect scenario -- we clearly understand that -- but there is a focus looking at that because this is a major city and a major part of a major city is for it to be convenient.
It should be convenient particularly to those suburbanites that are not comfortable coming downtown because they don’t do it that often. So just a point I am making: it’s a component that we need to pay attention to. I’m not asking to solve it to the point where people never have to wait when they leave an event; I just want to make sure, since we are investing, that we are in a better situation than we are now with the special events situation.
Jim Pressler, Greater Cleveland Partnership: Quickly, I think one your challenges is working on improving the safety issues involving the mainline. In order to get to Gateway, you have to start thinking how to get off the system at the Innerbelt Curve, that far north. Consequently, like what Tom was talking about, in order to get back on system, you have to start weaving your way over far south to get on pretty far north. That’s a change in mindset the people will have to be aware of.
Hebebrand: There will be adequate signage on the Interstate itself; telling people what exits are available in the downtown area. There will be adequate time for drivers to make decisions regarding the potential exits points available to them. The only parallel to this, we are building an Intelligent Transportation System for the entire Cuyahoga County and its approaches to the freeway. We will have a Traffic Management Center able to coordinate with the City of Cleveland when we have multiple special events. We will have signs; giving drivers inbound different directions, depending on their destination, and try to help them navigate into the City when we have multiple events.
Claire Kilbane, County Commissioners: I have one question. On this picture of Chester Avenue, there’s a street that dead-ends. Are you removing it? What street is that?
Hebebrand: We are removing that portion of the street -- East 27th. We have a number of locations such as that, like Cedar, where we have a recommendation on how to treat some of these streets. This is probably an area where we are going to spend a lot of time in this next phase, resolving those issues, and determining if these are appropriate places to adjust these roadways. I think when we were up in the Curve, there’s another one there at that point. We were very close not to be able to provide that link, but as we get into detail design, we can determine how we treat those roadways. But at this point, 27th street is shown as coming off Payne and not going through between Payne and Chester.
Dorothy: It becomes local access. These properties here, in back of the Interstate, those properties are removed as part of the project. The access point is only for the properties on the east side of 27th.
Kilbane: The new road, right next to it, is it a one way?
Hebebrand: One-way from Chester to Payne.
Michael Taylor, representing Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones: In December, if we want Prospect back in, do you have a plan for that? Can you go back and do traffic study? And how will that work?
Dorothy: Our current recommendation is that we have 4 primary needs in this corridor: Physical Condition, Safety, Operation, and Access. When we look at keeping Prospect in versus this option, which takes Prospect out, in order to fully address the needs of the Corridor -- especially the Safety and Operational needs of the Corridor -- it’s not possible to keep those ramps in. We are recommending that this Alternative continue forward in the process at that Minimum Alternative that preserved the Prospect Avenue ramps be removed from the process.
Taylor: Are you saying that this is a done deal?
Hebebrand: We are opening up to public comment.
Dorothy: Michael, our concerns are that we cannot find a solution that fixes the problem that takes care of the congestion and the safety and maintains Prospect access where it is. We need to redirect it to adjacent interchanges. This is the only solution we found that fixes the Carnegie curve.
Michael Armstrong of the Federal Highway Transportation Administration: Another way of looking at it…when you look at level of service, it tells you that currently it is congested. In the future, you will see the Interstate Modification Study that not only looks at the Interstate operations, but also the local street systems’ ability to deal with and collect and distribute that traffic.
Don’t forget Levels of Service. So if you are going from an F level on a lot of these streets, the higher the level of service the better it is for those roads. If you take them up to A, that would be outstanding. But that is not really going to happen, and we know that because it is too many cars. Shooting for a D hopefully…a lot of C’s on some of those movements.
What Craig was talking about was some of these intersections and looking at how many lanes there are and how they are configured. Those will be modified in order to obtain the highest amount of service. Always looking at where are you and where are you trying to go. So that will give you an indication of your ability to flow the traffic into the city Midtown area and everything around there and then back out. That will give you an effective measure that is quantifiable that we can all agree upon, which has been used on most other projects.
Dorothy: Again, the other point is, as we have shown, the safety problem is directly attributable to those Prospect area ramps. There’s no way to fix the problem without removing those ramps. The fact is, the problem the westbound condition is one of our worse problem areas in the entire Corridor. The next worst one is associated with the Carnegie Avenue ramp.
Hebebrand: Michael, we understand how important access is to the businesses along there. We have no intentions of harming them. We’ll do our best to build this system in such a way that it continues to serve them in the future. Again, as we get into this Access Modification Study later in the winter, we will have designed to detail every intersection flow. Every link flows so that we can get the traffic in and out of there.
Jamie Blackson-Baker from Superior/St.Clair Development Corporation: We have about a thousand small businesses in our neighborhoods. One of my concerns is, How much study has been given to if someone is running errands back and forth going across the Innerbelt to go shopping? How much travel time will be added to running those errands?
Dorothy: We have not studied that in detail. Those types of trips are typically a small percentage of the peak travel period, where we did a lot of our analysis. With the exception of Cedar, we maintain all cross-arterial connections across the Innerbelt. If the connection existed today, with removal of congestions problems it won’t back vehicles on to the arterials. So the system works better. We are not showing them on here, but we also looked at key intersections that run along here. They all have good Levels of Service as well. It is going to depend of a specific movement. In general, a new system will make it easier because there is no congestion associated with the Interstate travel impeding their cross-arterial movement.
Blackson-Baker: There is another concern I have. Our neighborhood has housing adjacent to industry. So with the changes one of our concerns is, Are you going to create truck traffic that’s spilling where it use to travel on the Interstate? Now it’s traveling onto the city surface streets. Creating a situation unpleasant or difficult for people to do that little shopping because of the volume of trucks passing through the community?
Dorothy: Let me give you a couple of answers on that one: First, the volume on the Lakeside Avenue ramp is low. The reason we are looking at the extension of East 30th to Hamilton is to provide trucks to opportunity to get off the facility and get onto Hamilton. The trucks don’t want to be in residential neighborhoods either.
That extension allows them to get to the more industrialized sections of the neighborhood and stay away from residential. There will be no changes with the exception of improving access on East 55th by widening the 55th Street corridor under the now constricted railroad bridge, taking to two lanes in each direction, and improving access in and out of there. There’s no change in outbound movements, just the outbound connection between Superior and Hamilton.
Bill Beckenbach of the Quadrangle: What would be the EMS inbound Route from I-90 westbound to St. Vincent?
Dorothy: I-77, E30th northbound to Central.
Beckenbach: Why eliminate the Broadway ramp?
Dorothy: Spacing.
Beckenbach: Don’t you want trucks to use I-77, not I-90 to East 22nd Street?
James Haviland of Midtown Cleveland: Are you going to come back to the 2 slides that are left?
Dorothy: Yes we will come back to this. Let’s talk about geometric deficiencies. We have eight primary, 25 other and 4 conflict points. When we looked at the minimum, again we talked about that when we go in and make changes, sub-geometric changes, reducing that to three primary again only addressed the major problems. Many minor problems stayed in. In the built condition, we dropped that to zero, three, and one.
Again, we can see the direct correlation between operation and safety and geometric deficiencies, which is why the built condition is operating at a better level. Further constraints dealing with Trench area are the existence of Historic sites. The Carnegie Curve has a clustering of both Cleveland landmark resources and national historic registrar resources. Three of the building that impact what we can do in that Corridor the most are the Walker-Weeks Building, the Mather Mansion, and the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court facility. The Juvenile Court facility is a Cleveland landmark and has been nominated to the National Registrar.
Hebebrand: Stop, stop. It has not been nominated; it has been determined eligible to be on the National Registrar of Historic Places by the State Preservation Office.
Dorothy: Thank you. That gives it …
Hebebrand: The determination of eligibility is the same as actually being on it. It has full protection.
Dorothy: It has the same protection as if it was on the list. What that means when we are looking at our alternatives, if we have an alternative that potentially takes one of those buildings, we have to be able to show that no other alternative that is feasible and prudent exists in order to be permitted to take one of those historic structures. We will talk a little more about that. These are direct impacts. Again, if you visualize the Corridor in that area, we have the Walker-Weeks Building up against our existing alignment. The Juvenile Court facility has that large wall against it as well. That gives us a narrow window between those historic buildings in order to thread our improvements without impacting both of them.
Haviland: Being vacated?
Starinsky: What is the fate of the Juvenile Court facility? I would like to propose something coming from historic preservationists about access and the need for economic development on Carnegie, given that the Juvenile Court Detention Home is fabulously historic, but that it is being vacated. If being completely being vacated, would you consider seeing economic benefit to the county in place of the being vacated? I believe that we could go through the 106 Process, which you have to go through anyway, which could be a compelling argument and have a greater benefit to the City.
Armstrong: I can answer that question. The fact that the Juvenile Court building is historic and houses the Juvenile Court operations now but that they may move it doesn’t change that it is an historic structure. Not only do you have to deal with the Historic Preservation Act, which is implemented under 36CFR800. That says your first option is to avoid, then minimize, and then mitigate.
And if you have other alternatives, you do that. On top of that, you have issue 4 F of the USDOT Act that deals with the same property, but from another law. Again the process is to avoid first. You have to prove there are no other feasible alternatives. That Alternative goes through the Juvenile Courts Building, To avoid it, let’s say there are other alternatives. But those alternatives result in distorting other impacts and that far outweighs that historic study.
Our understanding is around $30 million to acquire and relocate that facility. The Alternative is get off at East 22nd before it intersects at Central up one, over one, then there doesn’t appear to be any impact. Certainly, it is different. What economic impact it has is currently under evaluation. But is it enough to justify going through that historic site and test the laws? I do not believe so.
We have had meetings with leadership at ODOT on this issue, And Ethics WA does not believe it is an option truly available to the Department, knowing that there are other alternatives that can accomplish the same objectives without the impacts.
Ricchiuto: Mike, on that point, has there ever been a situation where this exists, but you have the local community, local political leadership, and the state political leadership all-pushing to remove a structure that the law says must stay? Just asking if that scenario has ever developed before.
Armstrong: Most of my career has been in Ohio. I’m not aware of that situation. We have taken historic structures in the past. But there are other environmental factors that are you pushing to make that balanced decision. I actually have their regulations here, so you can see the litmus test you must pass. We do not believe that scenario exists.
Starinsky: I know you guys disagreed. It means a lot when I say that this building is fabulous, but I’m trying to think of the implications on economic development. I wonder if it’s worth considering.
Armstrong: That area is expensive, but the process is the process. We don’t believe we can make the case. The 106 Process is a little easier, but we do not believe harder to make a case for the others (acts/laws).
Hebebrand: When you look at that, we are talking about one-fourth of that
Prospect /Carnegie interchange being restored by that acquisition of that building. That only provides one of the four ramps being restored. The alternative is for that traffic to go through two additional traffic lights. That’s what you are weighing against taking a historic structure.
Armstrong: There’s the perception about the impacts to the Midtown area. The issue there involves the economics of that neighborhood/community as a result of the Innerbelt. Currently, the process is evaluating that impact, which is broader and absorbs everything and what exactly that is and put in a quantifiable manner. So it’s not an opinion versus my opinion. But it’s a method of putting it down on paper that we can all look at it and say is this a quantifiable impact and if it is or not. Takes it out of perception and puts it in a quantifiable manner that we can deal with. We can better understand it.
If that analysis shows that there is a substantial impact to the community and those impacts justify additional expenditures, then it can happen. We do not believe that’s true based on what we are aware of today. I think further analysis should continue. If necessary, it should be re-opened. Again, we do not believe that is the case. Again, we talk about access, getting into and out of downtown. The Levels of Service will show you this method is commonly used to figure out what it is today, what is it in the future. And what’s the difference? If it is improved, the better it is. The same thing is going to happen with your transcript.
Dorothy: As part of the analysis, that acknowledges being in the Trench.
Traveling Time studies also are part of that analysis and are an input that quantifies the change and access. I would like to try get to what that change and access is.
Haviland: I would like make a comment to Mark, who’s walking out and it’s safe to say to Mike too. There’s been no local discussion to set aside 22nd and that Central is going to be the new access point. If there is a community will to address the Juvenile Detention Center, such a conversation hasn’t been held yet. The County Commissioners haven’t spoken with the mayor or previous mayor. There’s been no discussion about it yet. I think that discussions with ODOT and the State Historic Preservation Office is not taken into consideration about the local will to do something with that building.
So, I think that it is important for everyone to know that nobody locally has discounted it. And from the impact of the Community Development Corporation going back to over a year ago to maintain a new Carnegie ramp fly over or fly under, we always considered it necessary remove the Juvenile Detention Center. And nobody’s ever openly had any concern over that. So, right now, it’s a downstate issue that is rendering a decision based on whether or not there’s a need to take it. And then 22nd and Central will be the new Carnegie exit. That’s going to be a discussion that will have to be held at the city level at some point.
Armstrong: When you look at the analysis for the 106 Process, in particular the 4F Process, the local will doesn’t play heavily into the discussion setup in these laws. It’s more of , if you have other alternatives, what are your options to avoid? And it’s not the desires on what you want to do. Try to look at it from the other direction. Avoidance is first. And then you can talk about the minimization and mitigations. That doesn’t play well into saying we want to do this. This is kind of the basis for where Section 4 F built section started. They built a highway up the one side of the park. They built a highway up the other side of the park. And then said you only had one choice, and we are happy with that. It goes right through the middle of the park. The law was established essentially to make sure that never happens again.
Cleveland Director of City Planning Bob Brown: Two quick facts. There are other buildings eligible for the National Registrars that are taken by the alternative. So this won’t be the only building. I’m not saying that it won’t be valid in those other cases, but there are other buildings that are historically significant that are shown as property takes. I’m sure you will have to go through 106 and 4F on those buildings. They are over 50 years old and significant architecturally. Now that doesn’t mean there won’t be a difference between these takes based on the reasonable improvements of the alternatives. I would just like to point out this is not the only historic building that’s shown as a possible property take.
The other thing. No one knows the future of the County Building. The judges and most of us who read The Plain Dealer know that we are arguing that only they should stay and that only the Detention Center moves out to Quincy. At this point, it’s still somewhat up in the air, although the commissioners have spoken clearly on it from what I read in the paper.
Sarah J. Beimers of the Cleveland Restoration Society: 36CFR800 of the US Regulations does have a very strong provision for public input at the point of identification of historic resources and assessment of the facts. So I think that is different than what you just said, because it is in there in the regulation.
Armstrong: In assessment of a fact. If you actually take the structure, that would be adverse.
Beimers: Right. There should be input. I think the comments about the Juvenile Detention facility are that the historic resources that are part of the Public Involvement haven’t been taken out and made clear to people that they have an impact. With the Cleveland Restoration Society, we haven’t had a chance to comment or have any input through the 106 Process. It doesn’t seem to be starting yet. I was wondering, how is the FHWA allowing the timeline of the planning to meet those requirements?
Neil Chase of Burgess & Niple: For the 106 standard evaluation of that process, right now we have consultants on board that are doing studies of the buildings. These are known, so we don’t have to do much further study of the building to identify it. They have identified other buildings and they are going through the process to determine if they are eligible. None of those buildings are east of the Cuyahoga River. Well, one is down in the valley.
But in the Carnegie Curve and north, none of the buildings is considered to warrant eligibility at this point. There are other elements we are going to have to get into with the Mather Mansion and our roads. There’s proximity. Do we affect the resources that way also? Not only is there a concern about taking the facility, they are also going to be interested in proximity impacts when you put in a new highway next door. But those studies are ongoing. The Ohio Historic Reservation office calls it Phase 1. They have looked at all the buildings that we could potentially affect and what is the status of each. Those step studies will begin before the end of the year.
Alsenas: I am eager to hear what Jim has to say to Paul (Dorothy), but just quickly, I just want to make sure I understand this. We are talking about the safety issues relative to the bend in the Trench by Carnegie. Am I reading this right that your plan, looking at Green Line starting, say, at Euclid Avenue, are you going to pull the freeway farther to the right to the east than its current alignment?
At Euclid Avenue basically or just north at Euclid Avenue, say, starting at Chester, you are going to start to pull the new Trench farther to the right and then you are going to sort of make a tighter turn because when you get to Carnegie you are going to be harder right again. In other words, you are going to be making a much more right turn as you get just before the Convocation Center (Wolestein Center)? So you are going to make that curve a little tighter going eastbound? Westbound? Thank you. I mean eastbound too. I mean both sides
Dorothy: Let me back up and try to clarify. One of the things we strive to do as we work through the alternatives in the Corridor is to not just look at the operations and safety problems. But we also look at the constructability in the makings of traffic issues that will come. As part of that, one of the things you are going to see is a fairly consistent theme throughout the Corridor. It is a slight movement on the alignment of improvements. This will allow us during construction do the traffic phase to build the facility while minimizing impacts to the community and the traveling public.
We want to maintain as much access as possible during those construction phases. You could have the best solution in the world and, if you have to shut to down Interstate access to the City for a couple of years in order to build it, everyone in the room would agree that is not a good solution. So in the Innerbelt Trench area, what we’ve done, we pushed the build option. What I will say is half an alignment off the exiting one. So what I mean is that the eastbound direction can be constructed to the east of the existing alignment.
Without impacting…well, it impacts the shoulders of the existing alignment. But without impacting the traveled way of the of the existing Innerbelt Trench area. Another thing: that portion of the alignment -- the tangent part of the alignment -- pushes it about half of its width to the east. In addition, we talked about the fact that we have the Juvenile Court facility here and we’ve got Walker-Weeks building here. You can see that those two building make it a pretty tight pitch point on that Curve. So one of the other things that we do, we pull this Curve out this way somewhat. It changes that angle at which that roadway goes between Walker-Weeks and the Juvenile Court.
That gives us, by changing that angle, enough room to improve the number of thru lanes in that area, because this is one of the few areas, the curve area, in the Corridor where we, on the mainline, have a volume-capacity ratio greater than one. So we do need to have additional mainline capacity here. You’ll notice in the rest of the Corridor we talked about, there are no mainline capacity improvements. It’s all changes to the interchanges….changes to the traffic flow…. getting rid of conflict points.
This Carnegie Curve is one of the few areas where we actually need capacity in mainline facility so that we can bring 77 --- a whole other Interstate – on to the alignment and bring it on to the Carnegie Curve. In addition, by changing that angle that I-90 takes through this area, we can see this interface point right here between the improvements to the Trench and improvements to the Central Interchange area.
That interface point is on top of E 22nd that is where we come back on and then we cross over and then we move a little bit north of the existing alignment in the Central Interchange area. We need to have the constructability to maintain traffic that lets us build this westbound portion of I-90 with minimal disruption to travel flow on both I-90 and I-77. Again, the reason for some of these pushes are to try to make that better. This Curve being shown here does still meet the 55 mph design speed criteria that have been put forth for this Corridor. So it does meet our design standards. It’s changed and reoriented a little bit.
Alsenas: Quick comment. I know we got to get to the other issues, but I understand the issue of constructability. I think we’ll address constructability in other parts of the whole Innerbelt project as well. I understand the short term construction period, but from the driver’s perspective, you know, when you are driving and you start making a turn and you turn that steering wheel, you basically want to hold that steering wheel so you make a smooth turn. But when you put a subtle kink, which exists, what I am looking at, just exists right where 22nd street, that white strip, crosses the freeway, there is a little kink. And when you have cars in side-by-side, you know, going at freeway speeds and you put in a little kink, not a full turn, then is that a safety problem? That’s the question
Dorothy: Let me stop you right there. Let me be very clear that these drawings are not to be considered engineering drawings. This is an interpretation of the engineering drawings made by my graphics folks. There is not really a kink there. It is a tangent spiral curve. It’s when the guys get out the crayons to make it more palatable to the public…sometimes…maybe; I guess visually it may look that way but ….
Alsenas: Because there are kinks in the existing freeway system.
Dorothy: Yes there is. And one of the kinks is right here, and you can see we literally tangent across that kink here.
Alsenas: Okay well….okay…Jim, you have been waiting patiently.
Haviland: Well, have you gotten through what you needed to?
Dorothy: Let me just get through the access changes which I think is part of what you are discussing. I think it will help the discussion. Okay, let’s talk about traffic flow within the Trench area. I am going to try to split this up into two destination areas. The destination in the Central Business Area is designated by this CSU icon here and the destination in the Midtown area -- areas to the east of the Innerbelt Trench -- represented by this Midtown graphic here.
I am going to split those up because putting all the arrows on the map for both east and west just made them more confusing. So let’s talk about access to the west first. Under our existing conditions access from the west bound I-90 coming off at Chester, coming eastbound on I-90, either coming off here at 22nd and coming up or getting off at Chester. Again, you can’t turn left on Chester. So it forces you around the block, and you come up Euclid. With the reconfiguration that we are looking at, we’re now coming off either I-77 or I-90, up 22nd, 21st, off at Chester, with a direct left in, or off and in on Payne, more traditionally in on Chester. So, very little change in access. Actually it’s an improvement in access, inbound to the west.
Outbound: currently access in the Chester Avenue area coming out, you are either going up, I’m sorry; you’d actually be using the loop ramp. It got confusing to show the loop ramp, so we showed it simply in the direction up. Coming up on eastbound, we are using the loop ramp to go westbound or you are coming down hitting the Carnegie area and coming either on to I-77 off of 21st or down and using 14th to come onto westbound I-90.
Changes to the access in the Chester Avenue area…the only real change is when you travel down the frontage road to Payne then through the freeway facility, coming down this way. Access from 21st and from 14th has been reoriented to 18th. And so access to either I-77 or I-90 is handled at 18th. Alright, let’s talk about traffic going to the east in the Midtown area. Under current conditions traffic utilizes one of several connections. Either the Chester interchange or the Prospect Interchange and then east into Midtown. Eastbound traffic utilizes either Carnegie or Chester. There is strong desire to preserve access from the existing Carnegie.
The change under the build construction on Chester… we now get off, travel down the frontage road left onto Chester or stay on the Midtown Connector, which provides full access to Prospect. Coming in the other direction, access from Carnegie, reallocated to 22nd, the Community College, for the I-77 movement; Central, for the I-90 movement, instead of coming up to Carnegie, you come up; you turn left at a traffic signal. At a traffic signal, turn right, then your right back on Carnegie.
From I-90, come up to Central, turn left, traffic signal, turn right, and you are back on Carnegie. Access to the Prospect Corridor is also handled via this location here. Outbound traffic flow, again under existing conditions, there is a large movement being handled on Chester. We talked about the fact that right now this weave typically backs us out on to Chester access at Prospect. These are our typical movement points. Those movements are changed somewhat.
At Chester, the loop ramp stays in place. This now becomes a two-lane ramp. Right now, if you are coming along Chester when you turn into the loop, you’ve got both directions being fed in. You have to merge with that movement. Then you have to come around the Curve, get out on to the freeway, then immediately merge, and get out of the weave area before Prospect gets off. In this case, if you came in, this is a dedicated lane. You come around and it meets with the other lane from here.
So you now have two lanes that come around and add to the freeway. Those two lanes, plus the three lanes, give us now five lanes that come around. With the two outside lanes, one of them drops to I-77. So if you got on from Chester in this lane and just stayed in this lane, you would come off on I-77 southbound. Just past I-77, the other lane tapers out before 18th comes on. Coming in the other direction, if you are coming down Prospect, you are using the Connector roadway to come down Prospect and onto Carnegie. Carnegie comes in here instead of coming up to Prospect. You now come over to 18th and 18th allow you access to either freeway facility. That’s it.
Haviland: Can I borrow your pointer for a quick second? If you go back to the Preferred Alternative slide, I’ll try to be brief with my comments. Now if you guys read the article, I realized I failed at something. That is to take this beyond a Midtown issue and Central Cadillac and Jim Haviland to a community access issue. That is what we have been talking about and tonight, some more you are going to hear this from us.
We understand the safety issue but what we are most concerned about is the…what happens…we understand safety is a concern , but we also need to see what happens with your Recommended Preferred Alternative when it comes to congestion, Level of Service, and economic impact. What is not shown there is the stress being placed on north/south streets -- 30th the new infrastructure, 36th, 40th -- which are a problem right now. So what we are really focusing on too…Again, Midtown’s board is not just those in Midtown. We have people from the Clinic. People from Cleveland State. We have others across the Innerbelt that are concerned as well. So when I speak of Midtown, I speak of others that are representing institutions beyond our borders too.
So I think there is some concern there as well when you hear somebody from one of those major institutions asking if this is going tomorrow to the Planning Commission without Carnegie Avenue. That means they are not fully informed about what’s happening. So we are trying to carry that water by explaining what’s occurring. I really boiled it down to three main things. And this is where the challenge is and why we want to get this out to the community -- to analyze the impact it is going to have.
And really what it is, getting to Tom’s point. We are not just looking at special events. We are looking at how the people use this to get in and out of Midtown during rush hour. How we use the roads now. And access points, getting to Jamie’s point, about the freeway system currently acting as a way of getting goods and services through locally. A lot of this is being taken away, and I am just going to go through three quick things. As Paul indicated, as you are coming down the Innerbelt heading westbound, you currently have the ability to get off at Chester Avenue.
What I want to talk about is lack of redundancy. You now have three main arteries accessed by Chester and Prospect as you are heading westbound. You are going to lose that, and you’ll only have Payne Avenue. That is our point. If you miss Payne Avenue, you are across the river at West 14th and Abbey. So from the standpoint of the Cavs and the Playhouse and Cleveland State University, you better realize that everyone heading from Euclid or the Innerbelt heading westbound on I-90, you better learn to get off at Payne Avenue. Payne Avenue only takes you here. To get to Chester, you have to go down a one-way street and another one-way street to Euclid Avenue.
Otherwise you have Payne Avenue, and that’s it. So you are replacing Chester that takes you to Payne Avenue and Chester Avenue and Prospect, which take you east and west on Prospect with one exit. We think that might be a concern, because when you are heading eastbound right now, you have three exits. You have 22nd, you have Carnegie, and you have Chester. Your options now are Cedar Avenue/22nd or one long Chester ramp, which takes you off like to Rockside Road.
If there is a failure on Chester Avenue, you can’t get to the Quadrangle, Midtown, Cleveland State, or the Cleveland Clinic, unless you decided to get off at 22nd and make that movement up to Carnegie and over. So, again, you are replacing redundant exit ramps — three with one major piece. We question whether or not Chester Avenue can handle all of that. The last key piece is getting out during rush hour or during the day. With all the streets, it is going to put pressure on the infrastructure to get out of the Midtown, Cleveland Clinic, and Quadrangle areas.
You have Prospect, which is a very critical piece. It gets you northbound and southbound. You are coming down Prospect. You can move around east or you can head to the west and get to the freeway system. If you are down here, everyone has to migrate, not just to Chester but to Payne Avenue, because your drop off point to head east bound is on Payne Avenue. So now you are not talking about the Prospect or Chester exits eastbound. You are talking about a Payne Avenue exit to get everybody from the Clinic, from the Quadrangle area of town, and Midtown area to the eastbound Shoreway or eastbound I-90.
Again, a lack of access. How do people do this? As Tom indicated, everybody is going to make their way on this new infrastructure that is one -way. You get to Chester, you also have one-way on this ramp, but you’re merging with everybody from the Clinic and Midtown. That’s getting on Prospect and getting on Chester. Everybody now is making their way to Chester and Payne. That is now your access point to the east and west to downtown or to University Circle, which is also the heart of some of the greatest economic revitalization efforts that are ongoing. So that is where we need to really take a look at all. It is not about whether the Carnegie ramp is by Central Cadillac. It is going to be how you get from Prospect and East 40th to Payne during rush hour, let alone if it is during a Cavs game. Or getting somewhere else, while everyone is trying to migrate to these exit points.
Dorothy: So three questions… let me try to handle them. The first two questions dealt mainly with…
Armstrong: Excuse me Paul. Jim – have you written – what you said was very good: it really consolidated and brought focus to a lot of your concerns. Have you put those three points in writing just like you presented here? In very few words, you said a lot. That would give the project team the ability to take a hard look at those and provide quantifiable data that says whether that is going to be an issue, whether those are truly issues of concern that we need to go back to the drawing board to consider different alternatives, or whether they are already accommodated and handled through various methods.
Haviland: Well right now I have it on a page and half. I can condense it to one page.
Armstrong: A page and a half is just fine. We also try to put numbers to that impact as well. You try to pull support from your economic impact firm in Boston and also gather the information as well as to what that means for truck movements, getting goods and services out, retention of jobs, and impacts. What is really important is to get all that information down, quantify it, access it, and make some decisions
Hebebrand: We’ll take what you give us and we’ll spend some time analyzing that and analyzing the movements you are concerned about.
Ricchiuto: Paul, reiterate his three points just to make sure that Jim has a chance to make sure that we are clear on what those points are. I want him to respond to make sure he is satisfied that we are both on the same page
Dorothy: If I heard you correctly Jim, Point One is a concern that coming westbound on I-90 with the consolidation in access – currently you have access points at Superior, Chester and Prospect -- to Superior and Chester, there is a concern that a failure of one of these connection points may make it difficult to get down to Prospect. Two, is that if there is a failure on the system that you may be stuck on the alignment until down in the I-77 area.
Haviland: That is correct. The biggest point is that the Payne Avenue ramp is the only exit to downtown and everywhere else. If there is an accident at the Payne Avenue ramp, you basically cut off all access to the City of Cleveland, unless you get off at Tremont and West 14th Street
Dorothy: Or you can get off at I-77, right in front of the Post Office.
Haviland: That is assuming again…if you miss Superior first.
Dorothy: Mark. Can I do these questions one at a time? So I don’t have to repeat the question?
Hebebrand: Right now all I want you to do is get the questions down. We just want to get his bullet points down.
Dorothy: Question two, pretty much the same thing. Coming in the eastbound direction, the concern is that previous access points were East 22nd, Carnegie, and Chester. Now there is only a single access point at Chester. I’d like to clarify that by saying this is not quite correct. There is an access point at 22nd and Chester. So we had three and we are down to two. There is a concern that a failure in the last one of these interchanges could cut off access to the Midtown area. Because if you did not get off at 22nd and if there is a problem that has closed Chester, then you’ve got to get off at Superior and work your way back down.
Haviland: Yeah, access to that whole Corridor between downtown and the greater University Circle area, not just Midtown. We have to get Midtown out of our mindset.
Dorothy: And give me two seconds…. the third point was?
Haviland: Really access to eastbound I-90 from all of the points.
Dorothy: I got it. So the third point was that under current conditions, access to eastbound I-90 is handled at Prospect and at Chester and at Superior, and that under the reconfigured “build” alternative access to eastbound I-90 would be redirected to Carnegie/Payne, and Superior doesn’t change
Someone: You mean Chester/Payne?
Dorothy: Yes, sorry, Chester/Payne. The concern there is that we are going from three access points to two access points. These sections here are two-way roadways, not one way. I think those are the three.
Hebebrand: And, Jim, rather than respond to those now, we’ll take some time to analyze them and work with you to understand the numbers and how traffic flows.
Haviland: I’ll give you the bullet points.
Ricchiuto: Good job recapping.
Starinsky: Can I reiterate? One point you’ve made that was reiterated by Paul is the concern that Chester can actually handle this amount of traffic. Can Chester and the distributor roads that they are proposing actually handle the network of between downtown and University Circle?
Dorothy: At one of the stations at the public meeting tonight, we will have the model of these pieces conglomerated for everything north of the River. We’ll have a map, and you’ll be able to point at the Corridor map and say, ‘I’d like to see this area in the AM peak period’. And we’ll be able to zoom in on it and show you the operation…the model actually running.
Ricchiuto: Paul, just to highlight a point of contention, there seems to be a lack of confidence in the current proposal. Your explanation of Chester is that the reason it fails now is because of the Innerbelt that fails now.
Dorothy: Right
Ricchiuto: Correct me if I am wrong, Jim, and some others, that there is still a high level of uncertainty that Chester doesn’t have enough failures on its own. Because of not only what it is dealing with now, but the additional traffic it is going to have to compensate for based on the new plans. That is a point that everyone is very uncomfortable with, because with this plan the real success of Chester is it going to work or isn’t it? And if it even fails in the slightest manner, it is such a key point now to everything happening that there will be fairly significant failure all along the whole rest of the plan.
Dorothy: We’ll sit down and try to explain that……
Ricchiuto: Jim, is that a fair explanation of Chester?
Haviland: Yes it is.
Hebebrand: The other point I’d like to make is between now and later this winter when we submit the Access Modification Study to Federal Highway, we need to have all that resolved. And we need to be able to demonstrate to not only the community but to Federal Highway that when we redo Chester it is going to work. And outside the window, the picture that’s up there is that we don’t see a failure off the screen, and we need to look at that.
Armstrong: It is making a quantifiable answer that if we all disappear five years from now, someone can pick it up and understand what occurred to make a decision. We are trying to make a decision in the best interest of the public and that it all works. Because if it doesn’t work through further analysis, detailed analysis, certified traffic, we need to go back and re-look at some of those elements that aren’t working and try to figure out how to make it work. You don’t want to spend over $800 million and have a facility that fails.
You want to go in with a high level of confidence that it is going to work -- not only today, but 20 years onto the future and beyond that. And that is part of the detailed analysis that has to take a hard look at some of these movements that Jim brought up. These are some very good points. I am glad that you consolidated it, because it will really help the team to take a hard look and see what does that mean.
How do those local streets work? Part of FHWA’s access policy is not only to look at the Interstate facility, but the local street system’s ability to absorb and disburse traffic. And that will be part of the analysis. And then how’s that to balance with the economic impacts, and so fourth? And that the problem you are trying to solve -- the high crash rates, poor geometrics -- all comes in together. But these are all public documents. FHWA, we are looking out for your best interest through the laws that have been established by Congress.
Mike Schipper of RTA: On your build scenario, you said there is still one conflict point. Where is it?
Dorothy: It is between I-77 northbound and Chester Avenue. Going the other direction, it is long enough where it is not actually considered a conflict point.
Schipper: So your weave is too short?
Dorothy: It is a conflict point. We are considering a weave to be a conflict point. In order for it to not be a weave, it needs to be greater than 2500 feet between the closing terminals.
Schipper: But it is in the area of …
Dorothy: Correct, you analyze the conflict point and it operates at an acceptable Level of Service. But we’ll service it even better. So, while it is still a conflict point, it is an acceptably functioning conflict point. Whereas under the existing condition, we have multiple conflict points that are failing and compromising the safety….
Schipper: The Euclid Corridor is going up, and all that traffic is going to be diverted along Euclid. Is that being taken into consideration?
Dorothy: The Euclid Corridor is considered to be one of the build projects
Ricchiuto: On that point, they did a traffic study that showed if you literally eliminated Euclid Avenue that there wasn’t a major failure in downtown traffic.
Jamie Blackson Baker: I just wanted to dovetail with what Jim was saying. We have similar concerns about Superior and how that additional traffic will affect, in particular, additional trucks. And I know I raised it before and I know I raised it about a year and a half ago, and I wanted to see where we are with giving us additional data about how many extra trucks will be on the surface streets.
Dorothy: Getting ready for the public meeting, we haven’t had a chance to put those together yet. But we will.
Jamie Blackson Baker: Thank you
Dorothy: Let’s talk about the Central Interchange area. We also did a crash analysis in this area. The main problem we have in the Central Interchange area is – and no surprise here -- the short weave between the northbound I-77 on-ramp and the I- 90 and East 22nd Street off-ramp. That is an extremely short weave. We have the second highest crash rate in the corridor, at 10.1 crashes per million vehicle miles. Again, the regional average is 1.2. This problem is exacerbated due to the fact that immediately following this weave is a very short deceleration length through the Carnegie Avenue ramp.
So, we begin to look at how these problems are interrelated. Even if East 22nd Street is removed, it doesn’t remove the weave problem. That is because the weave problem is additionally associated with Carnegie Avenue. So again, let’s get back to talking about the safety. Our two largest safety problems in the Corridor are associated with Prospect and Carnegie.
When we look at the crashes in the Central Interchange, the number occurring on the ramp is the highest of any of the additional sections. Now, that ought to make a lot of sense, because the Central Interchange area is -- as we know from all the discussions -- a big mixing bowl of multiple ramp connections, including the system ramps between I-90 and I-77.
So given that the area we are looking at is predominantly the ramping west mainline, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s talk about some of the highest crash locations for these ramps. The first I want to talk about is the eastbound I-90 off-ramp to Ontario Street. It is the second ramp you will encounter as you are coming eastbound over the Central Viaduct Bridge. It is configured as a drop lane. We had 59 crashes there during the study period. The primary cause is the inadequate horizontal alignment. It causes a lot of congestion on that ramp as traffic backs out on to the mainline and causes ramp-associated crashes.
That being said, it should be no surprise that the next item on the list is the eastbound I-90 off ramp to East 9th Street. Once you pass Ontario, you go to East 9th Street. It’s a very short deceleration length that pops out and then, as well, becomes a drop lane. That short deceleration length coupled with the tight loop radius causes traffic to back onto the mainline Interstate and resulted in 53 crashes.
The final ramp is the East 14th street and westbound I-90 entrance ramp to southbound I-77. Those ramps come together and then travel down to intersect with the southbound I-77. We had 114 crashes on this ramp. The primary causes are inadequate horizontal alignment on this ramp. There is a very short merging and taper rate and a very short deceleration length on this ramp. We have basically a cascade of problems associated with this ramp. And it results in a large number of crashes.
So we looked at how do we address these primary safety problems? We talked about how we have four really big contributing problems in this area. So as we are looking at the eastbound and westbound directions, we increased the number of travel lanes on the Central Viaduct Bridge to five lanes in each direction. That gives us some room to handle the problem areas that we have at East 9th Street and Ontario. It allows us to take Ontario off as a drop lane so that you don’t have to do the jockeying that currently occurs. We also then increased the radius of the loop ramps to remove that really tight kind of pinched central portion of that loop.
So they are a much larger continuous radius and so much more comfortable to drive. As you know, the current ramps, as you come off them, the radius changes on you in the middle. These ramps, as you come off, are very comfortable to drive. They are a continuous radius all the way around. If you are coming in the opposite direction, it allows us to bring Ontario and 9th Street on as add lanes to the Corridor. Three lanes from the Trench, plus one from 9th gives us four, plus one and from Ontario gives us five. So that addresses two of the problems that we talked about.
The third problem was this ramp from westbound I-90 with the ramp from 14th coming together. After that, we have the divergence of this ramp here. There was simply too much going on that ramp. So we removed 14th Street. We bring it on from 18th and bring it on further down on I-71. After this ramp, traffic comes down from the Post Office that’s already exited. So we have a lower volume of traffic coming in, and we bring this on as a dedicated add lane. That gets rid of the conflict points we had on that previous ramp configuration. It eliminated the primary cause that we had for that approach.
The final problem area that we had was this short weave where we have I-77 coming on, the existing East 22nd coming off, followed immediately by Carnegie coming off. In order to correct that, we removed East 22nd and Carnegie and reconfigured their access. From I-90, you get off and come up to East 22nd and Central. You take a left, then a right, and you are on Carnegie. For I-77, you come up again here at Community College. You take a left, one traffic light, two traffic lights, a right, and you are back on Carnegie as well.
So we’ve got that bad weave area that is completely removed from the facility. That removes that conflict point and the safety problems associated with it. We talked about the fact that we have a capacity issue here. That lets us bring these lanes from I-77 on as an add lane, which allows us to bring four lanes up through the Trench to the Chester Avenue exit. And then we drop one of those lanes at the Chester Avenue exit. Again, this improves the capacity that we need in that area and removes the safety problem.
Since we last met, no real changes – sorry -- one additional change has been made. It doesn’t really show up on the graphic because it is a 2-D graphic. It is this ramp from
I-77 northbound to I-90 eastbound. When we first looked at how to configure this interchange, we brought that ramp up and it stayed up at about the second level -- about the second story of a building. And it ran along the back side of the property, where the Visiting Nurse Association is and the Credit Union. Since that time we have looked at the reconfiguration of this ramp coming into East 22nd and Community College.
Once we come across 22nd, this ramp begins to go down and dive because it is going to come up into the Trench Area here which is already in place. As the Innerbelt enters the Trench, it depresses to one level below the city street grid. So as we come around here, it is beginning to depress to about ground level. This allows the ramp to pull off just at ground level. Then it continues along, which reduces the visual impact to this area off this ramp. So instead of this ramp being up high and coming along the back of those properties, the ramp is coming in much lower. It is also pushed out a little bit. The previous design impacted the southwest corner of this property. This cut off the Credit Union’s drive-through access. It now has been pushed out enough to eliminate that impact. Other than that, no other changes to this section.
William Beckenbach -- The Quadrangle: This question ties in with the Trench. If I am coming from the north in an ambulance or EMS vehicle, how do I get to St. Vincent Hospital?
Dorothy: If you are coming north, you are going to come around onto I-77. You are going to get off here and come up 30th into the hospital. That is close to how it is done.