NOACA Board Approves Bicycle Plan and Transportation Plan for Special Populations

At its meeting today, the Governing Board of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) paved the way for improved bicycling and public transit services when it approved a Regional Bicycle Transportation Plan and a Coordinated Public Transit-Human Services Transportation Plan for Northeast Ohio. Both plans will be added to the transportation plan for NOACA’s five-county region, Connections 2030: A Framework for the 2030 Transportation System.

The bike plan identifies goals and strategies to promote bicycling as a means of transportation and recreation. It also includes a priority bikeway system that shows where bikeway facilities should eventually be installed. NOACA’s five-county region of Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties contained 113 miles of bikeways in 1997, 315 miles in 2006, and with the approval of the bike plan, those counties are projected to have 584 miles of bikeways by 2011. The bike plan is on NOACA’s Web site.

“As we learned from the Detroit-Superior Bridge, retrofitting existing routes to accommodate bicycles is difficult,” says Robert C. Klaiber, Jr., P.E., P.S., Cuyahoga County engineer and chair of NOACA’s Bicycle Advisory Council. “so it makes more sense to consider including facilities for bicycles up front. Not every project makes sense for bicycles; that’s why the bicycle plan includes priorities.”

By approving the Coordinated Public Transit-Human Services Transportation Plan for Northeast Ohio, the Governing Board allows NOACA to begin accepting applications for funding grants from two federal transportation programs that serve people with low incomes and individuals with disabilities. By federal law, projects that receive funding from these programs must be consistent with the goals of the coordinated plan, which identifies strategies and priorities to improve transportation for older adults, individuals with disabilities, and people with low incomes. The draft of the coordinated plan is available on NOACA’s Web site, and the final version will be posted next week.

“The coordinated plan shows the best way to share scarce resources and the best way to serve those who need those resources the most,” says Joseph A. Calabrese, general manager of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.

In addition to approving the two plans, the Governing Board voted to add 15 new projects to the transportation plan and the State Fiscal Years 2008 – 2011 Transportation Improvement Program, the comprehensive, four-year listing of federal-aid highway, transit and bikeway projects scheduled for implementation in NOACA’s five counties. Details about these projects are posted on the NOACA Web site.

For more information, call Gayle L. Godek, Communications Specialist, at 216-241-2414, ext. 283; or Steve Jones, Associate Director of Divisional Services, at ext. 352.