INNERBELT PROJECT CITY OF

- - - MEETING IN THE ABOVE-CAPTIONED MATTER FEBRUARY 1, 2007 - - -

Meeting in the above-captioned matter, taken by Haley J. Lensner, Notary Public within and for the State of , taken at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Anunciation, 2187 West 14th Street, Cleveland, Ohio, commencing at 6:00 p.m., on Thursday, the 1st day of February, 2007.

APPEARANCES: Bob Brown Director of Planning for the City of Cleveland

Neil Chase Environmental Consultant, Burgess & Niple

Craig Hebebrand Project Manager, ODOT, District 12 Dan Daugherty Real Estate/Right of Way Engineer, ODOT, District 12

Paul Dorothy Traffic Consultant, Burgess & Niple

Skip Smallridge Crosby, Schlessinger & Smallridge

Jackie Krupp Facilitator

- - - MS. KRUPP: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cleveland's Innerbelt meeting. As you know, public involvement is very important in these proceedings, and we are anxious to hear your questions and comments. Before we get started, I'd like to make a few housekeeping announcements. First of all, the restrooms are out here and to your immediate left. Anyone who needs a Spanish interpreter, we have Monica over here, and please feel free to walk over to her, should you need her assistance. Anyone who is hearing impaired, we have Debbie Epstein, and please walk over to her if you need her assistance, after I'm done. We have a court reporter to accurately report your comments and questions, and her name is Haley Lensner. Welcome her. I'm going to start off by introducing Bob Brown, Director of City -- I'm sorry. Director of Planning for the City of Cleveland. Thank you. MR. BROWN: Thank you. I'd like to, again, welcome everyone here this evening. I assume that most of you have been to previous Innerbelt meetings. Can I have a show of hands of anyone who has not been to a previous meeting on the Innerbelt project? - - - (Indicating.) - - - MR. BROWN: Okay, there are several. We'll give you a little orientation before we get into new issues. We had a subcommittee meeting this morning where we went through the same presentation and got comments from that group, and then this is the community meeting to get comments from a wider audience. As you know, this Innerbelt study has been going on for many years; in fact, many in this building. At this point, most issues have been resolved, but there are a few major issues that are still subjects of public debate. Those of you who have been involved know those. One is the access coming to the Innerbelt at Carnegie and Prospect, that issue will be discussed this evening, as it has been in the past. Another is the issue of bicycle pedestrian lanes over the , and then we have some other issues that are still up for debate, but certainly your comments are welcome. I, myself, have to apologize. I'll be leaving at 6:35 for another community meeting up in the area, but there are two representatives from the City Planning Office will be here, and at least one representative from the City, a traffic engineer. So, there will be city employees to hear your comments, as well. I'll turn it over to Craig Hebebrand. MR. HEBEBRAND: Thank you, Bob, and thank you everyone for coming out tonight. What you're looking at is potentially the ultimate build of the Innerbelt, it's looking at the two new cable stay bridges. The number that's out is 2025 before the second bridge is built, and what you see in the foreground is the proposed trail from University. It's a very long road between here and what we see in the picture, but let me start with discussion of where we've been in the last year. The last big public meeting in this room related to the overall corridor was in November of 2005. We have had a lot of other meetings since then, including a number of meetings related to the type of bridge that should be going across the valley, as well as meetings specifically related to certain locations, particularly the trench, over the past year. Today, I want to give you an update of what we call the early deployment projects. When we first initiated this going from the Innerbelt study to the Innerbelt project, there were several other projects we had identified for independent comprehension. I'll give you an update of where those stand. What we've been doing since November of 2005, so today, what we'll be doing in 2007, towards finalizing a decision on our recommendation for this corridor. We have a presentation from Paul Dorothy on a couple of critical intersections in our analysis. As we go through here, we make improvements to all of the intersections. We have some that are still going to have some problematic movements, and I think Paul has some graphics that will show you exactly what that means. The other thing, if you were in the back, we have the entire simulation of the traffic operating in the back, so certainly after we're done today, if you'd like to return there and take a detailed look at any specific locations. We also have with us today, Skip Smallridge, from Crosby, Schlessinger & Smallridge. He will be conducting our urban aesthetics initiative. Like the bridge type study, we'll be looking at the present look and feel of this, the facility, what it's like when you enter into a neighborhood or into a business district, what it's like to walk over and under the bridges across this facility. And Skip will have the public dialogue on that, and it will be handed to our section designers so we have some consistency in this corridor. We'll then go into detail on some of the intersections, and hopefully you'll have some time to look at any particular locations in the back that you might have questions on. We have another level of engineering than what we had in 2005. We originally had drawings that basically looked like white marker lines, with no detail on the roadway itself. Today, you'll actually see lane lines and turning lanes, and in the simulations, you'll see the traffic operations. And then we'll open the floor to comments. Some of the advanced projects or one of the ones that's already completed is the Quigley Road connector, at the south end of 14th Street. This project is actually a year ahead of schedule, in order to coincide with the opening of the shopping center today. We opened the traffic circle last fall, and we opened the roadway earlier this week. It really provides truck access between the interstate highway system and the industrial valley, and with Steelyard Drive and the other ramps of Jennings provides complete interchange with full access from the spine in the valley, which is Jennings, Steelyard, Quigley, West 3rd, up onto the interstate highway system. So it's a more efficient route for trucks. The other thing is, it keeps the trucks out of the neighborhood. The trucks no longer have to go up 14th; in fact, there's now a sign on 14th that prohibits through trucks. So, they are directed down into the valley. The other thing that this does, it calms traffic going into 14th Street. Previously, prior to this design, if a vehicle exiting I-71 happened to catch the traffic signal in the green phase when it exited, it could hit 14th Street at 45, 50 miles per hour, which is unacceptable. Now, they come off at 25, once they negotiated the circle. And when all the landscaping and that's done, there should be a southern gateway into Tremont. We've been working with the Regional Transit Authority. The idea behind this was to increase the capacity of the RTA to transport people by bus by allowing additional parking on the remote lots. Those lots happen to all be full, so we're in a situation where they could not handle any more traffic without expansions. The Strongsville Park-and-Ride lot expansion opened this fall, and the other two will go into construction this year. We are working on the design of a freeway management system. This is a system that will monitor the freeway system in all of Cuyahoga County. It includes changeable message signs so we can communicate with the drivers. It includes speed sensors and cameras, so that we can monitor the flow of the traffic. The feed from the cameras can be fed through the emergency responders so that police, fire and EMS can look at the cameras as well, when they get calls. And we've already implemented our road cruisers, which is our roadside assistance program. This is scheduled to go under construction starting in 2008, and should be completed and in operation before any of the main work on the Innerbelt starts. We have two projects at 55th Street. We have 55th Street over I-90. This was a bridge deck replacement project that we've kind of worked with the City and kind of extended its limits to accomplish a lot of other things. We've also gone ahead and changed the cross-section of that roadway. It was four thirteen foot lanes and a four foot median. We've kind of rearranged that to provide two eleven foot, two twelve foot, and two five foot bike paths, which go from the south side of the interchange up to the entrance of the state park. That project was leapt earlier this week, and will be under construction this summer. The project immediately south of that is to replace the railroad bridge over 55th Street. Right now, that railroad bridge is a bottleneck, four lane roadway, with a two lane railroad bridge. When it's completed, the full cross-section of 55th with the five foot bike lanes will continue up into the St. Clair/Superior neighborhood, and that's scheduled to start construction in 2009. We have this map here, which is really the overview of the corridor. You've probably seen this in a number of versions over the few years. To highlight a couple of things, and just kind of a general overview for people who haven't been to the meetings previously, we have eight construction contract groups identified. Within those, there may be multiple construction contracts. There'll generally be one designer for that entire section. The first one is the new West Town bridge. It's I-90, basically, from the Carnegie curve to the 71/90 split. It provides a new westbound bridge over the Cuyahoga River. The second one is the I-77 approach. It includes I-77 from the Pershing/Broadway area up through the 490 interchange across the Kingsbury Bridge, around the curve of 30th Street and into downtown, and includes the reconfiguration of the ramps north of the Kingsbury Bridge. The third group is the rehabilitation of the existing bridge. Once the new West Town bridge is constructed and the westbound traffic is using that, the existing eight lane bridge will be reconfigured to accommodate five lanes of eastbound traffic. That's really an interim condition of about a decade, until we can get to the point where the cash flow will allow us to replace the second bridge, as well. Once we're done rehabbing that existing bridge and converting it to five lanes, we'll go ahead and start work on the trench overhead bridges. So, looking at the overhead bridges from Prospect all the way north to the railroad, we're replacing those in a sequential fashion. When that's completed, then we'll go in and actually do the main line work on the trench and the curve, and at the end, we'd come back and replace our building eastbound bridge between the westbound bridge and the existing bridge, and then remove the existing bridge from service and physically take it down. Let me go back real quick. The color coding, the ones in yellow, the ones that are highlighted, those are projects that have TRAC funding. TRAC is the Transportation Review Advisory Council, which assists ODOT in prioritizing major new construction projects. Their funding window goes out through 2014. Beyond that, these projects are on their calendar; however, they don't make funding commitments at this point in time. Every year, they fund another construction. So, the first three groups of projects are within their construction funded segment, the others are what we call tier two, waiting future funding decisions. You see, the new westbound bridge is starting in 2010, 11, and 12. Its phase, the first thing we're doing, and doing some of this subsurface work, doing the foundations, and underground work. In 2011, the bridge starts to rise from the ground and up into the superstructure, and 2012, we do the approach work,tying t into the existing system. At the same time that we're completing that work, we start work on I-77, reconfiguring the ramps north of the Kingsbury Bridge, up into the central interchange. At that point, we're ready to move traffic onto the new westbound bridge and start to rehab the existing bridge. You'll notice, in front of 2014 on the existing bridge, I have the maintenance. That bridge is approaching its 50th birthday and needs a lot of tender, loving care. We need some structural repairs to the steel under the Broadway ramp, so we can reopen that. We will have another emergency project a little later this year to repair some damage, just some aging to the bridge deck at the east end, as we come into downtown, and there'll be a number of other projects over the years before we get to the general rehabilitation in 2014. And then, you can see beyond that, 2015, 16, 17, we sequentially do the bridges over the trench into the curve. Once those are completed, we start work on the main line itself, the trench and the curb, and then come back in the final three years of the program and remove the existing bridge. The dollar amounts, these are all a year-extended dollars, so there's a tremendous amount of inflation assumed and projected for the last one, and it, sequentially, all these TRAC dollars are year stint allocations. It's 436 to do the first construction contract group. Again, that's rebuilding all of I-90 from the Carnegie curve to the 90/71 split. That includes building a new five lane cable stay bridge across the Cuyahoga River Valley. 167 to do the work on I-77. There's another 17 million that actually comes out of our district preservation funds that goes to a replacement of the deck within that area. That was a project that was already scheduled, so that funding is what TRAC did for the other reconfigurations. It's 65 for the rehab, the reconfiguration of the bridge. In addition to that, there's probably another 65 million that will be spent between now and then to do maintenance to that bridge, again, continually, tender loving care to keep that bridge in operation. And then, the trench, 123 for the overhead bridges, 55 for the railroad bridges, and 138 and 98 for the main line pavements and ramps and the trench and the curve. And finally, 520 for the replacement of -- or, the building of the second bridge. I should note that that 520 is really 260 in today's dollars. If you went out there and built that today, it would cost about 260 million. By the time you get to 2025, the magic of inflation takes that cost up to about 520. So, it's a significant sum of money, t's about 1.5 billion dollars for the entire program, and it covers 15 years of construction. What we've been doing last summer, we had the meeting in November of 2005. We've met with the new administration of City Hall, brought them up to speed with everything that had been done previously over the past several years before they took office. We provided an update to the NOACA board, then there was a public meeting that was sponsored by Midtown, specifically dealing with the trench. That meeting was held at Myers University. We discussed the access issues relating to the trench. As an outcome of that, the City, FHW, and ODOT agreed to spend an intensive 60-day period reviewing all the decisions and information to that point; at which point, in April of 2006, the mayor released the press release concurrent with the previous recommendations contingent on levels of service and operation in the final report. The conceptual alternative report was issued in August. On each side of that, we've had a couple of meetings for the bridge; April all the way through the end of the year. In conjunction with them, we held two public meetings to talk about the type of the bridge. In the fall, they recommended a cable stay structure, and ODOT concurred with that recommendation at the very beginning of this year. It was the first of a series of council hearings on November 1. Testimony at that hearing was primarily from the concerned estate holders along the Midtown corridor. ODOT attended that, and then we provided an update to the NAOCA TRAC. We then came back and made a rebuttal presentation to the City Council Joint Committee, and then we did a similar presentation to the City Planning Commission, somewhat similar to what you're seeing today. We're here today, we were with our committee this morning, our advisory committee, and we're here today for public comment, and to make sure everyone understands this as it is today. I'm going to skip that first bullet, and I'll come back to that. We got a couple major documents that we are producing now, that will be available for review shortly. The first one's actually a technical document. It's an access modification study. It is a very large, technical analysis of the operation of all segments of the interstate, and all segments of the affected street grid. So, it looks at a large number of intersections, goes intersection by intersection, at how this system will operate as reconfigured. That has been in multiple iterations being reviewed by the City and ODOT. Ultimately, we'll go to FHWA in Columbus, and then we'll go to the FHWA in Washington for review and approval. The other document, which is a very large document, is the draft environmental impact statement. That is a document that will come out later this spring, which basically summarizes the entire process that we've been through in the past few years; all the decisions, all the data references, all the reports that have been published, and really look at the impacts of this project from noise to traffic to ecological to historic. That document gets published and distributed very widely. In the late spring, the notice of availability goes out to the public. We will have a hearing on that in the summer where everyone can come and share their comments. Based on that and all the comments we receive and the feedback, we will then make modifications to those submittals, and resubmit that as a final environmental impact statement to the Federal Highway Administration. And we anticipate their review and approval of that sometime in early 2008, which really makes just about all of 2007 kind of an analysis and review of everything that's been done prior to this, so there's lots of time in the upcoming spring and summer to take a look at all of these decisions that have been made, together, and weigh in on your comments. Let me go back to that first item. We're going to take the Bridge Aesthetics Committee. We're going to add some estate holders to cover the full geographic area of the corridor, and we are going to start another, similar process related to the urban design aesthetics, the look and feel of how this facility looks. We'll take those engineering drawings you see in the back and blend them into the neighborhood, so they're what the gateway looks like as you exit and enter the facility, as you cross over and under it. Skip Smallridge is here, from Crosby, Schlessinger & Smallridge, and he's going to facilitate for a minute a little bit of the discussion of how that process is going to work. He was also the facilitator on the bridge type studies, so those of you who were involved in that are already familiar with Skip's work. Those TRAC numbers I showed you, those TRAC construction numbers, they include a two percent amount for what we call the enhancements to design aesthetics. When we look at those first three construction groups, the ones that were highlighted in gold, that covers the construction of everything including Carnegie Avenue south. The work on Carnegie Avenue up through the curve is not is yet funded. We would accept TRAC to make similar, well, two percent available on those, but they haven't, again, gotten to that funding window. But for the 668 million dollars that's been identified for those three construction contract groups, that's about 13 million for aesthetics, above and beyond what we would traditionally do. And again, we look at what we do today, not what we did 50 years ago. Look at the 77 corridor, those bridges. Look at the new noise walls. I believe the most recent ones are on I-90 in Lake County. That's basically our base treatment. The Fleet Avenue Bridge has some enhancements above that, flagpoles and some other things, so there were things added to the base treatment there. But the standard bridge treatment is much different than it was 50 years ago, and this is looking at things to add above and beyond that. The cost of the cable stay structure is built into the base estimate, and these are things like, Gateway treatments, the Tremont gateway, but most of this money could be used for Gateway treatments, for Parks Plaza, sections of the towpath trail that come underneath our bridge and come up to us, so there's things we can do with the money related to that. We're going to put lights up, we're going to color coordinate them with the City, but if there's a higher light standard, higher fencing and Skip has some quite high in pictures of some of his stuff. And again, embellish the noise walls, something above and beyond what's in Mentor currently. These are all things that this two percent can go toward. I'll go ahead and turn the microphone over to Skip Smallridge, and he'll turn it back to me, and I'll go over some of the details in 2005 on the engineering. MR. SMALLRIDGE: Good evening. Some of you may be wondering why we're talking about aesthetics at this stage of the process. It's very early in the design process. We're still partly in the planning process. Are we putting the cart before the horse? Well, in fact, there's a history of doing this here in Cleveland. This is about a bridge. The following project is therefore labeled for your readers and the whole community. At the bottom it says, what we want is a grand and stupendous bridge at the top of the hill in Cleveland, at the top of the hill in Ohio City, and you can see that that statement was made in 1836, 170 years ago, by the Cleveland City Clerk. What's interesting about this is, the discussion was about a bridge over the valley, one of the first bridges, in fact. And aesthetics was on the table, but they were still arguing about where the bridge should be located, who would build the bridge, who would operate the bridge, whether to put tolls on the bridge, and should, in fact, they have a bridge at all. But in the very beginning, there was still a discussion about aesthetics, because there was a strong interest that it look good. There was a similar interest almost a hundred years later when the Lorain/Carnegie bridge was built in about 1927. A construction photo here, and obviously, there's a lesson in this. Look at the concrete pier that's holding up the truss. It stops at the bottom of the truss, and that's all that's required structurally. That's all that you really need to do. But if you look at the bridge today, you'll notice that the concrete continues on up. It doesn't stop at the bottom of the truss, it goes up to the deck. It goes up to the parapet at the top of the deck. That was an aesthetic decision. It cost more money, but it's a public policy to spend that money to make that bridge more beautiful. And you'll notice at the lower portion of the tress, the curved arch part of the tress, is very graceful. Well, typically, they were. They were made out of short, straight pieces of steel. But here, they made the decision to curve it slightly, make it more graceful, more elegant. That, too, is an aesthetic decision. That, too, added to the cost. And today, it is one of the most beautiful bridges in America. Now, a new bridge will go in, and it'll lay in next to the existing bridge, central viaduct, Lorain/Carnegie, and in the discussion of that bridge, as Craig said, we had a committee this summer, called the Central Viaduct Aesthetics Subcommittee. We met here in the back room with NOACA. I doubt if any of you have been in this room, but that allows us to pin drawings up all over the walls. We had a group of about 35 or 40 people; we met monthly, four or five times, and they made a selection. Now, this was all done under Craig's direction, ODOT's direction, Michael Baker, Jr., the engineers; and in the end, based upon set of design principles, this was one principle that said the new bridge should reflect consistent design themes of the existing bridges in the valley. In the end, the committee made a recommendation for a single tower bridge. Now, that was a very isolated part of the Innerbelt. Now, we're going to begin to look at everything in the Innerbelt, and we're going to look at it from three points of view. You'll notice the red arrows coming in from the east and the west, that represents the driver's point of view. Most of the people who look at this, in the course of a day, will be in a car, on the highway itself. So, as you come in and have this gateway experience into town, as you go through the trench, there will be an aesthetics experience. There's been a lot of research of what drivers notice while they're driving, and what they tend to notice is what's in their peripheral vision, what's on the side. Now, secondly, we've got views from a distance. The blue arrows represent just a few of those. If you're looking at the new bridge from Tower City, or you're looking down East 9th, you're going to see large viaducts, large interchanges, large bridges. Lastly, but not least important, is the pedestrian experience. If you're on the towpath trail under the bridge, on this side, in fact, or walking down East 9th or any of the streets that bridge over a trench, that visual experience is going to change. So, we look at this not just from the point of view of what the highway looks like, but how it begins to knit these neighborhoods together, too, and how building bridges over the trench become a part of that pedestrian experience, and much better than it is today. The landscape various varies a lot. I don't have to sell you. There is an incredibly diverse landscape. First of all, you have two major interchanges, out at the lakefront, and a central interchange itself. Quite large. The central interchange is about the size of three Jacob's Fields, and about 90 percent landscape. It should be addressed right at the get go. Driving by it, looking at it, walking by it, beautiful landscape. And then you have the approaches coming to and from the bridge on the other side of the valley. So, within those pieces, you have many little, tiny elements that come on together, like a house; roof, walls, ceiling, and a floor, windows, and doors. We have lots of pieces, too. So, we just aggravate them and look at them this way. Across the top, we see viaducts, both sections, which are really retaining walls, tunnels, and you could make that go on and on and on, and talk about developments. Those are the big, structural pieces, secondary elements, and then third level elements, the level of, what does a bolt look like, and what color is it? Some examples from around the country, clearly, this is not Cleveland. This is in southwest America, and it reflects the culture and landscape of that area. It gives you some idea of how intricate the design can be; it could be a design reflecting a neighborhood theme here, industrial history, but it can be built into the forework of the concrete. Here's another more dramatic example from another region, and this is the place where the geologic history of the area was very important, the rock strata. But this is not rock, this is tile, and what they did was actually have an artist do an abstract picture, a representation, of what the geological strata in that area looked like. Or it could be a lot simpler. This is one in Houston. What you're looking at on the right hand side, retaining walls, broken down in scale a little bit, they have some shadow lines. It's built into the wall, so it's all one piece. Very simple, very straightforward, and the bridges, you'll notice, are repetitive. It's the same bridge over and over again. If you look at it from above, this could be a trench, and if you look at a simple bridge, you'll see that a little bit of attention went into that, as well. Small, little red spheres, I'm not sure if you can see them. The point is, they're add-ons, here. They spent some money to make it a more attractive bridge. One thing we might consider in the trench is not having a big truss over it, but actually making the bridge wider with a very elegant fence on it with possible landscaping and very directive lighting. Now, here's a bridge that goes one step further. This is a bridge in Portland, Oregon, called the Fishbird Bridge, and it's a simple truss, so if you go from right to left and look at those two little red eyes, that fin could be the fin of a fish, or it could be the wing of a bird. if it were here, it would be called the Walleye Bridge. This bridge is here; this bridge is in Cincinnati. It's very recent, just been built. Art deco, and there was an interest in putting that into the design. I don't know who took the photograph, but they clearly waited for the full moon to go out there, so it was probably the architect who designed it. This bridge has some very elegant details, and very elegant lighting, as well. And you see in the close-up, the attention to the bridge and the light fixtures itself. This wasn't done strictly by the Innerbelt. This was done from consultations with and contributions from a private developer. There's an enhancement, but there's also a partnership here. There was a partnership on this one on the left, you may have seen it, format Washington to Cincinnati, as well. There's a different type of partnership. The City participated in the design, and the City helped pay for the design. This is my town, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and this is interesting. And some of you see the pole and old acre designed light fixture, but there's a more contemporary fence with it, so it's a blend-in. Now, these are some drawings we did this summer. The one on the bottom is the one I'm going to call your attention to. You're looking at the lift bridge, of course. You're looking directly under the new bridge, which is shown in a very crude, abstract sort of form. But what I want to call your attention to is that the underside of that bridge is just as important as the top side of that bridge, because a lot of people are walking under it and using it. How comfortable you feel walking under it is very important. So, we've got some pictures of some other bridges. This is Boston, the bridge over the Charles River. There are recreational boaters that go directly under the bridge, so there's lots of pedestrians under there. So, the solution was to use all these metal grills and pull a lot of lights into it. And people feel safe there. Another way to look at the underside is to add color. This is Florida. We wouldn't do this here, we wouldn't paint every ramp a different color, so there's literally a dozen colors in this city. There are pertinences on top of the highway. These are called sign breaches. This will tell you where to peel off to go someplace. Typically, they tend to be pretty clunky. In this design, we try to take a nice, round, graceful pipe comb, to bend it over the top, these can be painted in a color, and because this is the harbor, people selected blue. This is a piece that's already been installed. In another location, further from the harbor, people wanted red, so that got installed that way. Color is cheap, but color can be very effective. There's been some talk about decking. We call it some decking in some places. Columbus is going to call it the cap, or capping. This is the first one that was done in this country. This is Interstate 5 in Seattle, Washington. As you can see from the size of the trees, it's been there for a while. It's been there for 40 years. This is the cap in Columbus, Ohio, and I want to go to the second slide and talk about it. I put this one in because the top is the building cap. This is a partnership, as well. These are expensive, and in this case, the State, the City, and privates could all work towards funding it. Now, here's a picture of it in the upper left. That light, plane coming down like that? That's a highway. This is over I-670. I expect many of you have seen it. I said in this morning's meeting that anyone who's been there, went to Columbus to see those sorts of things. So, possibly, you haven't seen it, but it's a pretty dramatic structure. It has retail in it, it has a restaurant in it; basically, all it is, is a lighter bridge with retail. It replaced an existing bridge, and the existing bridge over I-670 looked very much like the bridges up at the cap. Now, finally, what are we going to get out of this? What's the final product? What will we see at the end of the six month process? Well, the Highway Aesthetics Committee will wind up with a set of design guidelines, this is one we did for a project in project in Boston, there'll be drawings, there'll be dimension, they will reflect the input and decisions made by the subcommittee. We have enormous things, like piers. Hopefully, we won't have it this large, break down the scale at the ground level, try to make it more of a pedestrian scale design, rather than one monolithic comb. But in addition, we're going to be looking at things outside of the highway corridor, areas alongside the highway corridor, and back on the streets. This is the I-70, I-71 project in Columbus, and at the bottom, a rendering, what's called a photo simulation, and you see a lot more landscape. As we go through this, we're not only looking at the pieces of the highway, the concrete and steel, but working with the architecture, we're going to be looking at the urban design, the neighborhoods, how this project relates to the neighborhoods, physically, visually, and how we can make that work as an improvement. We're not going to design this thing in isolation. And here's another one from the I-70/I-71 project. You will see, it is reconnecting the neighborhoods. That's part of the effort here. Under the viaduct, over the viaduct, using the bridges. Creating gateways from the highways into the neighborhoods, into the design itself. This is our schedule, which you can't read, I can't read, I just want to point out one thing about it. There are six vertical pallets going across this, the month, going from February to July. That's our work program on the left. Down at the bottom, the dots, those represent meetings. There will be monthly meetings. We will start off by presenting the project in three dimensions. We will do design principles, just as we did for the bridge. We will work on alternatives, we will discuss them. And hopefully, the committee will come to the decisions about landscape corridors, highway elements, and ways to reconnect the neighborhoods. Here's another quote: "Pleasing lines do not need to be expensive." This is our mantra. Our goal is down at the bottom. A structure that satisfies aesthetic taste and not only contributes to increased value, but civic pride and civic pleasure. It may seem a bit of a stretch, and true to it when I started this work, that you can think about a major urban highway as contributing to civic pleasure. But highways are designed differently these days, and our goal is to make this one as different as it can be, and as different as you want it to be. MR. HEBEBRAND: Thank you, very much, Skip. I appreciate that. Skip will be facilitating our dialogue with the advisory committee and with the public as we go through this. Skip's work is really just the start of it. We're looking at the corridor themes and the design guidelines. As we initiate construction design groups, those section designers will take those guidelines into getting into implementation and getting into more details of how this system will look. The drawing you see on the board today up there is one we had from 2005. It was pretty common at the level of detail that was available at that time. The roadways are simply shown as colored strips. There's no detail with the actual pavement area. We kind of changed the colors so you can tell what improvements were done on the interstate versus what was on a city street, versus what was on a railroad. Today, we have drawings that look like this. It's a little hard to see from your seats, but we do have them at the back, and these will be available on our website, should be available first thing Monday morning, along with the presentation. One of the things that we have here is, really, we've gotten down to the point where we have all the paper markings; at least, approximately where they're going to be. This isn't final engineering, but this is a very high level of engineering for this level in the process. But we have a very tight corridor, so a couple feet this way or a couple feet that way that way makes a big difference. So, we wanted to get to the level of detail where we could have intelligent debate over this. What you're looking at is the Innerbelt curve. This is I-90, mainly the curve around to the trench. This is the lakefront interchange on Route 2. One thing to know is, the existing Innerbelt curve will be located about here, and about that radius. Well, this is a much flatter radius, and I'll get into some details as we walk through this and look at it section by section. We'll start at the connector to the parking lot. This is the parking lot connector bridge. It is an existing facility today. It handles the westbound Route 2 movements. The eastbound movements are handled just off the picture within the last exit of the parking lot, the municipal parking lot. This wasn't in the original design, it was added late in 2005, out of concern to maintain the integrity of this access to the South Market, which indirectly leads up into the Lakeside development area. When we move over to the lakefront interchange itself, this is I-90 and Route 2. We have a much flatter, more sweeping curve, much safer geometry than is there today. The other thing we have is three lanes of I-90 eastbound, westbound. Right now, today, you have three eastbound lanes but only two westbound lanes in the curve. In the future, there will be three in each direction. The other thing we did is, because this is all moving to the east, this is the existing alignment back here. This entire trumpet interchange moves to the east. That does require the acquisition of the mounted police stables. We are working with the City for the relocation of that facility to a new home. There is a curve on the backside of the Innerbelt curve, if you're traveling SR-2 eastbound or I-90 westbound, there's a 20 mile per hour curve on the west side of the interchange, then you have to accelerate upgrade while people who are existing from I-90 to Superior are cutting across. It's very difficult maneuver. That ramp has taken over the top, so it has better geometry, and allows that traffic to come downgrade, as it catches up to I-90, so it's not trying to chase the traffic up the hill. The connection to East 38th street is perpetuated, it comes up to 90, instead of coming up to the edge here, so we're pulling away from traffic. We do push into the airport slightly, and we have been coordinating with the City on the airport. This is a taxiway here, where they warm the engines up before they enter the runway. That would actually be moved between the taxiway and the runway, in this room, to reconstruct that. But that allows this curve to be flatter. If you'll look now at the leg that goes into the Innerbelt trench, and this is the north side of the Superior interchange. One of the things that wasn't available last time is how we reconnect 26th Street. Right now, the Superior ramp enters 26th Street just for Superior, so there's a little bit of confusion there as to whether East 26th has the right of way, or the ramp has the right of way, and then there's a stop sign there, or a red light, and 26th Street can only be one way at that point, it can't be two way. One of the things we've done is, we've redesigned that cutback ramp to 26th Street. We've brought Superior up here so it doesn't have to cross 26th when it enters Superior, left and right off of here, and we've brought that cutback ramp up, and we have a two-way 26th Street between St. Clair and Superior, and it facilitates that truck movement up into the industrial corridor. East 30th Street is extended. Right now, it ends at St. Clair. It is extended up to Hamilton. Again, to help facilitate the truck movement up into the Lakeside and Hamilton area. The other thing you'll see here, and this is common between Superior and Chester, in the future, we'll braid the ramps. So this very short weave between Superior and Chester, and before it reenters to the south of Superior, Chester gets up and slides underneath it, and gets on the right side, so Superior can come down without having the conflict with the Chester exit in front of it. We're going to look at the trench now, so now, we'll look at Superior south to the Carnegie curve. Orientation-wise, we've got the Superior ramps; Payne Avenue, which has no ramps, but has cutoffs; Chester Avenue has a full interchange; and then Euclid, Prospect, and Carnegie. As we go through here, this is looking at the full Superior interchange. So, now, you're seeing all four ramps, exiting to and reentering from westbound Superior, reentering, so it doesn't conflict with the traffic. And here is the Chester entering, and when we look back, we'll see that that Superior exit is braided with that Chester entrance, as well. We perpetuate the cutoff ramps, so the ramp that comes off Superior to 26th, we'll continue those ramps. And these actually serve as not only access to 30th, but also access to Payne. So, this cutoff ramp here by CSU and 24th provide indirect access to Payne, which is the current situation. And this is Payne Avenue here. Again, no change to the volumes of character on Payne. That was something that we heard, don't change the character of this roadway. The cutoff ramp at 30th, the cutoff ramp at 24th, it's indirect access to Payne, so Payne is pretty much a condition similar to what's there today. Chester Avenue, the big change here, there's a couple changes, one is that we have the four ramps lined up. So, from westbound, instead of coming up and it being oriented to 24th and then requiring you to turn onto Chester, it comes up and is oriented to Chester, left and right, to go west or east on Chester, and continues straight through, and I'll talk about that in a minute. You can reenter Chester, the existing loop ramp remains. It actually slides up underneath the existing ramp. And we have a ramp that exits from the eastbound to Chester, and a ramp that reenters. Again, here's that Superior ramp sliding underneath the Chester ramp before it comes down. When we talk about continuing to provide access down to the other corridors, again, we've got Chester and Euclid and Prospect and Carnegie, which are the three east/west corridors through that Midtown area all the way up . We have a full interchange here, and then we have a partial interchange at Carnegie, and we eliminate the ramps at Prospect, but feed them off of this frontage road, so traffic exiting westbound that right now comes past the Mather Mansion and underneath Euclid to enter Prospect, would come up here and down the frontage road, past the Mather Mansion and a grade, low grade, across Euclid and returns to Prospect. Likewise, return traffic, you'd come back up, and then cross over the interstate to reenter. Another look at that, this is Chester, again, this is the Mather Mansion with the connection down to Euclid, an extension down to Prospect, and then it continues farther south down towards Carnegie and Cedar. Again, here it is coming down all the way to Cedar. This is Central Cadillac. The existing Carnegie ramp has been moved, and I'll get into that also, the central interchange where that entrance point is. This loop ramp to westbound is removed, and that traffic makes a left off on Carnegie in the future. The big change to the Carnegie curve itself, in addition to moving the ramps, if you're entering at Chester, somebody's exiting at Prospect, and another traffic is exiting at Prospect right in front of you. Likewise, going the other way, somebody is entering from 77 while somebody's existing to 22nd, exiting to Carnegie, entering to Prospect, before you get to Chester. So, we have a lot movements that are conflicting, occurring very closely. We try to consolidate those. This is the one main line location where we have a severe capacity problem. We have more traffic between 77 and Chester on I-90 than we have lanes for. We only have a three lane section. And that's part of the reason, in addition to the configuration of the ramps, that curve cues up on a regular basis, and we have traffic that not only backs up onto the interstate, but spills onto the city street grid. The traffic entering will actually become the fourth and fifth lanes, and they will continue all the way up to where 77 exits, and then the three lanes will go across the bridge, while two lanes go onto 77. Likewise, coming the other direction, five lanes come off the bridge in the eastbound direction. Traffic exits to Ontario, 9th, and to the 22nd Street corridor, and then two lanes come onto -- from 77, joining the three lanes that come through, and those continue all the way up to Chester. I mean, the two lanes exit up into Chester, and the other three lanes continue through the trench. So, by improving that flow through this curve, we take care of the problem that today spills back into the neighborhood. I guess while I'm on this side, I should note that we had a letter handed to us today from not only Midtown, but a series of the community development corporations and key estate holders along that corridor, raising issues with this, raising the issue with changing the access points from what they are today. We'll continue to work with them. I know they're hesitant to request for ODOT to facilitate a meeting with the Federal Highway and the City to discuss some of the conditions in here. So we will, upon receipt of that request from the mayor, appoint somebody as Director of Transportation to go ahead and facilitate that discussion, as well as sit down with the Community Development Corporation, and the City, and try to look at, is there anything that we missed the date? Are there any solutions? Again, we've been at this quite a few years, and looked at a lot of drawings, and what we've had so far is the only thing we've been able to get to work satisfactorily. But there's still some issues, and we will address those as we move forward. I'm stepping back now, at another large section. This is the central interchange. This I-90, that comes down, Jacob's Field, this is the large area that Skip talked about that's bordered by 22nd, Broadway and Carnegie, and there's a lot of greenspace. This is the 77 way, 77 comes north, turns parallel to Woodland and Orange, and then loops into the central interchange. Focus here on this 22nd Street corridor. One of the things we have today is, as you're trying to take I-90 eastbound and if you're exiting at 22nd Street, it's a very short ramp from about here to here that crosses this I-77 flow. That's a very difficult maneuver, it's one of our conflict points that causes a lot of accidents and congestion. And what we've done, again, is braided that again. This ramp slides over the top of the ramp to 77, so that those two movements don't have to compete for pavement on the ground. This ramp replaces both the 22nd Street ramp and the Carnegie ramp, which starts right on the other side of this bridge. The location is identical to where it exits for 22nd Street to access Carnegie traffic turning left, coming across the bridge, and turning right. That is one of the changes that has been brought as a concern to us. Instead of exiting directly to Carnegie, you're exiting here, coming. So, that's one of the things we'll continue to look at. The other thing you'll see that's different from when we were here in 2005, is the 14th Street/18th Street. We've actually gone back in working with the City of Cleveland Traffic Engineering Department to a configuration that is similar to what's there today. It's got a little bit of capacity and a little better operation, but it's much similar to what's there today than what was previously proposed. Right now, the distribution is primarily at 14th with the ability to get to 18th. We had proposed moving it to 18th, because 18th is a full corridor, and under the City's ultimate lakefront plan, it ultimately does reach down to SR-2. But looking at that, and the parking structures on Prospect, while we do want to make it a little easier to get to and from the 18th Street corridor, because that lets you go between and Cleveland State, we did still want to be able to take that heavy demand that goes into the parking structures, particularly along Prospect. So, the new design continues to predominantly focus on 14th Street, and provides the ability to make the connection into 18th Street. Another change since last time is the reestablishment of the 21st Street ramp. That ramp is 22nd Street northbound, 21st Street southbound, through the University area. There's the Convocation Center, this is the Z lot that will ultimately be the intermodal center. This is the YMCA. In the previous meeting, in November of '05, that ramp wasn't there, so we've reestablished that ramp. We've changed the geometry of that, and the ramp that goes to 77, that 77 ramp right now dives down underneath the main line of the interstate, makes a hard left, has a ramp coming in from its backside; that will now slide over the top of the interstate, and this ramp from 21st Street will come in, so it will be a much smoother geometry, cleaner site lines. You won't lose the site when you duck down underneath, you'll be able to slide over the top. Another picture, again, you can see the markings if you go back to the board, some of the movements to facilitate access to both I-90 and 77 from this 14th Street interchange. Moving down in front of Jacob's Field, this is Carnegie, this is the Lorain/Carnegie bridge, this is the new westbound bridge. This is the existing bridge reconfigured for eastbound traffic. Ultimately, the new eastbound bridge slides right in here and ties in at about this point, at which time the existing bridge is gets removed. And we're still working with some details in this area around the fire museum and the fire station, the triangle in front of Jacob's Field and the ramp on the Ontario/Carnegie intersection. But at this point, we're recommending that the ramp that comes off through the intersection actually use the West Roadway. That West Roadway right now is used for the left and right turns. They all actually leave the flow, and they use that West Roadway. We would recommend using that West Roadway, again, to continue to use the left and right, but to also use the traffic entering I-90. A little bit about the commercial road hill. Right now, trucks that are coming off I-90 eastbound exit at Ontario Street, they make a left in front of Jacob's Field, and then another left, and come down in front of the fire station, cross underneath, and come down to Canal near West 3rd Street. So, we have a heavy truck movement making a double left through this intersection. What we've done is take this existing Broadway ramp and slide it up here so it becomes southbound 9th Street. From this point, it can be -- traffic can come into the post office and the other two terminals, or it can come straight down into the commercial road hill. So that we're keeping the trucks, the post office trucks, the main gate food distribution trucks, and the trucks in and out of , all on the backside of that interchange, and away from Jacob's Field. Just a little closeup of that intersection again, using that West Roadway as the connector. You can see, there's a lot of pavement out there today, and not a lot of it is being used. We do have some issues with the access point here, and the proximity, and we're working with the City and the fire department related to that. This is eastbound again, showing you the access to Ontario Street. This is much larger than the ramp that's there. Unfortunately, I don't have it shown, and 9th Street is considerably larger than the ramp that's there, and this is that movement to southbound and northbound 9th. And this is what is Ontario, becomes Broadway, and ultimately Orange as it comes along this corridor. This is a little blowback, coming up a little higher elevation and looking at the 77 approach, it takes you -- this is the post office, Orange Avenue, this is Woodland, 22nd on one side of the campus, 30th on the other side of the campus. This is coming off the Kingsbury Bridge, around the 30th Street curve, between Woodland and Orange, and into the central interchange. For the most part, we don't make too many changes to the 77 approach. We do take care of a couple of things. One is, we kind of change the configuration of the ramps. Right now, a vehicle entering this ramp, this is westbound Woodland at 30th Street, they come up that ramp onto northbound 77. Actually, to continue on 77 up into 90, they have to cross three lanes of traffic. It's a very difficult and dangerous maneuver, particularly when made with large vehicles, which it frequently is. So, the new configuration is that the exit will all be on the right, so that traffic coming on the right will then continue on the right to get up to I-90. It won't have to cross all the lanes of traffic. The 30th exit, the Woodland and 30th remains the same, as does the entrance from 30th and Orange. We changed the configuration here. We take this crossover road, and actually take it through the two red lights here. It gives the traffic entering -- right now, you have a stop, followed by a yield, it followed by a red light. So, you have a very complex series of decisions to make, a very short -- we signalize that, and that allows trucks coming off here to go into the food terminal area, or other vehicles to come into the campus area, or down into the postal area. I'll start talking about this ramp here and finish it on the next line. This ramp here replaces the East 9th Street ramp. Right now, 77 north exiting to 9th street, you make a 540 degree turn in order to get into downtown. We'll reorient that so you can keep facing the city as you come in. Then the next exit would actually be this 9th Street exit. It slides underneath the existing crossover, and here it is coming up the other side of the crossover. And at this point, it actually becomes westbound Orange Boulevard. This becomes, it comes up to the intersection at 22nd Street, at which you can turn right, you go up into 22nd Street. You can go back to 14th Street, go back into the 14th/18th Street corridor, or continue all the way down onto Ontario. So, again, without turning your back on the city, you can access a number of streets coming into downtown. There's a couple of improvements that are important. They're relatively small, they're somewhat geographically isolated from the rest of the corridor. This is the I-71 northbound, at the Jennings Freeway. So, underneath is the ramp coming off of 176 north. This is I-77 south, Metro Health Hospital is up here near the text. This is Steelyard Commons down here, this is 14th Street and the new roundabout. What happens here, if you're southbound on I-71 and you wanted to exit to State Route 176, you do so immediately out of the left lane, and you do so very abruptly, and you go into a curve underneath the structure. What we're going to do there is create a deceleration lane so that traffic can move out of that left lane and decelerate before it goes into that curve, make that a little smoother. It actually helps the operation of this underpass coming through here, as well, by moving some of that traffic out of that lane before that underpass on the 176 bridge. The other location is at the opposite leg of -- this is 77. This is -- 77 southbound is this way, the 490 interchange is here, this is Broadway, and this is Pershing. What we have on the southbound is the improvements; we're actually bringing three lanes across 490, and down onto 77 south, instead of two lanes to downtown. But we have a series of ramps that come into that off on 490, Broadway, and Pershing. They come in very close and in succession. We're recommending is that the Broadway and Pershing ramps be connected by this one-way frontage road, so that we bring the 490 traffic on. The Broadway traffic, instead of entering immediately, actually comes up, crosses Pershing, and those two flow in as one, at Pershing. The Pershing flow is extremely light, and we consolidate that with the Broadway flow without a problem, but it spaces it out more, which allows 77 south to move a little freer as it leads downtown. Real quick, I wanted to talk about the Innerbelt bridge. This is the existing bridge that becomes the eastbound bridge in the interim condition. This is the westbound bridge, the new bridge. Again, central interchange, Jacob's Field, Cuyahoga River, the Tremont neighborhood, the river valley. This is actually pretty wide, from up here on the bluff to over here. When we look at the interchange out here, right now as you exit the 14th Street off of westbound 90, you actually have a ramp that exits, and then it splits, and you have a very short -- after you leave the interstate, are you going towards Abbey or 14th? So, what we've done is made a larger loop ramp that comes down to a stop sign, at which point you go left to go up to Abbey, you go right onto 14th Street. So, to calm that traffic down and to bring in a little safer maneuver, and then you can continue down to 14th. Again, this is the interim condition where traffic is using the westbound -- or, the existing bridge for eastbound, and traffic's on the new westbound bridge, and this is the corridor protected for the new bridge in the future. Again, we've got an existing bridge, four lanes in each direction, with no shoulders. The proposal is to build two five lane bridges that each have full shoulders. The five lanes gives us a couple things. One is, when we're bringing traffic into downtown, instead of being able to take only four lanes, we're able to take five lanes. Likewise, in the inbound direction, we've got traffic coming off 71, 176 and 90, and both, on top of the 9th Street ramp westbound and on top of the Jennings ramp eastbound, we've got the type of area that forces that traffic to merge, because we don't have a lane for those. So, under the reconversions, the traffic gets their own lane to be resolved. That's a look at the steel tower cable stay, just superimposed upon the existing University, the guardrail with the vines growing over it. And then, this is a look at the second bridge alignment. Again, the existing bridge is in purple here. We built a new westbound bridge, we moved the westbound traffic onto that bridge, we rehabilitate the existing bridge, and then ultimately, in between, we build the new eastbound bridge, and it ties in rather cleanly at both ends, and then, we remove the existing structure, and we have a pair of bridges that might look like that, back to the first slide. Now, in this case, we chose to stagger the cable stays to accentuate the look of the towers and the cables. Again, we worked with the County Engineer to look at the north rim of the valley. I did want to turn over -- before we go to this slide, I did want to ask Paul Dorothy to talk a little bit about traffic operations. When we go through, and there's a board at the back that looks at all the intersections that we've counted, and there's a board back there that we've made modifications to on this project, blue and you green. We did acceptable levels of service at all the intersections except two. Now, I should say that the conditions of those two are better than the existing conditions, but they're critical, and we want you to understand what that operation might look like in the future. The one intersection is East 30th and Chester, and we end up with a single movement that fails, and Paul will bring that up in the moment. Right now, that intersection completely fails in the evening peak, because the interstate fails and cues up through it. So, any improvement to that intersection today has no advantage, because the traffic is simply already in the cue from the interstate. In the future, with that interstate cue fixed, we can flow traffic through there. The other one is southbound East 9th Street and Carnegie. Right now, that intersection fails with no improvement. We had one movement that backs up at the peak hour, and Paul will go over the details of that. Paul, do you want to go ahead and get started? MR. DOROTHY: Okay. As Craig said, one of the things that we worked with, we looked at not just the operation of the Innerbelt freeway and the various ramps associated with it, but we also looked at the operation of those city streets that are directly impacted by what occurs with the freeway. Typically, any intersections that would be at the end of a ramp where you get off the freeway and you come up to a signal, and then key intersections that feed into those areas. So, the first location I'd like to talk about is up on the Carnegie corridor, I'm sorry, up on the Chester corridor. As Craig said, one of the things that we've been doing as we go through this process is to do detailed analysis of all of these intersection locations, to make sure that we're getting good operation at these intersections. We rate the operation using a term called level of service, A through F. And think of it a little bit like your grades in school, where A is exemplary, and F is failing. Not quite as good as in school, as anything that operates D or better is considered to be in an urban area an acceptable level of operation. That's where I say it differentiates from school. If I brought a D home from school and said, this is acceptable, I don't think my parents would have gone for it. So, before we start talking about that level of service, but what does that mean? Essentially, level of service measures the delay, the various vehicles in the intersection area, experience as they come through that. When we get into anything worse than that level of service, D, what we begin to see is situations where if you were approaching the light and you got caught at the red light, so you'd come up to the back of the cars that are beginning to cue up, and you get in line. If you're at a signal where you're getting a level of service D or better, the light would turn green, and even if you were the last car in that cue of vehicles, you would go through that green, and clear the signal, and continue on your way. If you're at a signal with a level of service E or F, often times, what you would see happen to the back of that line of folks, the light would turn green, you'd move your way forward, and then the light would turn red again, and you wouldn't make it through. So, when we started looking at these intersections, we look at two things. One's the overall level of service for the intersection, which is an average for the whole intersection. And then we also look at each of the individual movements for the intersection. So, we look at each left turn. So, at a regular intersection, there'd be four left turns, and we'd look at each of those, each of the right turns, each of the through movements, and we make sure that they're all operating at an acceptable level of service as well. What we see is, when we do our analysis of both the a.m. peak period and the p.m. peak period, we still have two locations where we're not, for particular movement, we're not achieving that level of service goal for particular movement. The first of those is the location at East 30th and Chester Avenue. So, to orient you, I'm going to be talking to the left screen here. So, here we've got Chester Avenue, under the proposed condition. You see the onramp to westbound I-90 here, the offramp coming off from east I-90 to the intersections up here, offramp from westbound I-90 here. So, we have some fairly closely spaced intersections at 24th, the two ramp terminal intersections, and then at East 30th, on Chester. Now, as Craig said, under the existing conditions, what we see pretty much everyday is, when we get out onto the freeway section itself, we have that weave of traffic coming on from Chester, you know, conflicting with the traffic that wants to get off at Prospect. A little bit to the south of there, we have the weave of Prospect traffic coming on and southern traffic trying to go off. We don't have enough lanes in the Carnegie curve. And those three things, pretty much on any given day in the afternoon, conspire to have traffic back up completely around the loop ramp, and then often times, it'll cascade back to Chester Avenue, sometimes as far as 38th. So, what we typically see is some pretty heavy congestion in those areas. So, what we're seeing here is -- what we're having in this location -- what we have at this location is, for the movement that is southbound 30th making a right turn onto Chester Avenue, we don't meet our level of service goal. We don't miss it by much. If you were one of the last one or two cars to get into line to turn right at that location, you wouldn't make it through at the light, and you'd have to wait for the light to turn green a second time in order to get through. Now, that's based on the traffic modeling numbers that we've projected for this area for 30 years into the future. So, that's not going to happen right away. As the traffic builds up, you know, over time, that becomes more of a problem for us. Now, the other thing is, you know, as that traffic backs up, there are other ways to get to and from the freeway, and traffic may divert. So, we really didn't see this as being too big a problem, too big a stopper for us at this location. so, we looked at, what would it take to correct this problem in that area? In order to correct the problem, we'd need to add a right turn lane to have a dedicated lane in that area. But in order to do that, that would require taking two fairly large structures here and here at the corner of 30th and Chester. And again, when we talk about the minor inconvenience of a couple cars getting caught at each cycle, we really didn't think that was worth mitigating that minor amount of delay for those drivers. So, we're not -- you know, the alternative we're presenting, you know, continues to show this level of service problem in it, because, you know, we felt that the cure wasn't worth it. Okay. So, that's what we're looking at, at this location, and what we're seeing here is essentially a simulation of the projected traffic for this location. Each little block represents a vehicle moving through the system; 5:30 p.m., peak hour. And again, in the back corner, we've got this, as well. So, if you want to zoom in closer or get a better look at any of the other sections that we looked at downtown, we can -- we certainly will be happy to oblige you after the presentation. Can you bring up the avionic for Carnegie, please? UNKNOWN MALE: I'm sorry, are you saying that that was at 5:30 p.m.? MR. DOROTHY: Yes. UNKNOWN MALE: About 90 percent of the cars have disappeared somehow. MR. DOROTHY: What's happening is, what we are showing, we fixed the main line freeway. What we're looking at there is, you know, in the Carnegie curve section of the Innerbelt -- UNKNOWN MALE: I'm talking about on Chester. MR. DOROTHY: I understand. We're talking about 7,000 cars going through that Carnegie curve area. You're seeing them up on the screen. We've gone through and we validated that model to show that we've got the right amount of traffic on the screen. Isn't that amazing, how much better it looks? All those cars are still out there, but when everything actually works, things look pretty good. UNKNOWN FEMALE: It seems to be 4:30 to 5:00 where there's the most problems on Chester, not at 5:20. MR. DOROTHY: We're looking at an idealized peak period. What we've done is, when developed our traffic numbers, we went through and we looked for the highest hour in that peak period, and that's what we based our projections on. So, we're basing our projections on the worst case scenario for that peak period, and we counted every one of these locations, so we know what traffic is out there today, as well as predict traffic for the future. UNKNOWN MALE: Would all of the cars from Prospect Carnegie, Euclid, all onto that little bypass road, and then coming in and making the right and then the left? MR. DOROTHY: Yes. All of the traffic has been reassigned to the available access points with what you're seeing here. We'll move on and talk about the second location we're talking about, which is East 9th Street, which you see here, and Carnegie, here. Can you run that one as well? And then zoom in on it, if you can. What we're talking about with this one is, the southbound left turning movement at this intersection, it's the same sort of thing. You know, that's a movement that's getting difficult for us in the p.m. peak period. When we look, again, what the solution for that would be, again, no surprise, it would be to add a second southbound left turn, and we're going to take care of that. But in order to widen the roadway north of Carnegie on East 9th Street by a lane, we would either have to widen the one side or the other. If you widen the one side, that means impacts to Jacob's Field. If you widen the other side, there's impact to the historic . Again, both pretty heavy impacts. So, because of the relatively modest nature of -- of the level of service problem for that particular movement, and again, you know, what we're seeing here, we're not seeing these large backups at this location. Again, it wasn't felt that it was necessary to have those large impacts for that small of a problem. Ma'am? UNKNOWN FEMALE: What are you doing about the entrance from 9th Street onto the Innerbelt? Because it has all this traffic coming in back of it, and it's a short entrance ramp. MR. DOROTHY: Sure. UNKNOWN FEMALE: It's one of the intersections that I prefer not to use, ever. MR. DOROTHY: Okay. And you bring a valid point. We're talking about this intersection location, you know, if we look at this on a given, you know, afternoon, if you were to drive out to this location, one of the things you would see, a big line of traffic, you know, lined back up north into the city, as folks try to get onto that onramp to go to westbound I-90. One of the things that happens with that, and as that begins to get worse, you get other folks that try to cheat the cue and push their way in, and nobody's going to have that, so they end up blocking that lane, as well. One of the things that we've done is, the entrance ramp coming onto the freeway being right across the intersection, we make it two lanes at the bottom of the entrance ramp. So, two lanes can feed from southbound East 9th Street, two lanes feed onto that ramp. As you're climbing up into the freeway, those two lanes merge down into a single lane. That would allow us to put twice as many vehicles through the intersection, because the vehicles come and stagger themselves in. Once they get up onto the main line westbound I-90, we're providing, you know, a much longer, you know, merge distance for the vehicles to merge onto the main line. That much longer distance allows you plenty of time to get over and into the lane and to find a place to come over into the lane. And again, at this time, instead of coming up and merging into a three-lane section, you're now merging into four lanes of traffic, so there's an additional main line lane up there, so there's more gaps available for you to merge into. UNKNOWN FEMALE: You can't have a through lane, like on Ontario, on that 9th Street? Because that 9th Street entrance is dangerous anytime of day. MR. DOROTHY: Sure. We've looked at doing two of those type things. We have three lanes coming from the Carnegie curve, and we have three entrances coming on to the central interchange. We have 14th Street, 9th Street, and Ontario, and we have five lanes coming out from across the river. So, two of those can come on, and one of them has to come in as a merge condition. And when we start looking at the amount of volume that we have, we've got a lot of traffic coming out of the trench. Once we add all the traffic from 14th on, we don't have enough capacity at that point. We have to bring 14th on, then, as one of those adds to give us the extra capacity so we don't just break the freeway out again, and then we bring 9th on as a merge, and then Ontario on, again, as an add. So, I think we're kind of moving into the questions section, so I want Craig to finish up the, you know, his discussion with this last slide, and then I think we'll let the facilitators handle the questions, which are starting to turn more generalized. MR. HEBEBRAND: Yeah, thank you, Paul, and I'm going to turn you back over to Jackie, who will be our facilitator. Do you want to go over this slide? MS. KRUPP: Go ahead. MR. HEBEBRAND: We have set up a deadline for public involvement. If you want your public comment considered in the drafted environmental impact statement that comes out this spring, we'll continue to accept comments after that, and they'll go into the final environmental impact statement in the fall. And that's a little over 30 days from today to get your comments in on anything. And we have comment forms on the side; you can complete those and leave them in the box with you, you can take them home and mail them back, or you can send us a letter, and the address is up there; or visit our website, www.innerbelt.org. And there's a lot of information on the project by Monday morning, the display boards and the Power Point will be up there, as well, as will a number of letters and stuff that go back and forth between Midtown and a number of other entities are also posted up there. I'll go ahead and turn it over to Jackie. MS. KRUPP: Thanks. Okay. I know there's a few of you who might have some questions and/or comments. We urge you to keep them to two minutes. Please don't go over. There's many people here in the audience who would like to have a question or comment, and we want to make sure that everyone gets a chance. Also, if you could also spell your last name, for the benefit of the court reporter, we want to make sure that it's accurately reflected for the record. And if you could also let us know if you're a resident, what area of the Cleveland neighborhood you're from, or if you're just an interested participant, that's great. And if you're from an organization, that would be good to know, as well. Your questions or comments will be addressed by a panel of experts. Craig Hebebrand, who's a project manager at the Ohio Department of Transportation, District 12, along with Dan Daugherty, the Real Estate Engineer for the Ohio -- I'm just going to say ODOT from now on -- ODOT's District 12. John Model, who's part of the Planning Commission, and from Burgess & Niple, Paul Dorothy, the chief engineer, and Neil Chase, who is the environmental consultant, from Burgess & Niple, as well. Please line up here for your questions or comments. There's a microphone available. MR. ECKERLE: Craig, it seems like you're improving on public relations. MR. HEBEBRAND: Thank you. Could you start with the spelling of your name, please. MR. ECKERLE: Yes. For the next five to ten years -- THE NOTARY: Sir, I need you to spell your name. MR. ECKERLE: E-C-K-E-R-L-E, John. For the next five to ten years, we'll be going through a lot of construction in Cleveland, either on the Shoreway, or the Innerbelt. And what I was just basically questioning, there is one of the major employers, an employer section, in the University Circle area. Why aren't we first building the opportunity corridor before we start ten years of decorative orange barrels throughout the city? This is a long term improvement, but by the time this is all done, I'll be retired, and I kind of think that we should be able to get to University Circle. If we're going to build it anyhow, why don't we build that first? Isn't that kind of, like, a better plan? Your comments? MR. HEBEBRAND: We are studying the opportunity corridor as connecting from I-490 to 55th Street, University Circle, with the City of Cleveland. That study is looking at the ability to take traffic from the interstate system, which feeds via 77 and 90, 71, a very large section of the region, and makes it very accessible to University Circle, with a prime consideration for economic development in the forgotten triangle. So, we are undergoing that study with the City of Cleveland. It is in its preliminary stages. It is nowhere near being a project that's going to be capable of going under construction in the immediate future. So, it is a study, it is a potential project. MR. ECKERLE: Does that make more sense to build that first? MR. HEBEBRAND: Yes, it always makes sense to build new capacity. And we are doing that within this corridor, such that we build the new westbound bridge off line where before we start working on the existing bridge, and likewise, the new eastbound bridge. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MS. SHORT: Okay. My name is Mary Sue, my last name is Short, S-H-O-R-T. I was born and raised in Cleveland, my father was an engineer for the county. So, listening to all this presentation about bridges brought back a lot of memories. As a matter of fact, my brother Phil works for ODOT. The only two questions that I have; number one, are you going to be able to make a left hand turn off of Chester going north? Because you can't make a left now. MR. HEBEBRAND: Yes. Under our recommendation, that left hand movement from the eastbound I-90 coming up to Chester Avenue turning left -- MS. SHORT: Yeah. You'll be able to make a left? Second of all, will you be able to take 77 north, which now connects with East 14th and everything going onto the Innerbelt? Will that still be there? MR. HEBEBRAND: Yeah. From 77 north, you're going to be able to exit from 30th and Woodland, you'll be able yo exit at 9th Street, which becomes westbound Orange. There's an exit at 22nd Street, and one at 18th Street, as well as the connection up to I-90 eastbound. MS. SHORT: So, when you go north on 77 and you stay in your left hand lane, will you be able to get onto the Innerbelt still? MR. HEBEBRAND: You will not be able to go from 77 north to the Innerbelt bridge. That movement from north to west will be rounded across the 490 bridge, which is actually a more direct route. MS. SHORT: Okay, thank you. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MR. SHEEHAN: Hi, my name is Jim Sheehan, S-H-E-E-H-A-N, Director of the Ohio City Bicycle Co-op. We're a bicycle educational facility on Columbus Road in the Flats. I'm also the regional representative for the League of American Bicyclists, which is the national membership organization which got roads paved about a hundred years ago, so I'm extremely interested in bicycle access on several components of your plan, specifically because we take children and adults on bicycle education rides through this entire area. I would like to ask, what plans are, as they stand now, for the bicycle access on the Innerbelt bridge; and from your presentation tonight, I'd also like to find out if you've considered bicycle -- well, first, if bicycles will be legal on the frontage roads, and if you considered accommodating them in anyway on the frontage roads and the access roads; specifically, the commercial road, which has been rerouted. I noticed there was a cul-de-sac on there; it would be helpful, for bicycle transportation to West 3rd street to downtown, to maintain a pedestrian and bicycle access along the existing, the current alignment for the commercial road. And I would just like to urge you to consider all the traffic modes in the rest of your plans, and thanks for your presentation. MR. HEBEBRAND: Thank you. Let me see if I remember all these. The frontage roads, yeah, there'll be city streets, so bicycles and pedestrians will be able to use the frontage roads, outside of our limited access highway where the ramps go down on to the interstate. With respect to the commercial road, that's something we can look at as providing connection down to that roadway. We do not believe it's a good idea to put bike traffic up on the interstate highway bridge, and we would separate that physically from the interstate traffic. We still don't think that's a good environment for the bridge, for the bikes and pedestrians, having to protect them from the traffic, protect them from dropping things on people that pass beneath, securing that facility. Particularly on some of these summer days, might have people on it, but there's a lot of times that are going to be very lonely and isolated. We don't think that's very appropriate. Looking at the towpath trail as it transcends, we're willing to look at those. MR. HAUSER: Good evening. My name is Ed Hauser, H-A-U-S-E-R, and we meet again. I saw you guys this afternoon. I just want to highlight a few things I talked about this afternoon. One is the process after six years, participating in this process. I'm disappointed, frustrated, and I believe the process is significantly flawed. One of the other things I want to focus on is the bridge. I don't see any preferred bridge anymore. It's hidden behind contract whatever, but no more preferred central viaduct. It's disappeared, it's not an issue. The southern bridge alignment was invalidly removed because of -- it said it was going to take this church, which it is not going to do. But for that same reason, the northern bridge is taking the historic properties, so that historic federal review process is flawed, also. But what I really want to point out is, one year ago, on January 31st, I submitted my first of five assessments to ODOT. And what I said is, tell me how much this future eastbound bridge is, so we get a true cost of your preferred alternative. You can't just say, yeah, we'll worry about that in 20 years. So, after one year, this afternoon, when I met with you, I got the answer: 520 million dollars for the future eastbound bridge. That's over one billion dollars for the bridge alone that you've proposed. That's two thirds of the entirety of this project, which is 1.5 billion, and we have no alternative. Can I hear you publicly state that your bridge alternative will cost over one billion dollars? MR. HEBEBRAND: The entire program that we're proposing over 15 years is 1.5 billion dollars of your extended dollars. So, when we look at that first construction contract, it's about 436 million, which includes not only the bridge over the valley, but all the approach work and all the approach bridges from -- MR. HAUSER: Craig, I just asked you one question. It's a lawyer-type question: Is your project going to cost over one billion dollars in its entirety? MR. HEBEBRAND: Yeah. The entire project costs 1.5 billion dollars. MR. HAUSER: The entire bridge? MR. HEBEBRAND: No. That's 520 million dollars in your 2025, or I think we escalade to 2023, the midpoint of the pursued construction. That's 260 million in today's dollars, if we went out there and did that today. The rest is what happens when you inflate something to a future year. Yes, it's very close to a billion. It's not a billion for the river crossings themselves. MR. HAUSER: And to repair the existing bridge? Is that included as part of your proposal? MR. HEBEBRAND: We have about 130 million dollars for the rehab of the existing bridge, which includes the reconstruction of the interchange. Again, 130 million isn't just that bridge rehab, it also includes the approach over the bridge. MR. HAUSER: Anyways, it's a billion dollars. Thank you. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MR. CRONIN: Hi. Kevin Cronin, C-R-O-N-I-N. I'm a Cleveland resident and also active with a group called Cleveland Bikes, working on bike safety education and the like. I want to thank you first for clarifying the cycling access on the frontage roads, the access roads, because that's a concern and if it's city property, it's the law. Bikes should have access. I do want to address the question to ask if you can clarify some things about the bridge, the Innerbelt bridge, and bike access on that. My understanding is, when you've got cycling access on both sides of the bridge, there should be a preference for bikes on the bridge and being able to use the bridge itself. Now, we can start talking about alternatives, as to whether cyclists and pedestrians can even enjoy the facility. If there's a way that we can talk about, you know, an undercarriage, or an access that has been done in cities around the country, I think that would be the important signature bridge that we would really be able to enjoy here in Cleveland. MR. HEBEBRAND: Thank you. When we look at access to the bridge, and again, the federal requirements ask us to consider including the bicycles in any of our improvements. Again, when you're talking a continuous facility, there is no continuous existing facility or proposed facility along our route. We have to do the intersecting towpath trails, which is actually running perpendicular to us. The discussion of underneath versus next to, building the deck wider, putting it next to, is more expensive than hanging it underneath, because we're not adding structure with it. But from our perspective, hanging that underneath on a bridge that's a mile long, where you're a half mile from the approaches, from the security standpoint, that makes that facility even more difficult to justify. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MS. WEHRLE: I'm Mary Wehrle, W-E-H-R-L-E, and I'm a resident of Ohio City, and I'm still concerned about the entrances to 90 west off of Carnegie, because as the City currently has their traffic flow, you are unable to make a left hand turn at 14th and at Ontario. So, what it means is, you have to make your entrance, if you're going west on Carnegie, onto 9th Street, and its ramp is not a through ramp, and that ramp is dangerous, because it's short. And also, there's very poor visibility. Now, is the City going to change its traffic patterns on Carnegie to make it safer, since you're not making any improvement? MR. HEBEBRAND: Under our recommendation, yeah, there would be changes to Carnegie from the bridge to approximately East 30th, the entire corridor. Under our recommendation, traffic heading westbound on Carnegie that wanted to access I-77 could do so by turning left at 21st Street. To access I-90, they could turn left at 14th Street, in which case, they'd get their own lane at the top, and become the number four lane. They could also turn left at 9th Street. While they would not get their own lane, they would have to merge, they're merging into a four-lane section which has the gaps larger, and visibility at the top of that ramp would be great to improve over the existing condition. MS. WEHRLE: How about Ontario? MR. HEBEBRAND: As we have it configured now, you could make the left turn because the ramp comes off that west frontage road. But you've already had the opportunity to use 14th and 9th prior to reaching that point. Ms. KRUPP: Thank you. MR. SCHMIDT: Robert Schmidt, S-C-H-M-I-D-T. I live in Ohio City, and I own businesses in Midtown. I've got a question and several comments. First, on the AVI film that counts the car calculation and the assumptions, is that all available to the public? MR. HEBEBRAND: They're massive. I mean, we could make them available if you wanted to come to our office and review them, but they're massive documents that we didn't intend to mass duplicate. But if you'd like to call and make an appointment, we'd certainly like to do that. MR. SCHMIDT: I've got a number of issues with all of this, specifically on the bypass road. I don't know, the road just to the west of the trench. You've got one lane in each direction with four stoplights, going through all of this. That's quite a large number of single point failures for anybody who breaks down to be able to cut that off and to be able to, you know, eliminate traffic going into and out of Midtown. One example could be, without any of these breakdowns, coming out after a baseball game, there's 40,000 people, maybe something like 9,000 cars. If a third of them are going east, that's 3,000 cars, half of them may go on East 9th and the other half towards the Innerbelt. That's 1,500 cars going through on that single road. Twenty cars a minute would be pretty high, I think, typically more like ten cars per minute, trying to get through four sets of lights. That means 150 minutes, it's going to take two and a half hours to empty out the stadium everyday. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MR. ASCH: My name's Robert Asch, A-S-C-H. I have a two-point question. Number one, construction on the Innerbelt curve at the Shoreway, has that been delayed? Initially, you were talking about a possible 2008 construction start, and it looks like you pushed it back to 2011. MR. HEBEBRAND: That has been delayed. The sequence originally started from the north and worked its way south. It's one of the changes, we actually start with the westbound bridge, finish the central interchange. So we do everything from Carnegie south first, and then we go into the overhead bridges, so that we don't get into the trench itself. We don't have that until about 2018. MR. ASCH: Okay. And the second thing I had to ask was, in regards to the add lanes that you've got proposed for East 14th and Ontario, if you realized that after everything is open to traffic and the traffic patterns are not what you're anticipating, can the traffic structure be slightly changed so that East 9th would merge in with East 14th, become the add lane, or will it be constructed in such a way that East 9th Street would have to be a merge only, even in the future? MR. HEBEBRAND: We could make that change the other way, where if we build it with Ontario as the add lane, we could never, because the pavement wouldn't be there for 14th. We would have the option of changing 14th Street to a merge condition, and then that lane would be open and available for 9th Street, if that's what operation showed. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MR. HOM: Hi, my name is Steve Hom, I'm with the -- THE NOTARY: Could you spell your last name? MR. HOM: Last name is H-O-M. Paul and Craig, early on in this process, certain ramps were eliminated, ostensively for the purpose of opening up green space and compensating for expansion of the pavement for the trench. Previous plans showed the elimination of the East 30th Street exit, which forks off of the Superior exit. The current plans now show it reestablished. We think that this exit promotes Payne Avenue as a pass-through to points west and points east. We think if you observe traffic flow, you will find that a lot of those cars using that exit rarely use that exit to use Payne Avenue to go to those points east and west. Payne Avenue is a residential street, unlike these other downtown commercial streets. There are people who live on both sides of that street, who walk up and down that street. You have senior citizens, you have children, and we would prefer that Payne Avenue not be used as a pass-through street. Why not eliminate the East 30th Street exit? It would reduce pass-through traffic on Payne Avenue, and it would increase green space. I would appreciate a response. MR. HEBEBRAND: Thanks, Steve. In the earlier renderings, where we did not have both the cutoff ramp or the passing ramp to 30th, from I-90 eastbound to 30th, or from I-90 westbound to 24th, that was in the design in which there was a pair of frontage roads between Chester and Payne, so Payne had a set of ramps at its north end. When those were eliminated based on public input, you did not want the character of Payne to change. One of the things we were asked to restore was the existing condition, which is the East 30th Street cutoff ramp and the East 24th Street cutoff ramp. This is the first that we've heard that we should eliminate those ramps and actually reduce the level of access that Payne has today. MR. HOM: So, will you consider eliminating that East 30th Street exit ramp? MR. HEBEBRAND: I mean, not at this time. We've heard from one person that suggested that be eliminated. Our discussion from the City and other estate holders has been to perpetuate the level of access to Payne, not make it greater, and not make it reduced, either. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MS. EAKIN: Hi. My name is Martha Eakin, E-A-K-I-N, and I live in Shaker Heights. I was interested, as we were going through this evening, and we were hearing a lot about traffic patterns and movements, that the comments that we are making, that we write in, are going to be included into the draft environmental impact statement. And basically, nobody has mentioned the environment, the land, the water, and the air. And I realize that there is going to be a draft put out, supposedly, spring/summer '07, and then we're going to have a public hearing. If it runs the way the conceptual alternative site happened, things are proceeding, you guys are going to your next steps before there's any possible chance to respond to comments made. For instance, you know, there was a brief mention about a historic building that you're not going to take. We didn't hear about any of the buildings that you are going to take. With reference to water, we've heard nothing about water run-up, which is obviously going to increase. With regards to air, if you're aiming at increasing the traffic that can move through here, because you expect there's going to be more traffic by 2025, we're already in an area of noncompliance with regards to air equality. So, what's your response to -- I was surprised that you could be bringing more traffic in if we already don't meet air equality standards. MR. CHASE: We've been doing this project for a number of years, and we started approximately three years ago on a number of detailed studies of the environment, and they're in our library area back there. We have done evaluations of the ecological impacts to the area. Not too much in this urban, but there are some trees, et cetera, that we may have to be concerned with. We have done air quality studies, we have done detailed noise studies of alternatives; not just the one that was presented tonight, but of alternatives, and how they were impacted. We have done phase one historic studies, where we looked at an area and decided which buildings may be possibly historic, which recommended the number be studied in further detail, which is called the phase two study, and those phase two studies have been undertaken and are being included now. And also, we're looking at included alternatives and their relationship with the alternatives. That process will be continuing as we move forward. We've looked at hazardous waste impacts, all the different areas along there. So, these have been ongoing, and as our alternatives have been narrowed, our studies have gotten more detailed. So, we started, and they are available. Not all of them are available on the website, but the environmental impact statement does not begin the studies of the environment. This basically summarizes what has been done for the past three years. MS. EAKIN: I would just say, I still have a concern that we're operating on the preferred alternative, not after we compare, at least to given all these things, but we've chosen our preferred alternative, and then we're doing these further studies. And hopefully, on your side, wanting to make them match up to what you intend to do. MR. CHASE: Actually, in the environmental impact statement, we will be presenting an alternative, besides the preferred alternative, and we will be explaining why certain things were eliminated, a number of them because of impacts that are considered environmental. But that will explain the process of how we narrowed the alternatives down. It also will carry an alternative, if we are presented an alternative. MS. EAKIN: The public would be able to give more intelligent responses if they knew about the alternatives, and the reasons they were or weren't chosen, before the fact, instead of after the fact. But I've gone on long enough. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MR. PUNTEL: Hi. Excuse me. Hello, my name is Greg Puntel, P-U-N-T-E-L. I actually have a business on Carnegie Avenue, and unlike Steve, who is concerned about the additional traffic on Payne Avenue, my concern is the access to Carnegie Avenue from the Innerbelt. I've been to a number of these meetings over the years, and have yet to see anything on any of the drawings that would propose any type of creative alternatives to eliminating the Prospect and Carnegie interchanges. Has there been, I guess, any creative thought to those two areas? MR. HEBEBRAND: Actually, there has, and a lot of them didn't make public meetings because we couldn't get them to work. But we did look at 18 different concepts for access to the Midtown corridor that were presented over the years, so there were a lot of iterations to that. And I know Midtown has raised concern, as well as the other estate holders, that they'd like to sit down with us once more, and make sure that we haven't exhausted -- that we have, in fact, exhausted, and we haven't left anything that might provide a different level of access than what we're recommending. So, we'll work with the City and estate holders along that corridor, but we have looked exhaustively at ways of getting that in. It's a very difficult location, because the freeway makes a 90 degree turn and changes from running parallel to the street grid to running perpendicular to the street grid. There's historic buildings on each side. It's been very difficult to find an alternative to what we're proposing that works, but we've agreed to sit down once with Midtown and the estate holders and the City of Cleveland, and confer, you know, is there something else out there, or have we, in fact, exhausted it? MR. PUNTEL: If I could follow up, with the Juvenile Court being moved out, would that free up land for that exit area? MR. HEBEBRAND: We don't believe that that changes the position or the protection of that structure under the historic regulations. But those are federal regulations and not state regulations, and the City of Cleveland has indicated that they will, when the new Director of Transportation is appointed, that they will request that he set up a meeting between the City and Federal Highway to discuss that specific issue directly between the City and Federal Highway. MR. PUNTEL: Okay, thank you. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MR SCHOCK: My name is Tom Schock, I'm a suburban resident from North Olmsted. My last name is S-C-H-O-C-K. I come into downtown quite often. I have two questions. The first one was, in several places you're creating marginals on both sides of the freeway, like through Cleveland State. Is there any thought to bringing these marginals together and putting them on top of the freeway, so you can free up the land and creating a more aesthetic boulevard above the freeway there? MR. HEBEBRAND: Early on there was a concept, and Midtown did look at something similar to that. And again, the frontage road, it's a two way frontage road. Right now, it facilitates very well the alignment coming off the Chester ramp. The freeway, in the future, does make a slight shift to the east to facilitate constructibilities. There is a natural plateau left there on the west side that makes that alignment more natural, and it is quite a bit more cost effective than trying to put it in the middle, where there would be gaps on each side. So, it would kind of be a roadway structure without land use adjacent to it, where at least we'll have land use on one side. MR. SCHOCK: How are you going to eliminate a whole intersection there? Because you have one road instead of two roads. MR. HEBEBRAND: Well, the frontage road as it's evolved right now is a single, two way roadway. We had early concepts of two way. MR. SCHOCK: And my second question was, Skip had talked about looking at decking or capping, whatever, but then there was nothing presented on that. Where are you considering those? MR. HEBEBRAND: We aren't, at this time. That is some of the process that Skip will facilitate with our advisory committee, is look at where are the opportunities, where would it be appropriate to consider those? So, that's something we'll do over in 2007 as we go out. MR. SCHOCK: Thank you. MR. SHEEHAN: Jim Sheehan again. I just wanted to follow-up with some clarification, please. On the frontage road bicycle access, one of the details I'd asked was, if you're planning to include any treatments for cyclists, such as wide curb lanes, or bike lanes, or signalization that would accommodate cyclists. And if I could follow-up after your answer. MR. HEBEBRAND: You know, we will work with the City, and where their plan calls for facilities, we will work with the City to accommodate them, but we don't have any plans of our own for those. We'll coordinate with the City of Cleveland's master plan. MR. SHEEHAN: Thanks. And just, if you would, clarify for me the ODOT's position on bicycle access in general on the Innerbelt bridge. MR. HEBEBRAND: We don't believe that it is a prudent location for bicycles. Again, you are isolated, up high. Yes, there would be terrific views; yes, we'd have cages around you to protect you from the traffic, and to protect people below from something that might be dropped off. You know, it is our recommendation that it not be included. We'd much prefer to see working to keeping the bikes' facilities onto the street grid, rather than bring them up onto an interstate highway bridge. There's not going to be anything -- other than the spectacular view, there's not anything up there. And it's a long way from security points at each end. For emergency access, again, with the barrier protecting the vehicles from the wind and physical impact from traffic and the wind generated from the trucks and the spray generated from the vehicles, emergency access has to be on both ends. We just don't think that's the appropriate place to make a significant bicycle investment. We just don't think that is the appropriate place to make a significant bicycle investment. MR. SHEEHAN: I respectfully disagree with you, then, that there is no other reason than the view to be there. I would have taken that bridge here tonight from our location on Columbus Road in the Flats. If I have to go up one hill or the other, if it's a choice between climbing Columbus Road hill, which is narrow and steep, has high speed traffic exiting downtown at this time, and then crossing Abbey Avenue, which is marginally wide enough to share with a car, or take an alternative through downtown, and then dedicate it a specifically designed bike facility that would be world class, and give me that nice view on my way here, I would have chosen the latter. And I would like to, if I may, if you'd like to reply, I'd appreciate it, but I would like to just urge you, again, to consider, because of the factors that you mentioned, wind blasts from trucks, spray, exposure to the weather. Dropping things off the bridge, I guess, might be considered something to worry about, but I'd urge you to consider the lower level, especially since it won't add much to the cost of the bridge. I know there are concerns about personal safety, but I'm sure we have technology that can handle those, between cameras, lights, patrols, and all the other technological solutions there are. Thank you for your time. MR. HEBEBRAND: Thank you. MS. MILLER: Hi. My name is Susan Miller, M-I-L-L-E-R. I live in Cleveland Heights, and I just wanted to echo some comments that I've heard here tonight, and to mention my surprise at a comment that was just made about the environmental impact study. That alternatives which have disappeared from the public view will reappear at the end after public comments have been made, like the ones that we have 30 days to make now, those alternatives will reappear, and environmental impacts and historic properties and reasons will be brought out about why they were taken off the table, why, you know, why those possibilities disappeared. If those possibilities have disappeared for -- because they're more detrimental to our air quality, or they're more detrimental because of noise pollution, or because of this or that, or soil quality. For some very specific reason, it would be helpful to know that, rather, as a citizen, a taxpayer. I feel disenfranchised by the process that has left me out. I feel like I'm a child waiting for Daddy to tell me, you know, where to go and what to do. And, you know, the difference between me and a child is, I'm paying for this. So, you know, I'm not paying for it by myself. We're all paying for this. So, it would be really nice to have a sense that it was happening in an open, kind of an open way, rather than in a closed door, back room way. I also would like to add that the cyclists and pedestrians, what one would hope in a region that is plagued with air quality and water quality issues, that, you know, there would be some effort on the part of this massive undertaking, to address and help heal some of the problems. Rather than what I read in your phase one environmental impact study, we have a lot of permeable surface already, in terms of our urban landscape. So, any additional permeable paving that ODOT would do is just, you know, sort of a fly on the windshield, barely, not important. It's a much larger issue, so I hope that you guys would, you know, consider that. Thanks. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MR. HEBEBRAND: Thank you. I will note that the vast majority of the decisions that have been made today, they're really made for engineering feasibility and operating issues. There haven't been a lot of places where we had to play impacts of one type against impacts of another type. So, for the vast majority of them, because it didn't work, and because the connection couldn't be made here. And the environmental document, again, it doesn't bring all of those back, but it summarizes why, at certain points of the process, we dismissed certain options and carried others forward. MR. HAUSER: Back again. Ed Hauser, H-A-U-S-E-R, and one of the other things that I kept reiterating on for a year, at least a year, over a year, is the magic trick, one of the best magic tricks in the . The Greek church is going to be taken, the southern bridge alignments removed, never to appear again, in its original form. Now that we know that ODOT's proposed bridge is going to cost over one billion dollars -- and all the rhetoric there, it's over a billion; I just added it up. What I've been asking is, are we -- can we use half a million dollars, just a miniscule portion, to get a valid engineering study, an economic impact study, to compare the north and south bridge alignments for feasibility, costs, and traffic interruptions? We have never got solid answers, even on the northern bridge, how you're going to tie in the future of the eastbound bridge. Thanks. MR. HEBEBRAND: We've already spent a considerable amount of money looking at all of that, and it will be documented in the environmental impact statement. MR. ECKERLE: John Eckerle again. One of the things that I observed was, that this is an ongoing process for you, and that there's still going to be considerations of whether or not there's bike lanes, or there are bike lanes, the environmental things. I just think that you should cut off public comment whenever you guys have figured out, this is what we want to do, we're pretty solid on this project, we've worked with Midtown, we're done discussing with them, we're done discussing with the bike people, we're not going to do this, we're going to do that. This is our proposal. You've got 30 days to comment, public. I think setting a public comment day before you're done -- and I understand why you're not done. You wish you were done already, but that might be more acceptable to the public, to actually have, this is what we're proposing, so that we can say, we like this, we hate that, but it's something that's not moving. MS. KRUPP: Thank you. MR. HEBEBRAND: Well, I think -- you know, we've been -- our recommended alternatives have been on the table for about 14 months. We come before you with some refinements to it, but substantially, it is the same. Refinements are important, and they've been driven by public comment, but it's still close to the same. The public needs to comment on the environmental impact. So, the draft environmental impact statement is released to the public. There is a notice of availability. It is widely distributed, and there is a public hearing this summer on that document; however, in preparing that document for that, again, it's been 14 months since we've made the initial recommendation. we've come forward with all the refinements that have been discussed in the last year, and we think we're substantially complete. We would like the public to comment on it. We don't cut comments off on March 5th, we'll continue to accept comments. But certainly, if you're interested in having your comments in that draft document, addressed, you know, please make sure they're to us by that time. MS. KRUPP: Is there anyone else who hasn't had -- who wants an opportunity to address a question or a concern before we adjourn? Okay. Well, I guess that concludes our meeting, and thank you very much. MR. HEBEBRAND: Thank you very much for coming tonight. - - - (Meeting concluded.)

C E R T I F I C A T E I, Haley J. Lensner, Notary Public within and for the State of Ohio, do hereby certify that I attended the foregoing meeting, wrote the same in stenotype, and hereby certify that the foregoing is a true and accurate transcript of my notes, in their entirety.

______Haley J. Lensner, Notary Public My commission expires 04/26/10.