When RTA announced it wanted to install dedicated bus and bike lanes up and down West 25th Street from Old Brooklyn to the Detroit-Superior Bridge, a concentrated force of opposition rose from the heart of Ohio City.
The plan, generally, was fine, except for the blocks around the West Side Market, where on-street parking would be eliminated to make way for the new bus lanes. And it wasn’t just losing those parking spots — though some business owners specifically claimed they were essential for customers — but the idea that the bus lanes would make the area less safe.
While RTA argued the need for the corridors, which would speed up bus routes down the street by roughly 15 minutes, stakeholders argued for a carve out for the business district.
From spring to fall of 2025, developers, architects, financiers, restaurant and brewery owners penned letters to Mayor Bibb and RTA chief India Birdsong-Terry framing the proposed “bus superhighway” as misguided.
“Eliminating parking and creating unsafe conditions would damage not only our businesses,” Don Whitaker, the president of the United West Side Market Tenants Association, wrote in a September letter. “But also the cultural heritage of Cleveland’s most iconic public market.”
Other pointed to the RTA’s Healthline as an example of what can go wrong. “Midtown Euclid Avenue is bereft of pedestrians, cars and activity—other than buses,” developers Ari and Jori Maron wrote in July. “Those results, too, speak for themselves.”
Yet, this week, RTA reaffirmed its commitment, despite the lobbying. At a board meeting Tuesday morning, Mike Schipper, RTA’s deputy general manager of engineering and project management, said that the plans to build four miles of bus lanes will go forward with lanes that cut right through the Market District.
Schipper, who has been spearheading the study and plans for 25Connects since 2020, seemed cognizant on Tuesday about the eventual backlash from Ohio City businesses that wanted to keep those parked cars from Monroe Ave. five blocks to Jay Ave.
There has been plenty of communication and opportunities for feedback, though. Schipper said he’d talked stakeholders on at least four separate occasions in the past year. “But people are busy,” he told the board. “But we are out there. And we’ve done a pretty broad spectrum of communications.”
Bus-rapid transit, truncated as BRT, are used by cities and transit agencies to create a subway-style form of transportation through the use of bus-only lanes and thoughtfully-placed transit stops, as to speed up commutes and boost ridership.
But skeptics say that without those walls of cars, crossing the street will seem dangerous; ambitious drivers will abuse (and speed up in) that open bus lane; and accidents will spike.
“All we wanted was to go on a road diet and calm lanes—not speed up traffic,” Sam McNulty, an owner of eight businesses in the Market District, told Scene in a phone call.
“But here we are! Twelve months later, multiple meetings later, with unanimous support for [that cutoff] at Monroe Ave.,” he said. “And RTA is basically saying, ‘Cool, we’re just going to go ahead with our plans.”
Research shows that BRT lanes actually do help the businesses, but do so over a long-term period. One February 2025 study in the Journal of Urban Science found that businesses closer to BRTs clocked higher sales than those blocks away.
And the city is adamant that the plan will indeed calm traffic. At Tuesday’s meeting, Calley Mersmann, Cleveland’s senior strategist for transit and mobility, emphasized the suite of bells and whistles going into West 25th’s new BRT—its raised crosswalks, rumble strips, separating posts, car-aware cameras and new bus stops—that would surely calm traffic despite the removal of about 55 parking spaces. (A small portion of the available parking in the area, both on side streets and in the Market’s massive parking lot.)
“We’re looking for win-win situations,” Mersmann told the board. “We’re looking to support the businesses and what they need to continue to thrive.”
About half of the $50 million project is covered, with a $20 million federal grant set to cover the rest of the cost sheet, Schipper said. Finished designs are slated to wrap up by the end of the year, with construction set to start in 2027.
Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter