CLEVELAND — Work will begin later this month to turn Prospect Avenue and Huron Road between Ontario and East Ninth Street from a two-way into a one-way pair.
The number of traffic lanes on Huron and Prospect will be reduced from four in both directions to two lanes in one direction. Huron will be eastbound, and Prospect will be westbound.
Reducing the space for cars will create more room for bikes. A separate section of each street will be separated from vehicle traffic to create a two-way bike route, and a lane will be preserved for parking and deliveries.
More space will also be made available for sidewalk seating for bars and restaurants.
This is not the first time this traffic pattern has been used. For many years, police have routinely turned Huron into a one-way eastbound road and Prospect into a one-way westbound road before and after Guardians and Cavs games as thousands of pedestrians surge through the Gateway area.
Bike Cleveland said this traffic change should bring more bikers and pedestrians downtown.
"Instead of pedestrians having to hustle across five lanes of traffic," Bike Cleveland's Communications & Event Manager Jason Kuhn said, "it's going to narrow it down to just two. It's going to be incredibly safer for pedestrians crossing the street, getting to the games, going to restaurants and stuff."
This is all a part of the city's Cleveland Moves plan to build 50 miles of protected bike lanes over the next three years.
The $200,000 project is funded through the city's general fund.
The conversion won't take very long. It will be a quick build in the sense the sense that it requires paint and delineators, but not heavy construction.
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