After you read about how John Kasich is leveraging Ohio Turnpike toll hikes to finance state transportation projects — including a significant chunk of the vaunted Opportunity Corridor — and once again hear from the PD’s editorial pages what a magnificent investment the Opportunity Corridor will become for University Circle and its surrounding neighborhoods, it’s imperative that you read this Streetsblog piece by Clevelander Angie Schmitt:
Cleveland’s business leaders want you to know that “The Opportunity Corridor” — a new road they want to jam through the city’s southeast side — definitely isn’t a highway. From the beginning, project proponents have been careful to refer to this $350 million, three-mile traffic-mover as a “boulevard.” And they also want you to faithfully accept that this is really all about “opportunity” for the neighborhoods the road will bisect — some of the poorest in the region — not the benefit of suburban car commuters.
Schmitt exposes some of the Opportunity Corridor’s most basic infrastructural flaws — demolition of homes and businesses via eminent domain; existing routes in disrepair; zero dollars invested in public transit among communities where a large percentage of residents don’t own cars — and interrogates the marketing mumbo jumbo being sallied by the likes of Terry Eggars, the PD’s current publisher and Opportunity Corridor cheerleader.
Chief among backers’ disingenuous assertions is that the Opportunity Corridor will be a terrific boon to Cleveland’s impoverished African American communities. That bullshit is heaped so high and stinks so badly even the blind residents can see through it.
“This is an opportunity all right,” Schmitt reports an overheard conversation. “An opportunity for white folks to get to work and not have to see any black folks.”
This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2013.
“Leveraging” = mortgaging an existing road to pay for more roads we can’t maintain. Politics at its finest.
What I find puzzling and painful is that the planners of this corridor had the “opportunity” to make this a showcase for public transportation to connect people and jobs, as well as attract new economic development and none of that was seemingly ever considered. I’m no huge fan of the new Euclid Avenue corridor, but at least that incorporated Bus Rapid Transit: a poor substitute for light rail, but better than what’s being pushed for this latest corridor.
I’m all for a quicker, faster way to get to University Circle, but is this the best we can do with $350 million?
Who cares? I’ll still have to get to Wade Oval Wednesdays two hours early to get a parking space and a shady spot, now that the powers-that-be have started “reaching out to the community” with their summer programming. Where the hell do they dig up those half-fast bands?
But seriously, folks, it’ll make things a lot easier for culture-starved West Siders. Just lose the name “Opportunity Corridor” and call it the I-490 Extension, and maybe fewer folks will be so pissed off about it. That’s what people will call it anyway. Who the hell calls 237 the “Berea Freeway” or 176 the “Jennings Freeway”–except traffic reporters on the radio?
Chuckles the Clown
How many homes are going to be destroyed?
Get back to me
Google, Thomas, Google.