My traffic calming story

I can't believe the difference it has made -- but the process of getting it done was horrible

I live on one of the prettiest streets in Cleveland, Franklin Boulevard. I’ve lived here for about 14 years. My house was built in 1890 and it’s not real large and has almost no yard and no garage, but it does have pretty little bay windows that look out onto the street.

When my house was built, cars weren’t a thing and streets were social places. So the house was oriented toward it and placed relatively close to it.

The one thing that was a real bummer about living on my street, though, always was the traffic. People used the street as a high speed cut through. Thanks to a (stupid) nuance of Ohio State law, the street was signed at 35 mph.

All times of day and night people were racing down the street. Even on the most beautiful day in the summer we couldn’t leave our windows open because the noise was too much. It would wake you out of a dead sleep sometimes. And sometimes people would crash — about once a year. At high speed into a tree or car across the street.

For years, I complained about it. And then a little over a decade ago, I started organizing neighbors to try to demand some changes. We made a presentation to the block club, which was a semi powerful group at the time, politically, and there was pretty strong consensus that speeding was a problem and that street should be signed at 25 mph.

We continued complaining, and complaining and somewhere along the line we got some planning money through NOACA, our “Metropolitan Planning Organization.” It’s hard to even remember the early days of all this, it drug on so long, but there were community meetings with little stickers. And NOACA planners presented some options for calming traffic. And the most popular suggestion, at that meeting, was “neighborhood traffic circles.”

Years passed before Franklin Boulevard was up for resurfacing. And when it finally was, there was an additional $250,000 awarded through NOACA for the traffic calming plan. I don’t think anything quite like it had ever been done in Cleveland.

A few years ago they came back with a final plan. It included 8 traversable mini roundabouts. Which means little raised roundabouts that had nothing in the center — cars can, technically, drive right over them, but there is a grade change.

The plan also included removing a slip lane and some chicanes and rectangular rapid flashing beacons.

At every stage of this process, it was a little bit ugly. Neighborhood-level politics can be brutal. Especially since a lot of the discussion happened on Facebook. I served on a volunteer planning committee throughout this process and I remember at a few points being accused of some weird conspiratorial stuff. Again, I was just a volunteer and these were actual people I lived near but it was hard to believe how unhinged it got at a few points, imo.

I don’t know exactly why street projects often get that way. I think a lot of the public truly did not understand why we were changing the street (but enough did that we were able to pull it off). I also think a lot of people kind of wanted to preserve their ability to speed around. And I think there was some ego and normal kind of social jockeying in the mix too. But I don’t fully understand it all. It was sad though that the process was so negative. I think a lot of neighbors just thought I was a huge trouble maker. But I do think all of that was negative and that that matters a lot.

Anyway, when this plan was released with eight “traversable mini roundabouts” people did not know what to think. Nothing like this had ever been done before in Cleveland. I admit I was sort of on the fence about it.

Would people just drive right over them? Many people were disappointed the plan didn’t include speed humps.

After we spent more than a decade planning and getting the pieces in place — the project was almost killed in the home stretch. Neighbors were complaining (although a lot of the most vocal complaints were that the project didn’t go far enough). Certain officials were nervous.

Over the years I was generally the one yelling at the city and Being Mad. But in this case, it did seem like the city had gone above and beyond to me. That they had listened and tried to accommodate our concerns and preferences.

In the end, I tried to speak up and support the plan. A lot of people I think have forgotten because it was so long ago, but it was neighbors themselves that said they preferred traffic circles as the traffic calming element. And even though the intersections weren’t ideal for it, the city worked with designers to sort of make it work and eliminated a bunch of traffic lights (that were always kind of awkward and a big time suck on a residential street imo.)

It took maybe about a year to finish construction, during which time the road was closed, certain portions and certain directions, which affected traffic on its own.

It was finished right around the time my children were old enough to want to cross the street, to see their best friends who live immediately across.

It’s funny, but they even installed one of those “Your Speed” displays right in front of my house. And — no lie — I can see it from my window when I’m lying in bed. It almost never shows people going over 30 mph now.

A lot of the kvetching about the roundabouts has sorta died down now. I still wouldn’t say they are popular though. But the difference they made for me living on my street is kind of amazing. I would say through traffic has been reduced by about half. There are simply a lot less cars on the street. And the speeds are much slower and more controlled.

I live on a portion that doesn’t have one of the roundabouts. It is a place where people do have a little bit of a straightaway. Occasionally someone still does gun it. But overall, it’s a game changer. They installed a rectangular rapid flashing because and crosswalk that the kids can use to cross the street, for added safety. And they even “daylighted” it so people can’t park next to it and make a giant dangerous blind zone. (When I saw them installing that, I almost died!)

I feel like it has shifted the whole nature of the street. Unrelatedly, a few other families with kids moved into the block over the last few years. And there is a little node of kids that all run around together. They don’t play outside as much as I’d like, but sometimes it seems pretty ideal in a way that I would say has mostly been lost in other neighborhoods. It’s been fun for me as a parent too, because it’s a social thing to hang out with the parents of the kids friends, who are all really nice people also.

In the end, we are trying to live our lives and raise kids here. And we want to raise kids that are healthy and well adjusted too — not just kind of hidden away in front of screens. I think we have a special thing here.

Over the last few years, I’ve debated moving to the suburbs a number of times, mostly for school related reasons (education is an garbage fire rn, y’all.) But now that the kids best friends are right across the street, I feel like we can never leave.

I do really appreciate the people who worked on this project and the people who were willing to give it a shot even if they weren’t super enthusiastic about it initially. At the end of the day, I think social capital is the most important thing in a neighborhood. My neighborhood has a lot of it. And that’s a real blessing. Hopefully, the slower traffic will help us build more of it. And maybe without that strong bas ethat we had initially, we couldn’t have pulled this effort off.