Downtown Memorial Bike Loop Plans Will Be Unveiled Early This Year

The three-mile bike lane linking Downtown and Ohio City is set to go public at a community input meeting early this year. Credit: City of Cleveland

Preliminary plans for the first protected bike lane to come to Downtown Cleveland are lined up for public feedback in the next few months.

The Memorial Bridges Loop, a three-mile two-way bike lane that will link Ohio City with Downtown’s Gateway District, will be the next major cycle project to head towards public scrutiny, Phil Kidd, manager of the city’s Complete & Green Streets program, announced in an email newsletter this week.

In its current rendition, the Loop would allow bike riders to pedal from Progressive Field along the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge to the West Side Market, up north to the future Irishtown Bend Park, then over the Detroit-Superior Bridge to Huron and Ontario.

Which, bike advocates say, is a long time coming: the only truly protected lanes, with white delineator posts and green-hued paint, are mere slivers near Gordon Square and in front of the West Side Market.

Spokes, per se, without the hub. Downtown has lanes—like on Euclid and Superior avenues—yet they lack dividers intended to keep cars from swerving inside of them.

“It’s just always been accommodating the space outside of that Downtown Loop,” Jason Kuhn, a spokesperson for Bike Cleveland, told Scene. “It’s why we want to keep pulling in pieces here and there, so that you can move throughout Downtown, rather than just to it.”

It’s unclear whether or not the Loop’s debut to the public will include plans for the CLELink trail, six miles of new pathways that would, if built, connect the lakefront, Cleveland State, Playhouse Square, Public Square and Progressive Field with similarly-designed, two-lane paths solely for bikes and pedestrians. (A city spokesperson did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.)

Both CLELink and the Loop came out of brainstorming in 2018, most of it involving cyclist advocates at City Hall, Bike Cleveland and the Trust for Public Land. Yet it took eight years, until last January, for the city and the Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency to raise $1.1 million towards a final cost sheet for paving way for construction.

The Memorial Bridges Loop (in blue) would be the first time protected bike lanes are built downtown. A built CLELink trail (in red) would only, advocates say, encourage more Clevelanders to ride downtown on two wheels rather than four. Credit: City of Cleveland

Whether CLELink comes to fruition this year or not, a Loop trail would advance the overall goals of the Midway network, which includes the upcoming Superior Midway and the planned Lorain Midway, along with the Mandel Community Trail set to break ground this year. A lane protected by parked cars is slated for the repaving of Payne Avenue, Kidd said.

A completed network of bike lanes in and around Downtown would somewhat imitate the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, which has been reported to have spiked property values in and around its own loop around Downtown Indianapolis.

That network would also, Kuhn said, help curb injuries suffered by cyclists every year. In 2024, 610 Clevelanders were hit by cars walking or biking—13 of them fatally, according to Bike Cleveland’s Crash Report to be released in February. That’s 60 more people hit by cars compared to last year’s Crash Report.

Facts that, Kuhn said, make building the Loop a matter of public safety.

“I mean, it’s critical we have this,” he said, “to keep people safe and help promote people moving in and out of [Downtown] not with a motor vehicle.”