Monday, January 30, 2017
YOUNGSTOWN
Despite plans for a bike path connecting downtown and Mill Creek MetroParks and the installation of bike-rack sculptures on Federal Street in 2011, it’s been illegal since 1974 to ride bicycles and motorcycles in the heart of downtown.
While the little-known law hasn’t been enforced for years, it doesn’t send the best message from a city promoting the use of bicycles, said Councilman Julius T. Oliver, D-1st, whose ward includes downtown.
City council is expected to vote Wednesday to repeal it.
During a Jan. 19 public hearing on a proposed bike path between downtown and Mill Creek MetroParks, a bicyclist brought up the law.
“While it’s a dead law and not enforced, it needs to be repealed,” Oliver said. “We don’t want people breaking the law even if it’s not being enforced. People have been breaking the law for years, and we didn’t know it. Nobody was paying attention to it.”
The original law specifically bans the use of bikes and motorcycles on the Federal Plaza area “which is bounded by the east side of Phelps Street; then east on Federal Street to the west side of Walnut Street including the public square; then from the north side of Boardman Street on Market Street through the public square to the south side of Commerce Street, an access to this improved area by way of Champion Street.”
The ban was approved by city council Oct. 25, 1974, about five months after the city closed Federal Street and turned it into a pedestrian plaza – something cities commonly did in their downtowns during the 1970s.
There used to be signs downtown years ago informing people that it wasn’t legal to ride bike and motorcycles downtown, said Law Director Martin Hume.
“This regulation was when there wasn’t a through plaza,” he said.
Under the city law, a person found guilty of riding a motorcycle or bicycle downtown was convicted of a minor misdemeanor. It became a fourth-degree misdemeanor on a second conviction within a year and rose to a third-degree misdemeanor with each subsequent conviction within a year.
The city took down the plaza in early 2005 and reopened Federal Street – a key factor that led to the revitalization of downtown.
In 2011, the city approved abstract bike-rack sculptures to promote art and to encourage people to ride bicycles.
“We inadvertently encouraged people to break the law, but it didn’t matter as it wasn’t being enforced,” Oliver said.
City council needs to review all of Youngstown ordinances and repeal the outdated ones, he said.