BRUNSWICK, Ohio — City planning should be a rational process of measuring costs and benefits, guided by broad public participation and basic principles of fairness. But when elected officials intervene, it can turn into a raw exercise of power.
By all appearances, that’s the case with a measure approved by Ohio lawmakers Wednesday requiring the construction of a new Interstate 71 interchange between heavily developed commercial areas in Strongsville in southwest Cuyahoga County, and long-settled residential communities just to the south in the northern Medina County City of Brunswick.
The interchange would most likely be built at Boston Road, a two-lane, tree-lined, semi-rural road edged with single-family houses, that divides the two counties. Observers say the exit, according to the legislation, could also be placed at Drake Road in Strongsville, or Grafton Road in Brunswick.
Uncertainties surrounded the proposal Thursday evening. An ODOT spokesman said, “a study is underway,’’ for the proposed interchange, but did not provide details. That left it unclear which local road might be affected, and how many properties would have to be taken by the state to enable construction.
It was also unclear what kind of environmental review would be undertaken, and whether the process outlined under NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, would apply. The project would be reviewed through ODOT’s Transportation Review Advisory Council, an ODOT spokesman said Thursday.
Any way you cut it, residents along the roads where the new interchange could be built would have no way to know Thursday night whether their property values were secure or whether the state might come knocking soon to buy them out through eminent domain. Nor would they know whether the long-established character of their community could be radically changed.
And that’s because, if the transportation bill passes as written, it could bypass normal planning processes designed to give all affected parties a say.
The interchange proposal, added to the final version of the state’s $13.5 billion transportation budget bill passed by the legislature, will supposedly ease congestion in heavily developed areas of Strongsville around the South Park Mall at State Route 82 and I-71. That’s been a major concern of state Rep. Tom Patton, the Strongsville Republican who authored the measure.
Aerial view of the area surrounding Interstate 71 at Route 82 in StrongsvilleJohn Pana, cleveland.com
But any benefits to Strongsville will likely come at huge expense to Brunswick said Vice Mayor and City Council President Nick Hanek, and State Sen. Mark Romanchuk, R-Ontario, who represents part of Medina County.
Even if the state pays the full cost of the interchange, as Patton has said he hopes may be possible, Brunswick could be subjected to huge additional costs and dramatic erosion in its tax base, Hanek said.
Expenses could include the cost of widening Boston Road to handle heavier traffic, which he said would mean cutting into residential front yards and moving a jet fuel pipeline if Boston Road is the location. Moreover, a new exit could dramatically change local land use patterns, causing significant impacts on residents and businesses.
“It’s the stupidest thing,’’ Hanek said. This is catastrophic for the City of Brunswick. This is putting a highway interchange into a residential neighborhood and turning it into a commercial corridor’' on Boston Road. Hanek said he suspected that Strongsville may want to see Boston Road turned into a truck access road to an industrial park it operates west of I-71.
The interchange proposal is the second effort by Patton this year to use the transportation bill to affect a specific project. In February, he proposed an amendment blocking a locally popular, fully-funded project to build a bicycle lane on Superior Avenue, called the Midway.
He withdrew the amendment after protests by Cleveland officials who saw his move as an overreach of state authority into local planning.
I called Strongsville Mayor Thomas Perciak and Patton for their responses to the comments by Brunswick officials. Patton said Thursday evening that he’s concerned primarily with solving safety problems in what he called one of the highest accident-prone parts of the region.
The issue has been studied for at least two decades to no avail. Patton said that when former Governor John Kasich vetoed an earlier proposal for a new I-71 interchange, he promised to consider the issue in the future. That didn’t happen.
Now, however, Patton has taken the unusual step of inserting the interchange proposal into the transportation bill to position the project for funding with the $300 million that Gov. Mike DeWine has proposed to spend on capital projects around the state.
Patton said traffic from Brunswick has caused nearly half of the congestion experienced on affected streets in Strongsville, and that Brunswick officials haven’t participated in recent meetings on finding a solution.
Romanchuk said, meanwhile, that he sees the proposed interchange as a way for Strongsville to impose the cost of solving its traffic issues on the neighboring county to the south.
“Brunswick and all those upper townships in Medina county are extremely upset that Cuyahoga County would try and push some of their traffic problems into their county and cities and townships.,” said Romanchuk. That’s why, he said, he voted against the transportation bill and has asked DeWine to veto the line item with the interchange.
Whether a new exit proposed by Patton would solve congestion is uncertain. In fact, it’s more likely that building it would increase sprawl development in northern Medina and southern Cuyahoga County through a long-established principle of traffic planning known as induced demand.
Adding capacity to highways tends to solve congestion only in the short term. Over longer periods, increased capacity causes more development, which generates more automobile trips, more congestion, and more emissions that contribute to climate change.
Induced demand explains examples of highway overbuilding such as the Katy Freeway outside Houston, which is 26 lanes wide at its widest point, and Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, which is 14 lanes wide at points.
Concerns over increasing Vehicle Miles Traveled, a measure of demand for roadways, is one reason why NOACA, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, declined to include the new exit desired by Patton in its latest plans for highway interchanges in Northeast Ohio.
A heat map prepared by the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency shows how seven of eight proposed new or enhanced highway interchanges would add to traffic in the five-county region. The three areas circled in red by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer indicate exits that NOACA's staff recommends not building.Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency
NOACA, which oversees transportation planning in Cuyahoga, Medina, Lake, Lorain, and Geauga counties, instead has opted to continue studying whether the proposed interchange would make any sense.
NOACA has shown strong leadership since 2020 in developing new policies to determine fairly where and when new interchanges should be added to regional interstate highways.
It developed its new approach in part to avoid the kind of regional fight that took place before it approved a new interchange in Avon in Lorain County in 2007. The project was hotly contested among elected officials and members of the agency’s board over fears it would lure commercial development to eastern Lorain County at the expense of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.
The fight over the Avon exit exemplified how interstates enabled sprawl development that has turned Northeast Ohio communities into tax-base winners and losers over the past six decades.
Research in 2018 by Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer showed that among 226 communities across seven counties across Northeast Ohio, Cleveland was the biggest tax base loser, with a 66% percent decline in values between 1960 and 2018. Strongsville was the biggest tax base winner, with an 896% percent increase. Part of that growth is attributable to Strongsville’s desire to encourage heavy development that’s now causing traffic congestion.
Instead of building a new exit and adding capacity to the highway system, Strongsville should look at alternatives that would reduce its dependency on cars and encourage walkable, transit-oriented development.
Patton, however, has expressed frustration over NOACA’s hesitance to embrace his I-71 proposal. Hence, he made his proposal to include the project in the transportation bill.
What’s clear, for now, is that the benefits of the interchange, and the negative externalities it might impose, are not entirely understood and that there’s no consensus on it. With so much unknown about the proposal, there’s only one right thing for Gov. DeWine to do. Veto it.
Note: This story has been updated to reflect comments from State Rep. Patton