'Midway' Plan to Transform Cleveland's Old Streetcar Routes to Bike Paths

A coalition of bike advocates and planners have proposed what would be one of the country's most ambitious bike infrastructure projects: transforming the former rights of way of Cleveland's street car system into protected bikeways.

According to an article by Alison Grant, "Bike Cleveland, St. Clair Superior Development Corporation and Bialosky + Partners Architects have been working for two years on plans to reimagine some of the wide, low-traffic streets that branch to all corners of Cleveland and to the Emerald Necklace fringing the city."

Their idea: to transform the "paved-over tracks of Cleveland's once-extensive streetcar network" into "the Midway"—what Grant describes as "a center-of-the-road, two-way bike lane protected on either side with boulevards, with a lane of traffic and a parking row on either side of that."

Writing for Streetsblog, Angie Schmitt provides an insider's perspective on the ambitious proposal.