Innerbelt Study meetings

The Innerbelt through downtown Cleveland and adjacent neighborhoods will be reconstructed in the coming years. This project will have huge impacts on quality of life in the city. In the next several months, planners will be making key decisions about what alternatives will be studied. Here is a summary of the meetings, all of which are open to the public.

The Cleveland Innerbelt Study has narrowed the alternatives for reconstructing the Innerbelt freeway through downtown to four possibilities. The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) is in the midst of its 2-year study phase which involves identifying all the possible problems along the corridor and then analyzing possible solutions.

The "hybrid alternatives" range from the minimum ($350 million), which calls for modest improvements to the Central Viaduct bridge, to the maximum ($1.2 billion), which
reconfigures access points on the Innerbelt freeway, constructs a new boulevard to serve the near east side and University Circle, a new truck route to serve the Cuyahoga River Valley, a new Central Viaduct Bridge, and other significant improvements.

The timetable calls for the study's 36-member Scoping Committee of neighborhood and civic leaders working with transportation consultants, business owners, and neighborhood residents to select a preferred alternative by this fall.

Schedule:

November 17, 2005 at CSU's Wolstein Center, ODOT presented its plan for the Innerbelt, including the Innerbelt Bridge. Public comments on the plan—and on a movement to construct a signature bridge— can be during December, 2005 and January, 2006.

Ohio Department of Transportation/Innerbelt public meetings were held in October, 2003.

All are accessible using RTA. For more information or call 216-581-2333 ext. 246

Over the past several months, the Cleveland Innerbelt Study Team, in consultation with the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), has analyzed and refined the Conceptual Alternatives. They are:

• Reconstruction/Rehabilitation Alternative
• Transit/HOV Alternative
• ITS/TSM Alternative
• Downtown Portal A Alternative
• Downtown Portal B Alternative
• Frontage Road System Alternative
• University Circle Access Boulevard Alternative; and
• Neighborhood Planning Committee Realignment B Alternative

As part of the conceptual alternatives phase of the study, the scoping committee and the study team will work together to develop one to two hybrid alternatives. These hybrid alternatives will be compared to the reconstruction/rehabilitation alternative in the hybrid alternative phase. In the development of the hybrid alternatives, the committee will take the best components of the individual conceptual alternatives and blend them into comprehensive, workable solutions. Thus, a hybrid alternative may be made up of components of several of the conceptual alternatives.

For more information on the Innerbelt, call ODOT at 216-581-2333 ext. 246

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