VIEWPOINT - CUDC Quarterly 2:2 - Spring 2002

Euclid Avenue
Rethinking a "Corridor" as a Great Main Street
Maurizio Sabini, Ph.D., AAIA
School of Architecture and Environmental Design, Kent State University

"One of the finest streets in America", so Mark Twain wrote of Euclid Avenue (then Euclid Street) in 1868.* And in the 1930s and 1940s, the hustle and bustle of this grand avenue echoed Chicago’s or London’s great streets, while its parades were compared to those on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

That past glory has vanished, and yet Euclid emanates a unique charm, and every Clevelander, whether from the inner city or from the suburbs, feels a special attachment to this once great street. Most people use Chester or Carnegie for faster commuting from downtown to the east side, while Superior and East 9th innervate  important business districts–but Euclid is Euclid. It is the only street where we would want the St. Patrick’s Day parade to culminate.

That is why the idea of up-lifting Euclid Avenue, launched by City Hall many years ago under the leadership of Hunter Morrison, has steadily gained interest and support from the local community. Non-profit organizations, business development corporations and almost every citizen would agree on the strategic importance of improving Euclid Avenue. But how?

The project that the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) has been developing over the last few years (the "Euclid Corridor") has the objective of tapping Federal Transit Authority (FTA) funds for transit-oriented street revitalization. Now 30% through its design, the RTA project has raised many reservations, doubts, and criticisms, among both citizens and knowledgeable experts.

After having dropped a light rail concept, the latest RTA scheme consists of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) concept, where the "pilot" character of the transit system (supposedly necessary to access the federal funding) derives from two dedicated central lanes of the street for buses, which offer a cheaper alternative to the streetcars originally planned.

Buses running in the middle of the street need to offload/intake passengers on median islands through left-side doors. As RTA wants to avoid acquiring a whole new fleet of left-sided buses and purchase only a few to operate in the downtown stretch of Euclid, a complicated system has been adopted for the "Corridor". It is called "ribbon-flow" (never tested before in this country). From East 17th to East 107th, it would require normal buses, while approaching a bus stop, to cross to the left side of the street, stopping on the left side of 12-foot wide bus-stop islands.

The further complication of this scheme is that the bus-stop islands would be linked by a continuous landscaped median strip. This median–not accessible to pedestrians and too narrow to be a grand median like in a French boulevard, a Spanish avenida or an Italian viale–would eat up precious street section and turn Euclid into something (a boulevard) it was never meant to be. Euclid’s right-of-way is 99 feet on average, while the Champs-Élysées in Paris are more than 220 feet wide. The median in the RTA project is 12 feet wide, while the one of the Ramblas in Barcelona is 45 feet wide.

Euclid needs life, not a "corridor transit system" that risks becoming a sad monument to itself. The people of Cleveland deserve a Euclid Avenue that is once again Cleveland’s great Main Street, recalling glorious memories and inspiring future progress, thriving with people, retail, business, traffic, encounters, events. To achieve this we need to:

Prioritize retail and housing
This means on-street parking (excluded in the current RTA scheme) and an aggressive municipal housing policy able to foster private development;

Focus on the sidewalks
These are the very arteries of urban life:
the Champs Élysées were recently rejuvenated by turning the side vehicular lanes into an extension of the side-walks, which now measure 70 feet. (Euclid’s current sidewalks are 15 to 20 feet wide, and 20 in the RTA scheme).

Forget about the median
"Main Street, USA" has none, and Cleveland has the fortune of possessing one of the greatest examples of this truly American urban space.

Adopt the transit system that would
better accommodate the above objectives
If dedicated transit lanes are essential, there should be two dedicated central lanes, no median, only 12-foot wide bus stop islands and buses able to operate on both sides (therefore, no "ribbon flow"). Better would be a conventional light rail system, or a traditional bus system with new, improved vehicles.

Are we sure that the FTA would not support a more intelligent and community- sensitive approach? Is the FTA part of the same government that talks about "livable communities" ? Is federal money meant to improve the life of people or simply to produce complicated engineering acrobatics?

Which is better for the people of Cleveland: a cheaper and more appropriate scheme–perhaps partially funded by FTA, but genuinely supported by the local community–that is able to enhance Euclid’s very character? Or a more expensive scheme– surely partially funded by FTA, but opposed by almost everyone–that alters forever (and for the worse) one of Cleveland’s greatest distinctive urban spaces?

click here for studio projects for Euclid Avenue