Cleveland to Consider Legislation to Incentivize Transit-Oriented Development, Issues RFP for Mobility Study

Proposed rendering of the proposed Lorain cycle track, scheduled to break ground in 2025. Credit: Cleveland Planning Commission

City Hall announced two of its latest steps in the pursuit of making Cleveland a 15-minute city, an effort to ensure that residents live within a short walk, bike ride or transit trip from almost all of their basic needs.

The efforts come in two different forms: One, a legislative proposal in cooperation with City Council, introduced on July 12, to incentivize developers to think more about transit in their builds; the other, an official search for an outside consultant to complete a new Citywide Mobility Plan by the end of next year.

Both the legislation, technically called Transportation Demand Management (or TDM) in urbanist lingo, and the Mobility Plan are among the first official moves Bibb and his administration have made attempting to catch Cleveland up to its neighbors with higher walkability scores.

“The plan will improve pedestrian safety across the city as well, making it easier for people to access bus stops and train stations,” Mayor Bibb wrote in his introduction to the request for proposal. “Most importantly, this planning process will capture the voices of Clevelanders to create a city where it is easier, safer, more convenient, and more enjoyable to move around the city outside of a car.”

A project of City Planning Director Joyce Pan Huang, and her team, for the past year or so, the TDM legislation would create a “menu” of “points” required for developers to tally before design phases are wrapped up. Points would be amasssed in ten categories — —”parking,” “car,” “family,” “transit,” etc — from which developers could pick and choose.

The TDM menu lists four tiers of projects, based on number of units, number of employees and square footage. According to the document obtained by Scene, “parking removal” is worth up to 10; giving tenants free transit, 8; a bike valet, 4; having vanpool, 6; offering 100 percent affordable housing, 10 points.

City Planner Matt Moss was part of the brains behind City Hall’s recent transportation demand management legislation, which will go to Council in the fall. Credit: Mark Oprea

What’s new about such TDM policy, Matt Moss, a city planner, told Scene, is that it would be the first requirement for developers to design with 15-minute principles in mind.

“So what that means, in other words, is if you’re doing a residential project,” Moss said. “You require a certain number of points.”

In the Citywide Mobility Plan, which began its search for a consultant Monday, the progression to shaping Cleveland’s bikeabilty and walkability are taken a few steps further. The plan would build on the efforts of likeminded studies—the 2007 Bikeway Master Plan, 2017 Midway Bikeway Plan, 2022’s Complete and Green Streets city ordinance—by formulating a three-year strategy.

The strategy, according to the 22-page RFP, is quite far-reaching: It aims to build new bikeways, improve pedestrian access near schools and parks, construct a “neighborhood greenway boulevard facility,” along with “short- and long-term public bicycle parking.”

The consultant will be required to host “two rounds of community engagement” and three public workshops.

According to the city, the benefits go beyond access to groceries and other needs.

“Having a city that’s more proximate is inherently a safer city,” Moss said. “When we [city planners] talk about safety right now, certainly we need it from a traffic safety, roadway safety perspective, since that’s our wheelhouse. We also have a public safety department, we have police and fire and EMS. That’s their main responsibility. I think that having a city where things are closer together, where things are more proximate, where there’s more activity, there’s a correlation with less crime.”

The city will select a consultant in late September, with the $200,000 sum coming from a $3.5 million allocation of ARPA funds, and a final study to come a year later.

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