Cherry Street motorists mystified by the one-block “cycle track” the city created more than three years ago along part of that street need not feel embarrassed: Even one of Toledo’s most dedicated bicycle advocates drew a blank on its purpose.
“It looks funny,” Scott Carpenter, known best as Metroparks Toledo’s spokesman, said of the separate bikeway on Cherry’s west side between Spielbusch and Woodruff avenues. “I assume it is the start of more to come as they resurface Cherry.”
But while the city of Toledo does plan to add — eventually — a bicycle and pedestrian path along Cherry between Spielbusch and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Bridge, the “cycle track” fragment it laid out during a resurfacing project in 2019, then completed with a curbed island the following year, is already a key link in Toledo’s bicycle network.
Between Cherry and Franklin Avenue, where it connects with the Cherry/University Trail, the Buckeye Basin Trail uses Woodruff Avenue — mostly with its own lane, but with “sharrow” markings in the block between Cherry and Canton Street indicating a lane also used by cars.
Between Cherry and I-280, the Buckeye Basin Trail uses a separate path parallel to Greenbelt Parkway, built during Greenbelt’s late-1990s construction, before it turns south and meanders beneath the Veterans’ Glass City Skyway to reach Summit near the Craig Memorial Bridge.
But before creation of the piece between Woodruff and Greenbelt, no proper way existed for cyclists to travel from one to the other without braving Cherry’s motor traffic.
“It’s about crossing Cherry, not about a bike lane on Cherry,” confirmed Keith Webb, chairman of the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments’ Bicycle/Pedestrian Committee, and a leader of We Are Traffic, which promotes cycling as a form of transportation.
While it is possible to make bicycle-friendly improvements as their own projects as well, Cherry’s one-block cycle track demonstrates how routine street work also can offer “an opportunity to support bike infrastructure,” Mr. Webb said, and it’s a lot easier now to get grant funding for such project elements than it has been in the past.
Amy Voigt, a city spokesman, said the block-long traffic island and other details along Cherry’s cycle track cost about $80,000.
“It’s kind of the classic example of segmentation building,” Mr. Webb said before remarking that the one block along Cherry is “an important connection to the Greenbelt trail, and on the other side you’ve got neighborhood streets” that are good for cyclists.
A cycle track, he added, can even be used by non-traditional riders, such as parents towing small children in trailers, for which a paint-only bike lane is unsuitable.
Christy Soncrant, the city’s engineering and construction administrator, said Toledo follows a bike plan adopted in 2015 when adding bike and pedestrian elements to its street projects.
“If a road is scheduled for resurfacing and is part of the bike plan, we incorporate the new facility at that time,” she said through Ms. Voigt. “Also, if we are resurfacing a road that can enhance the connectivity between existing paths we will add bike improvements to the project."
Discussions are ongoing, Mr. Webb said, about marking the street portions of the Buckeye Basin Trail with green paint, as has already been done with the cycle track along Jefferson Avenue between 23rd Street and Summit.
Such markings “help bring awareness to motorists, bring their attention to the presence of cyclists,” he said. “It doesn’t solve every issue, but it helps … we have to go inch by inch to educate motorists. And the more people who are out there cycling, that means motorists are seeing more of them.”
Ms. Voigt, meanwhile, said the eventual creation of a multi-use path on Cherry’s east side from Greenbelt to Summit will also provide a valuable link for cyclists.
At Summit and Cherry, she said, “riders will choose to either cross the MLK Bridge on a future path to the trails on the East Side, ride southeast on Summit to Jackson [Street], or ride northwest on Summit to connect to the Metroparks Riverwalk.”
The MLK Bridge bike lane, identified in a Downtown Toledo Transportation Plan drafted three years ago by a city consultant, is planned as part of bridge improvements expected to cost about $4.1 million, largely paid for with a grant secured by TMACOG. Metroparks Toledo is slated to match that grant to the tune of $1.48 million.
Mr. Carpenter said the Metroparks district expects to complete its own project to build “the first legs of Riverwalk” along the Maumee River, including approaches to both ends of the MLK Bridge, by mid-2024. Work on the bridge itself should start by then, he said, but that will depend on design work the city is managing, “so I don’t have a timeline in that piece yet.”
The transportation plan also called for converting one of three lanes on westbound Cherry Street into a cycle track, but Ms. Voigt said the city’s current plan is to make the bike lane separate from the street.
First Published December 30, 2022, 3:38 p.m.
