Editorial: Cleveland Made a Mess of Public Square Decision

A Crain's Cleveland Business editorial questions the political and planning process that preceded the recent decision by the city of Cleveland to reroute buses around the Public Square.

The city of Cleveland may have chosen the right direction for the future of bus traffic around Public Square, but its process for getting there was chaotic, and it leaves us with less confidence about the Jackson administration's planning abilities on major endeavors.

Though the editorial provides a positive review of the Public Square since it reopened with a design by James Corner Field Operations, the editorial questions the way the renovation process changed its plan to allow buses into the Public Square after the renovation.

Buses had been re-routed around the square through construction and then after it opened, though they were supposed to start running through it again in August. That never happened. As much as people enjoy the bus-free center of Public Square, it's unfortunate that there wasn't a test for a couple months of whether the space could indeed have accommodated buses safely.

The editorial notes some very serious consequences to the decision, both to transit service and to the terms of an agreement between the Federal Transit Authority and the RTA to create a downtown transit zone in connection with the HealthLine.