Saturday, August 14, 2010

Enhance Clifton -- What we can learn from the neighbors to our North (part something)


Cycling in Montreal:
I was amazed by the access to bikes and the preferred treatment that so many cyclists were given. Bike lanes, bike roads, shared bike plans (Bixi), etc. It was amazing to witness and made me incredibly jealous. The city was also tremendously walkable, had a fantastic public transit system and phenomenal park system. More on that later, right now we are going to concentrate on cycling and commuting and what is planned for a major corridor in Lakewood and Cleveland.


I am going to just start this post off with a complete disclaimer before the attempts to discern my intent are misconstrued. I do believe that the ease of vehicular access from the urban core has destroyed our regional vitality and increased our operational costs (translating directly as a tax burden) beyond our current means. With that in mind let me begin by saying that I was hoping that the plans to enhance Clifton would be more aggressive.

Clifton Boulevard is currently 7 lanes of asphalt connected to downtown Cleveland by a slight change from an avenue to highway occurring at Lake Avenue. Clifton is the anomaly in the city of Lakewood, Ohio as it is the only main East/West Corridor that is primarily residential (in Lakewood), the other main corridors (Madison and Detroit Avenue) are primarily commercial or mixed use (residential/commercial). Clifton Boulevard also provides easy access to the suburb of Rocky River to the Cleveland Memorial Shoreway. My hopes were that any redesign of Clifton would accomplish the following goals.
1- Provide dedicated cycling lanes from Rocky River, through Lakewood to Detroit Shoreway neighborhood in hopes of connecting to Clevelands's Bikeway Masterplan.
2- Dedicate lanes to the 55 and 55F bus route which terminates downtown around Cleveland State University and is a hella faster way to get downtown then the #26 on Detroit to the Red Line.
3- Calm traffic so that the residential area north of Clifton (and Lakewood Park) could be more easily accessible from/to the commercial corridors of Detroit Ave./Madison Ave. Lakewood is the most walkable city around Cleveland which is one of it's greatest assets (for all ages, hence one of the reasons there is such a diverse age demographic).

In my opinion it would actually be just fine if Clifton were altered to provide only 2 lanes of traffic each way, a lane for dedicated parking on the north side (longer blocks) and dedicated bike roads (see slide show above for example) on the south side which would provide access/area for buses as the center median would become sort of a give/take area for turning lanes (where necessary) or lane shifts for bus stops.

The proposal for Enhance Clifton is not that aggressive. The only major changes are creating a planted boulevard median which will calm traffic on residential sidestreets which currently act as cut thrus for commuters (I use one that is going to be more difficult to get down, oh well) with the use of a mountable median (for emergency vehicles). A few bustops are going to be relocated and redesigned (yay!), nicer (more obvious) intersections for pedestrians as well as autos and some changes to vegetation (trees and such).

Overall the plan is very logically and does accomplish at least some traffic calming. Since there is no change to the parking on the street there isn't too much for anyone to get all upset about. The new exciting change will be the inclusion of legal U-turns as the central median will require some people to pass their streets or driveways due to the median. I don't know if Hummers can make the turn but a firetruck should be able to.

You can find the overall plan online here and make some comments, etc. as needed. The current plan includes parts of Clifton in both Lakewood and Cleveland.

As a side note when I used to take the #55 downtown for work I would do a traffic count of how many cars would pass and their occupancy. I remember that even during the school year (and I was waiting by a school) at least 92% of the vehicles that passed had only one occupant. I have to find that notebook so I can parse out the data.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Clifton Boulevard Design Public Meeting - 2010.08.11 - 6pm


Clifton Boulevard Design Public Meeting

The next public meeting for the design and engineering phase for the Clifton Boulevard Enhancement Project has been scheduled:

Wednesday, August 11th
6 - 8 pm
Garfield Middle School

We will review the 30% submission from the designers and engineers (which means that they are one third there). The submission reflects the public input from previous meetings, we'll need your continued input to continue the project. So, please consider attending.

You can find more information on the Enhance Clifton webbernetsite.

Sunday, August 08, 2010

Student Reviews Summer '10

I find myself sitting on student review panels often. I really do overly enjoy them. It is a good excuse to get out of the office, converse openly and off the cuff with students and other (typically) learned individuals whose names I forget on the tedious ride home. Once in a while I will come up with a summation line that I will hope to hold close to the chest and keep in the pocket, sort of a remembrance fortune cookie for when I myself get stuck on an idea.

I find, overall, that students have a very hard time explaining their goals and decisions. It isn't hard to imagine, any person working on a project, forced to put on blinders and concentrate for 8 to 12 weeks begins to create a set of personal rules, a metric of their own device, from which to cull options. The problem typically stems that the metric becomes wholly intuitive, not that intuition is a bad idea, but utilizing intuition only (forgoing logical problem solving) means that when the overall idea is shared, components operate in a vacuum of assumption. I strongly dislike having to guess upon why someone decided option A was better then option B, especially when I don't agree (given my severely limited exposure to the prompt). I feel betrayed and at times overly rude for having to ask seemingly obvious questions as to what the vernacular the student is using actually means. Words have a power when used succinctly and correctly and can make one look quite foolish when not (see our last empire).

I also have to admit (here and now as I do during reviews) that I find when students present an overly pragmatic solution I become intensely perturbed. I realize that the students are not yet aware that when they become boy and girl architects that they will enter a world ruled by devious code enforcement and seemingly random zoning logic where pragmatism (actually it is the powers that be interpretation) can suck the very joy from, yet simultaneous allow existence. However they are not quite yet in the "real world" so they have the chance to "Dream big you f*ing dreamers" (to quote a comedian I don't find funny).

In all regards the latest review of one of the graduate studios at Kent State left me with two statements that have become the profound iteration of my fortune cookie litany (someday to actually be produce in fortune cookie form). I share them with you because I don't want to post photos or type out a diatribe about bike lanes and poor urban planning or how ODOT is directly responsible for our state's economic collapse.

There are three questions you should be constantly asking yourself as you design through a solution; Why not? What if? and Who cares?; Why is said solution to a problem most correct? What does this alter (in implementation/execution or experience? Who does said solution affect (I decipher this as Who the f*** Cares?)?

I admit I find this line of thought not very original, it lends itself to an adaptive reuse of basic journalistic teachings (journalwhawha?), however there is something poetic about how if one considers architecture to be profoundly about the ability to problem solve then getting to the truth becomes requisite to being authentic and successful.