Cleveland

For two Sundays every summer, a three-mile loop between downtown Fargo, North Dakota and nearby Moorhead, Minnesota is transformed. The open streets event StreetsAlive draws between 6,000 and 8,000 people -- on bikes, sneakers and rollerblades -- into the space that is normally occupied by cars.

Cleveland's metropolitan planning organization was one of those transportation agencies that had never quite gotten over the Eisenhower era. Sure, it threw some money at the transit agency every year. But for the most part, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) treated its mission as a simple matter of expanding roads to reduce congestion.

In a new report making the rounds this week, “More Development For Your Transit Dollar: An Analysis of 21 North American Transit Corridors,” the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy does two things.

If Ontario Street in Cleveland, Ohio, is any indication, a complete streets policy is no guarantee you'll get a safe place to ride a bike, or even a comfortable place to walk.

The evolution of state and regional transportation agencies is painfully slow in places like Missouri and Ohio, where officials are plowing ahead with pricey highway projects conceived of decades ago. But plenty of Midwesterners have different ideas for the future of their communities, and they aren't shy about speaking up.

Ari Maron had no friends.

Cleveland's business leaders want you to know that "The Opportunity Corridor" -- a new road they want to jam through the city's southeast side -- definitely isn't a highway. From the beginning, project proponents have been careful to refer to this $350 million, three-mile traffic-mover as a "boulevard." And they also want you to faithfully accept that this is really all about "opportunity" for the neighborhoods the road will bisect -- some of the poorest in the region -- not the benefit of suburban car commuters.

Where advocates in Cleveland fell short, Captain America has triumphed.

This is it: our last Parking Madness match-up before the Final Four. And it's going to be a good one.