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Cleveland Avenue Crosswalks Update

Previously: Notes from the Cleveland Avenue Pedestrian Improvements meeting on May 24, 2022.

Schedule of construction

Department of Neighborhoods Liaison De Lena Scales writes:

Construction will start at the intersection of Cleveland Ave and Camden Ave and proceed north by this schedule, weather permitting. As construction occurs at each location, approximately 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays, right lane closures will be in place. Pedestrian and COTA bus stop access will be maintained.

Feb 12 – March 24
at Camden Ave
at E. 19th Ave

March 24 – May 24
at Kenmore Rd
at Republic Ave

May 24 – June 24
at Lakeview Ave
at Agler Rd
at Lehner Rd

It's good that these crosswalks are finally getting installed, after decades of requests from the community. Will they be solve the problem? Let's look at the data.

Map of crosswalks

This map shows the locations of crashes where a driver hit a pedestrian between 2019 and the start of March, 2024. ODOT groups these crashes into the categories shown on this map: Fatality Suspected, Serious Injury Suspected, Minor Injury Suspected, and Injury Suspected. I'm only showing crashes that happened on Cleveland Avenue, excluding ones on side streets intersecting Cleveland Avenue, because the new crosswalks are for pedestrians crossing Cleveland Avenue, not walking along it.

This map also shows the placements of new crosswalks and existing traffic lights.

What are the takeaways?

  1. Crashes happen all along Cleveland Avenue.
  2. Most pedestrian-involved crashes occur near bus stops. It is unquestionably a good thing that the Franklin County Engineer's Office is installing a central median in the Northern Lights shopping center area, with crosswalks that pause on the island.
  3. There are several crash clusters, not at existing signalized intersections or marked crosswalks, which will not receive improvements as part of the "Walk Safe on Cleveland" intiative:
    • Piedmont Road and Dunbar Drive
    • Between 25th and 26th Avenues
    • At 18th Avenue — there's a new crosswalk going in at 19th, probably because 18th is too close to the existing large intersection at 17th.
  4. Other clusters are getting crosswalks:
    • The bus stops at the south end of Northern Lights Shopping Center
    • The bus stops at the north end of Northern Lights Shopping Center
    • The bus stops at Lehner Road, for the Northern Lights Library

Sources

Locations of new Rapidly Flashing Rectangular Beacons and Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon crosswalks come from Walk Safe on Cleveland promotional materials.

Download GeoJSON of crosswalks

Locations of crashes come from ODOT's OSTATS Crash Dashboard, which doesn't have an export function. I copied the data out by hand. Locations of crashes are approximate. If you need to know precisely which leg of the intersection or which lane the crash occurred in, take the two numbers provided in the popup and enter them into ODOT's Crash Retrieval Tool to get the report that the reporting agency gave to ODOT. If you need even more authoritative data, contact the reporting agency.

Download GeoJSON of crashes

Locations of bus stops are from the COTA Stops Current (Public View) January 2024 shapefile, which was manually trimmed down using QGIS to the subset of bus stops shown on this map.

Download GeoJSON of Cleveland Ave. bus stops

The map is made using Leaflet JS and the Stamen Toner Lite Variant map hosted by Stadia Maps, with a side helping of Overlapping Marker Spiderfier for Leaflet.

Cleveland Avenue Crosswalks Update - March 8, 2024 - Ben Keith