On a warm, rainy morning in Cleveland, Rocky Encalada could be heard sharing a story on top of the Detroit-Superior Bridge.
It was Bike to Work Day, an annual event that encourages bicycle commuting. Locally, the event is organized by nonprofit Bike Cleveland. The organization's staffers handed out coffee and breakfast treats to cyclists commuting into Downtown Cleveland.
As Encalada stopped to chat, she revealed she had just had a close call with a car that morning. The Lakewood resident, who usually rides her bike to work on Fridays, said the streets were wet, so she was trying to avoid a puddle during her commute.
"We made eye contact, and as I'm coming around the puddle, I had the right of way," Encalada recalled. "I still had a green light. I'm trying to get back into the bike lane and he just starts to turn right. And literally I'm swerving to not get hit."
Encalada said the driver did slow down to apologize, but when she cautioned him to be more aware, his answer was alarming.
"He was like, 'Well, I was distracted,' and I was just like, 'Well, what does that say for you as a driver?'"
The latest data
Safety is an omnipresent topic within the Cleveland cycling community.
In 2023, 550 people were hit by cars while biking or walking in Cleveland. Nine of those crashes were fatal, according to Bike Cleveland's annual crash report. Cuyahoga County has recorded the most cyclist fatalities of any Ohio county since 2019, according to the Ohio Dept. of Public Safety.
“The best way to be a bike advocate is to be out riding your bike," said Jacob VanSickle, executive director of Bike Cleveland. "The more the public sees that there are people out here that are using bicycles for transportation to get to and from where they need to go, or even recreating, the safer we all are.”
Grassroots coalition People For Bikes recently released its annual city ratings, which scored the bike infrastructure for more than 2,500 global cities. The ratings factored in bike-safe speed limits, protected bike lanes, reallocated space for biking and walking, intersection treatments, network connections and trusted data, according to People For Bikes.
Cleveland received a 31 out of 100 rating, ranking 874th overall. That's a six-point improvement since People For Bikes first rated the city with a score of 25 in 2018. But while the rating puts Cleveland above Ohio's other two largest cities — Columbus and Cincinnati — Cleveland remains far below the nation's safest big cities, Minneapolis and Seattle.
Slow progress
That's not good enough for many local cyclists.
Jon Scudamore suffered a concussion when he was hit by a car while riding his bike in 2020. The Lakewood resident commutes by bike to work in Ohio City, and owns a front-load cargo bike, which he uses to tote around his two kids.
Scudamore said he hopes cities like Cleveland and Lakewood will take broader perspectives when considering bike infrastructure, such as working toward becoming multimodal cities where citizens are less reliant on cars.
"It also just needs to be safe for the people who aren't using cars," Scudamore added. He called for bike lanes separated from vehicular traffic by physical barriers.
"Paint isn't going to protect you. I was actually in [a painted] bike lane when I got hit and the paint didn't do anything for me."
Bike infrastructure locally has been slow, Scudamore said, noting Madison, Wisconsin; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Paris, France as model bike cities.
"I would be a lot more aggressive about it," he said. "I would try to push a little bit more towards what they're doing in Europe — a lot more protected and separate a bike lanes, slower streets. And honestly, if that means less parking, it means less parking."
Scudamore said he also hopes society learns to view cyclists as equals on the roads. He's experienced a range of run-ins with motorists, including road rage incidents and people flashing guns at him.
He's also heard people try to shame him for riding his cargo bike with his kids.
"Every once in a while, you get someone roll up [and say], 'You're putting your kids in danger,'" Scudamore said.
He said he usually volleys back with, "Right now, you're endangering us by not looking where you're going because you're wanting to engage me in conversation."
'Meetings, meetings, meetings'
Paul Hamad, of Cleveland's Old Brooklyn neighborhood, expressed similar sentiments. He said not much has changed since he began commuting by bike to Downtown Cleveland in the 90s.
"I felt that I was fighting for myself back then. I still feel that I'm fighting for myself right now," he said. "I will say, some of the drivers have become more tolerant of my existence out on the road, but I think that's a change in culture or society, not necessarily anything that the cities or governments have done for us."
Safe infrastructure requires more than marked bike lanes and flexible delineators, Hamad said, especially in a car-centric city and culture.
"Start laying down something, some kind of protection for these cyclists," he said, pointing to what he called insubstantial bike lane barriers on Cleveland's Detroit-Superior Bridge.
"You can knock [them] over with your car," he said. "They just flop back and forth. That's not protecting anybody."
Hamad said the proof is in the progress, or lack thereof. He noted that he hopes organizations like Bike Cleveland, who are the voice for local cyclists, hold the city accountable for more action, adding that he's tired of hearing about studies, meetings and discussions in lieu of physical improvements.
"All I hear about is meetings, meetings, meetings. What do you need meetings for? There's reports from 50 different people, at least, out on the internet that you can pull up and see how to help and how to make your city better," Hamad said.
VanSickle said Bike Cleveland's purpose is to ensure that conversation leads to action. Part of that action is empowering individuals to join the cause, he said.
"We encourage everybody to be talking with city leaders. Email your councilperson to tell them you want traffic calming, you want the bike network expanded," he said. "The more people are asking for these things and talking with the decision makers, the [better]."
A new look for Lorain Avenue
Cleveland's Midway Project aims to implement a separate bike network for riders in two high-traffic corridors — Lorain Avenue between W. 20th Street and W. 65th streets, and Superior Avenue between Public Square and E. 55th Street.
The project's concept started with Bike Cleveland in 2011 and the Cleveland City Planning Commission conducted a study on the plans in 2016. Traffic analysis for the Superior Avenue project was completed in March 2020 and the design process for implementation began in early 2023. Construction on the Superior Avenue Midway is projected to begin in fall 2025, according to the city.
The Superior Midway is expected to cost $24.5 million and is funded through federal congestion, mitigation and air quality dollars along with a 20% local match, Ideastream previously reported. The Lorain Midway is budgeted around $30 million, but funds are still being raised for the project.
It's part of the city's long-term goal of improving access to its neighborhoods.
City officials and project engineers recently provided an update on the Lorain Avenue Midway at a public meeting. They're still soliciting community and survey feedback on the preliminary project plans, which currently include separated bike lanes next to sidewalks with a 2-foot buffer between the street and bike path.
"Over 90% of people who have responded to the survey agree with the project vision and have consistently put the separated sidewalk level bikeway at the top of the priority list," said Dave Bass, major transportation projects coordinator with the City of Cleveland, during a public meeting last month.
Bass noted that the portion of Lorain Avenue between the Hope Memorial Bridge and W. 65th Street is on the city's high injury network, meaning it's one of Cleveland's most dangerous streets. He said 45% of people who bike Lorain Avenue ride on the sidewalk, which he said "clearly indicates a safety problem."
About 67% of residents in the neighborhood have one car or fewer and 21% are car-free, according to the city.
The Lorain Midway project remains in the engagement phase, meaning the city has not announced a construction timeline.
Advocating for safer streets
It's been five years since Randy Knilans was hit and killed by a car while riding his bike in Avon Lake.
His wife, Patty, continues to share his story — both to remember him and to spread awareness of the need for greater bike safety. She also joined Northeast Ohio Families for Safe Streets, which is a chapter of a national organization that provides support to victims of bike crashes.
“I don't know that you can actually change behavior, but you can change the way the streets are designed so that they're safer for everybody that's using them — not only bicyclists, but pedestrians as well as cars," Knilans said.
The speed limit was 35 miles per hour on Lake Road where Randy Knilans was killed by a drunk driver. Patty Knilans said drivers often reach speeds of 50 there.
She's been calling for changes to state law that would allow cities to set speed limits on state routes, like the one where Randy died. She, Bike Cleveland and other statewide coalitions recently met with lawmakers in Columbus to further those discussions, though no legislative moves have happened yet.
"If we could get the cities to have the right to determine the speed limit, lower that speed limit and slow down traffic by creating some barriers, it's just doing some creative things," Knilans said.
She said she won't give up until bikers no longer have to risk their lives on roads that she believes are too dangerous for anything but cars.
