CH safety plan aims to address crashes, fatalities on city streets

Cleveland Heights engages the community as part of its safe streets planning. 

There were more than 7,000 crashes in Cleveland Heights in the past 10 years—a staggering number of incidents that killed 20 people. Eleven of these fatalities occurred within the past three years alone. Some of the crashes involved cars, while others affected pedestrians and cyclists. Additionally, there were 98 serious injuries during this period. 

A new Cleveland Heights traffic safety plan aims to ameliorate this situation and make the city safer for all. With a $200,000 grant from the Federal Safe Streets for All (SS4A) program, the city set out in January of last year to begin developing a strategy for preventing roadway fatalities and serious injuries. Now that the process is complete, Cleveland Heights City Council adopted the Comprehensive and Equitable Safety Action Plan (CESAP) at its April 7 meeting. 

The city will begin implementing traffic calming measures contained in the plan using an $800,000 grant it received from the federal government in January.

“Making Cleveland Heights’ streets safe for everyone has been a priority for my administration,” said Mayor Kahlil Seren in a statement. In 2022, the city launched a traffic calming initiative, and in 2024, invested in measures such as speed humps and roundabouts in seven “higher-risk” locations. 

In developing the CESAP, the city held public meetings, met with stakeholders, established a technical advisory committee, built a website to gather feedback, and held pop-up events. The city also looked at where the crash clusters are—in other words, where most of the fatal and serious accidents are happening, especially those involving cyclists and pedestrians—to determine hot spots where they needed to take action. 

Specific plans and changes that city staff are considering include: 

• Bike lanes/paths on Lee, Mayfield, and Taylor roads, and Monticello Boulevard.
• Leading pedestrian intervals (crosswalks that give pedestrians time to cross before cars receive a green light) at Cedar and Lee roads.
• High-visibility crosswalks (such as flashing lights) on Noble Road.
• Implementing a no turn on red policy at Cedar and Lee roads.
• High-visibility crosswalks on Coventry Road.
  
  

The plan’s overall recommendations include evaluating and lowering speed limits; improving pedestrian push buttons; adding and improving lighting; improving multimodal access for bikes and pedestrians in all infrastructure projects; adherence to a complete and green streets policy; updating the zoning code to require sidewalks; continued investment in neighborhood traffic calming; and traffic enforcement in DUI (driving under the influence) cases. 

“Speeding is not something that should be controlled by policy,” said Ken Bernard, GIS coordinator with the city of Cleveland Heights, in a presentation before council. He stressed that police enforcement alone would not solve the problem and traffic calming was necessary to change behavior. “Speeding can be controlled with design changes and geometry changes,” said Bernard. “You can’t get mad at somebody for treating a street like a highway when it looks like a highway.” 

With the $800,000 grant, city officials can begin testing some of the traffic calming measures outlined in the plan. Immediate plans include speed humps on residential streets and traffic calming projects on main roads, according to the city’s press release. Also being considered are better pedestrian signals, separated bike lanes, raised crosswalks and the hardening of center lines into what are called “pedestrian refuge islands.” Lee Road, where two fatal crashes occurred in 2022, will receive some of these treatments. 

The city also has invested in software that will allow it to track before and after conditions and measure the results of its traffic calming initiatives. According to the city, officials have seen a decrease in speeding once traffic calming measures are implemented. For example, they cited speed humps on Harcourt Road and a reduction in the radius of an intersection that reduced speeds by 6-7 miles per hour on that street. 

City officials stressed that the plan is a “living document” that will be updated with new information as it becomes available. For more information, visit www.safestreets4ch.com or www.clevelandheights.gov/330/active-transportation.

To learn more about the plan and actions you can take to make Cleveland Heights and University Heights streets safer for all, attend FutureHeights’s Crowdsourced Conversation on Tactical Urbanism on Thursday, April 24, 6:30–8 p.m., at the Noble Neighborhood Library. For more information, visit www.futureheights.org.