KJP[/member] related to your idea, are their plans to extend the rush-hour bus lane on Clifton onto the new "Buckley Boulevard?"  Obviously this would help put the "R" back in BRT.

KJP[/member] related to your idea, are their plans to extend the rush-hour bus lane on Clifton onto the new "Buckley Boulevard?"  Obviously this would help put the "R" back in BRT.

 

No, the dotted line is for mixed traffic. Bus-only lanes are limited to the pull-off areas at stations. I showed this to an RTA assistant GM yesterday and he liked the stops along the Shoreway but considered the bus-only ramps to Detroit Avenue as way too expensive. RTA's hope is that the Saturday-only bus stops at the bottom of the Edgewater-W73rd ramps will attract riders and be added to its weekday service someday too. RTA staff noticed the big traffic and parking problems Edgewater experienced for its Thursday evening concerts last year. And many RTA staff people ride the 55 to work and have watched all the multifamily housing popping up a short walk from the Shoreway.

 

csu-brt-batterypk-ohiocity by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

To me it seems like someone dropped the planning ball to give buses the right-of-way on Clifton, but then when they reach the new "boulevard" will be stuck in traffic when it backs up into downtown.

When you look at the number and scope of new multi-unit developments planned and built over the last 3-5 years, the Hingetown/north Detroit-Shoreway corridor is the fastest growing in Cleveland.  It also is compact and walkable and reasonably close to downtown ... Rail transit of some kind would seem to make sense for such an area (and hell, stretch this corridor west along the NS railroad tracks through Lakewood, and you have the densest population corridor between Philadelphia and Chicago!) ... and yet RTA kills rail and pushes buses... even, as Cleburger correctly notes, the downgrading (speed-wise) of the Shoreway into a boulevard (which is admirable in many ways in itself) will get these 'fast BRTs' in traffic... Go figure.

To me it seems like someone dropped the planning ball to give buses the right-of-way on Clifton, but then when they reach the new "boulevard" will be stuck in traffic when it backs up into downtown.

 

Because the temporal bus lanes on Clifton didn't require much of an automotive sacrifice. They weren't being used as full-time traffic lanes anyway and didn't require constructing a wider right of way to add new lanes. Providing bus only lanes on the Shoreway would have required taking full time traffic lanes away for buses or widening the right-of-way for bus-only lanes. Neither of which is something that ODOT wanted to do.