After Two-Year Study, Cleveland Seeks to Cut Lake Avenue Speed Limit By 5 MPH

From 2021 to 2023, the City of Lakewood engaged in close observation of one of its most traveled throughways, Lake Avenue, believing that car traffic was moving too fast for the sake of safety.

Earlier this year, that study—which compiled days of traffic and pedestrian counts—concluded what traffic engineers suspected: Lake Ave.'s 35 MPH speed limit was a tad too high. Most cars, they found, averaged at 30. Last week, the city prepared a month-long awareness campaign to usher in that new limit, five miles slower.

On Monday, Cleveland decided to seek the same for its 1.7-mile portion of Lake Ave, from the edge of West 117th Street to Detroit Avenue. Legislation is to be introduced into City Council, a press release stated, in the coming months.

"I fully support a speed limit reduction which will make Lake Avenue safer through both Lakewood and Cleveland," Ward 15 Councilwoman Jenny Spencer wrote in the release. "And I'm grateful for the team at the City of Cleveland who is putting the steps in place to make this possible."
That team, comprised of the city's Mobility Team and its Department of Public Works, see Lake Avenue's speed diet as finely connected to their achievement with the goals of Vision Zero, the idealistic transportation mission of eliminating all car-caused fatalities and serious injuries by decade's end.

Especially those that result in injuries to bike riders and pedestrians.

Earlier this year, Bike Cleveland's 2023 Crash Report tallied 39 people hit in Ward 11, which Lake Avenue runs through. Though the vast majority of these crashes—one of them fatal—were on Lorain and Detroit avenues, advocates see Lake's switch to 30 MPH in a domino effect perspective.

"Reduction, at best, saves someone’s life," Jenna Thomas, an advocacy manager for Bike Cleveland who produced the 2023 report, told Scene. "You're more likely to survive a crash at 30 than at 35. I mean, at its worst [a slower road] adds a few minutes to someone’s drive."

What continues to beguile Thomas, however, is why exactly Lakewood required roughly three years worth of street observation to simply change how fast cars go in a two-mile span.

Even Lakewood city staff, who submit those years of traffic data to the Ohio Department of Transportation, seem bothered by the sluggish procedure. Lake Avenue, unlike Detroit Avenue to the south, is not a state highway or throughway, which means that it's not in full jurisdiction of the state.

Regardless, as Lakewood City Engineer Mark Papke noted, ODOT's standard process of modifying speed limits needs both city and state approval before any change is made.

“You can’t just snap your fingers and change a speed limit—and that is a good thing,” Papke said. “In Ohio, it’s a complex, data-driven, multi-jurisdictional effort, which makes sense given how important these laws are for protecting the public.”

Thomas rolled her eyes at such regulations.

"Um, I think that we know speed is a huge reason that people are killed on our roads," she said. "I think we have broken system, where a multi-year study is required for a five MPH speed reduction."

Lakewood's Lake Avenue speed diet goes into effect on Monday, June 3. It's likely that Cleveland City Council will have introduced their own ordinance by then.
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