CH announces Bike to Work Day and safer-streets initiatives

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and National Bike Month. (The two may be more connected than we think, considering how physical activity provides relief from anxiety.)

Cleveland Heights invites all to celebrate Bike Month as well as Bike to Work Day on Friday, May 16. Community members are also invited to participate in a Bike with a Mayor event with Cleveland Heights Mayor Kahlil Seren on June 8. For additional Bike Month events, visit www.heightsbicyclecoalition.org Heights Bike Coalition and www.bikecleveland.org.

Making Cleveland Heights streets safer for all is a priority for the city. In 2024, Cleveland Heights undertook the production of a safer streets plan (CESAP), identifying needed physical improvements for the city’s roads and intersections. The plan’s goal is to improve safety for everyone and increase the likelihood of residents and visitors choosing to walk, bike, roll and ride transit around town. The Seren administration also announced receipt of an $800,000 federal grant to pay for traffic safety improvements.

Adding to the momentum, the city recently won a grant from NOACA to improve Taylor Road. The grant will pay for implelmentation of a 2019 plan for Taylor Road, the goal of which is to consider the road’s many uses, including by the children and families who regularly walk on Taylor Road.

The plan will consider a “road diet’—a reimagining of the road that considers the needs of its many users. In its current state, parts of Taylor are very wide and encourage speeding. A road diet reconfigures the same road width in new ways. Where it has four or six lanes, Taylor may be slimmed down to four or three lanes—enough to make room for bike lanes. 

Bike lanes have been shown to increase pedestrian safety by reducing car volume, speed, and crossing distances. Studies have shown that the presence of bike lanes generates economic activity for commercial districts.   

The city’s Active Transportation Plan, also released in 2024, is an plan created in cooperation with South Euclid and University Heights. Among other items, it identified Noble Road as a candidate for a road diet with the goal to improve biking, walking and [public] transit use. (RTA recently announced increased transit service to 15-minute headways on Noble and Warrensville with its #41 bus line.). 

Road diets are being considered by other cities, as well. Shaker Heights, after years of planning, announced a plan to reconfigure Lee Road with a “four-to-three” lane road diet that could include the addition of bike lanes.