CLEVELAND — The city of Cleveland is kicking off the second and final phase of its rehabilitation of Franklin Blvd. in Ohio City.
The goal is to make drivers slow down and pay attention to the roadway that has been plagued with crashes and accidents.
A study by the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) found that certain parts of the roughly 2-mile stretch of road, that straddles Ohio City and Gordon Square neighborhoods, were twice as likely to see crashes compared to other nearby streets.
After years of residents asking for change and help with the area, the city and ODOT started its project last year that includes pavement resurfacing and seven mini-roundabouts at intersections between Franklin and West 25th to West 85th Streets.
Four of the roundabouts are complete but not everyone thinks they’re the right answer to the dangerous-driving problem.
“As long as people know how to drive, it wouldn’t be a problem,” said Dwayne White, a longtime property owner in the area.
Roger Scheve lives right in front of one of the new roundabouts on Franklin Blvd. He said he was hopeful for change but doesn’t believe the roundabouts are the right move.
“People drive over it, multiple people will slow down or cut each other off in it or go the wrong way,” he said. “The bicyclist they come through, they’re at more risk now than they were before. Cars fly right through they don’t know which way to go.”
White said speaking in general, he believes the roundabouts were a good idea, however adds that they’re too wide in the middle for drivers to get around without hopping a curb.
“Personally, I’m not an engineer but the design is a little bit too big. They didn’t leave enough width to get through,” he said. “Plows are going to be tearing them up. They’re going to crack apart and then the city will be out here redoing them.”
Scheve echoed his sentiment about the design.
“It’s a big, flat circle that doesn’t serve a good purpose. The barrels have been there all season because if they take the barrels out and it snows nobody was going to know it was there. It wasn’t planter based. It wasn’t small enough to make it actually traversable,” he said.
Calley Mersmann is the senior strategist for transit and mobility with the city of Cleveland. She said the roundabouts are designed that way for a reason, adding the ‘mini’ roundabouts are the first of their kind in the city.
“What we did during design is did specific detailed engineering for the skew of each intersection and they are designed intentionally to be tight. We don't want drivers to be able to essentially go in a straight line through the intersection, forcing people to slow down, to drive around carefully as part of the traffic calming strategy and influence that the design is supposed to have,” she said.
Scheve was hoping the city wouldn’t continue its work on the second phase of the project until the
“It’s not a sustainable solution, even if we are stuck with it,” he said.
Mersmann said she hopes, over time, drivers get used to them.
“What we've seen so far is that people are moving through intersections much slower than they were prior when there were traffic signals in place. We're going to continue to monitor the corridors as the final touches are added on phase one, as construction completes on phase two, where city council and the legislation for the project establish an expectation for a safety study,” she said. “ We're keeping a very close eye on the corridor, really looking at performance and tweaking as necessary as the project comes to completion.”
She said the project should be completed in the fall of 2023. For more information, see below.
Watch live and local news any time:
Download the News 5 Cleveland app now for more stories from us, plus alerts on major news, the latest weather forecast, traffic information and much more. Download now on your Apple device here, and your Android device here.
You can also catch News 5 Cleveland on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV NOW, Hulu Live and more. We're also on Amazon Alexa devices. Learn more about our streaming options here.
