Cleveland Aims to Build 50 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes Across the City in Next Three Years

Calley Mersmann, Cleveland’s new planning director and Bibb’s former senior strategist on transit and mobility, gleefully led a press conference Friday to usher in the official start of Cleveland Moves, a five-year plan to modernize the city’s bike-lane infrastructure. Credit: Mark Oprea

As the city exists today, cyclists and their lot have a little over 60 miles of protected bike lanes and greenways throughout Cleveland to traverse.

The team behind Cleveland Moves last Friday announced that, following years of planning, research and feedback, the city is truly trying to ramp up that mileage. By 2028, Cleveland will have twice as many “high-comfort” bikeways cyclists can feel safe riding.

It’s why there was a sigh of relief and joy under the City Hall rotunda, by both those working for Mayor Justin Bibb and by the cyclist advocates who have been praying for years for Cleveland to match its sister cities as far as actual bike lane infrastructure went. A sigh especially when Cleveland Moves’ leaders delivered their ultimate goal: a city-wide, protected system of bike lanes stretching a whopping 250 miles.

“This is a bikeway network that really focuses on the high-core values,” Sarah Davis, the project manager behind Cleveland Moves, told press at City Hall on Friday. “That’s the bikeway that most people feel comfortable riding.”

Cities like Minneapolis, Boston and even Ann Arbor, Mich., have seen major improvements in street space for bike riders—with plastic delineators and green paint—in the past decade or so. Even Akron saw its first protected cycle track built through its downtown, with the help of a $5 million federal grant, in 2017.

But Cleveland’s long lagged behind. Former Mayor Frank Jackson’s administration often tilted to the status quo found in conservative traffic engineer departments, those that saw streets and roads as efficient travelways for automobiles rather than a potential for other modes of getting around. “Sharrows” were painted on streets; green paint was not.

There was the city’s first go at a Complete & Green Streets law in 2011. A Bikeway Implementation Plan to wrap up by 2017. Then, in 2021, an in-depth data survey of car accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians, which culminated in Cleveland’s Vision Zero Action Plan.

What Cleveland Moves hopes to accomplish by 2028: 50 miles of new bikeways, with new protected lanes in blue, greenways in green and yesteryear bike lanes in orange. Credit: Cleveland Moves

City Hall’s full plan: 250 miles of lanes across Cleveland. Credit: Cleveland Moves

“However,” City Planning Director Calley Mersmann said on Friday, “we know that the comprehensive update of multimodal recommendations and bikeway connections throughout the city has been a key need for some time.”

Cleveland Moves’ five-year plan was okayed by the City Planning Commission an hour before a press conference on Friday. As Davis vocalized to CPC Vice Chair August Fluker, a lot of the plan’s excitement centered on hope for the next three years—a focus on building new traffic signals, bike boxes and those protected lanes with green paint.

“Higher comfort lanes,” Davis said, “more in line with best practices across the country.”

This year, it’s possible new lanes could pop up on Payne Avenue, along with new greenways in West Park and Old Brooklyn. Downtown Cleveland may actually get its first protected bike lanes, as well: one on Prospect and one on Huron, coinciding with a potential shift to one-way traffic.

All what may be an appetizer for the idealistic main course. “Putting every Cleveland household,” Davis’ presentation read, “within a five-minute walk of a connection to the network.”

Mersmann, who replaced Joyce Pan Huang as the city’s latest planning director in February, didn’t shy away from the obvious: building 250 miles—or just that 50—would be pricey, especially during an era of unclear federal support. Building just one mile of those high-comfort lanes could cost upwards of $1 million, she told Scene.

Which seemed to only give Bibb another line-item to fret over, especially as $150 million in federal grants to help make his lakefront dreams a reality are relatively up in the air.

President Trump has made it clear, in a handful of executive orders, that his administration is hesitant to help fund any city development that rings of being climate-friendly. And the recent itineration of the state’s transportation budget bill leaves little room for grants for bike lanes.

“I know Washington is not coming to save us anytime soon,” Bibb told reporters after the press conference. “We have to keep continuing to make the case to both leaders in Columbus and in D.C.”

And in other City Hall departments.

The city’s currently looking for a replacement for past consulting traffic engineer, Andrew Cross, long known for his hesitancy bike-laning roads in repair. A recent job posting mentions that such an engineer must play nice with Cleveland Moves and its ideas.

Which Bibb said he’d help keep together as the pursuit of those 50 miles of re-done streets kicks off.

“Everybody must be singing from the same hymn note,” he told Scene, “when it comes to our policy priorities as an administration.”