Clevelandia: The Awakening

Hello, Clevelandia:

I want to give you my thoughts on the ODOT announcement today that "the design teams have been announced!"  (an aside: sounds like a reality game show in need of a host to me!)

Begin with this photo:

That main artery that crosses the Cuyahoga River's third major bend is the location of this new bridge. It is the gateway to Cleveland. It will give access to our city's architectual core, its sports draws, its empty downtown storefronts, the stupid fucking casino, and lots and lots of underground parking. It will span over a large plot of riverside peninsula, which would be an awesome place for a Etta Mae Cheeks Johnson Federal Park.

Look closer:

There really are two bridges coming, aren't there?  First, there's a new bridge to be built just to the left of the existing one, over the exact spot of a mass transit tragedy that took the lives of a dozen or so Clevelanders in 1895. Then, once that's up and running, the existing bridge will be demolished and replaced.  The first bridge built will have to bear all traffic both ways until the second is built.  Thereafter, the left bridge will carry westbound traffic, and the right bridge will carry east bound traffic across the Cuyahoga River.

Each of these bridges will include an off ramp, the first could accommodate two way exit to a causeway at the base of the northern bluff of the northern side of the Cuyahoga, then the second could accomodate eastbound exiters and the first would thereafter only accomodate westbound exiters.  This causeway is already an existing road the winds around the eastern/northern bank of the Cuyahoga until it brings you to Tower City and the location of a new casino.

Traffic in and out will be easily controlled.  There will also be a vast swath of peninsula surrounded on three sides with river/bike/hike/wetland/GreatLakes/towpath/kiddie park funland. 

The southern bank of the Cuyahoga, the Tremont side, is also ripe for riverway use.  Once the first bridge is in place, the second bridge will include a memorial, and a sub-level pedestrian/bike crossing that parallels the current sub-level/trolley level on the Detroit-Superior bridge.

Lookie here:

[work in progress}

 

The west bound traffic on the first bridge (blue) will exit (purple) to a causeway (white), and east bound traffic will exit (red) to the same causeway (white).  And look at all that green...


Both east and west bound interstate traffic has momentary access to parking under the tower city complex. Visitors will traverse the main hall of Tower City Center to get to your stupid fucking casino.  Euclid Corridor commute is moments away.    Public Square and the malls of the Burnham Plan are now in play as usable public space.  A free speech quadrant with 24-7 internet video, coffee houses with 3G/WiFi.  And don't forget the skate park.

Back to the bridge: why not a pedestrian lane UNDER the interstate level? Metal and glass, an architectural wonder at an international crossing. An honest to God tourist draw. The citizen commuter federal memorial bridge.  An international visitor's center/great lakes education center on the southern bank of the river beneath the bridge.  Bike park. Right next to Sokolowski's