CLEVELAND, Ohio – Jacob VanSickle scoffs at winter. A year-round cyclist, he dons cold weather gear nearly every day, snaps on his helmet and mounts the saddle of his Civia-Bryant to commute to work as director of Bike Cleveland, the city's leading advocacy group for cyclists.

Cyclists arrive in Public Square for a "Critical Mass" monthly ride in 2012.

His job puts him in an ideal position to evaluate the city's 2011 Complete and Green Streets Ordinance, a key piece of legislation aimed at transforming public rights-of-way to make them friendlier for transit, pedestrians, bicyclists and the environment.

Such ordinances, now common across the country, view streets as vital networks that serve broader and more complex agendas than simply moving traffic.

The law made clear sense in a city whose population reached nearly 1 million in 1950s, but whose streets now serve fewer than 400,000 residents.

With so much asphalt, a mushrooming population of cyclists and a citywide push to embrace sustainable revitalization, there's room for evolution beyond streets that cater exclusively to vehicles.

Along with City Council, the administration of Mayor Frank Jackson is on board. Now in his third term, Jackson aspires to make the city greener, healthier and more livable.

So how is Cleveland doing on "complete and green"?

Performance evaluation

VanSickle and other observers applaud what they see as modest progress in the first three years of the program. But they say the city could be moving faster and more creatively.

"We've had good wins . . . but we could be doing better. That's always my mantra," said VanSickle, a 30-year-old Michigan transplant who came to Cleveland to help shape its future.

Cleveland's existing bike infrastructure in 2013, the first year of a four-year plan for improvement.

VanSickle said he hopes the city will make quicker headway by issuing the $100 million capital improvement bond approved by council on Monday.

Roughly $35 million from the bond would be directed toward road and bridge projects, including $10 million for the proposed bike and pedestrian bridge designed to connect the downtown Mall to North Coast Harbor.

(Some council members raised the possibility that a significant portion of the bond issue would have to be set aside to address reforms in the Police Department over the use of force that could be required by a federal consent decree, Leila Atassi of the Northeast Ohio Media Group reported.)

VanSickle said he'll present a review of the city's "complete and green" performance at Bike Cleveland's annual meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 24 at the Sachsenheim Hall, 7001 Denison Ave.

Councilman Tony Brancatelli, who heads council's committee on development, planning and sustainability, said he also plans to organize hearings on the street program soon with council's committee on transportation.

The city responds

Officials in Jackson's administration had a mix of responses to comments from VanSickle and others, including a desire to manage expectations and balance aspirations against factors including heavy traffic on streets they don't consider eligible for complete-and-green improvements.

They also said critics have misconceptions. On simple repaving projects, for example, the ordinance doesn't require the city to make costly investments in green infrastructure.

"If you're basically just fixing the pavement, you don't have the ability to do the other things -- the drainage features, the streetscape and all of that," said Ken Silliman, Jackson's chief of staff. "You're basically fixing what's already there. Otherwise, the cost balloons, and you may as well do a complete reconstruction."

Nevertheless, Silliman and Jenita McGowan, the city's sustainability chief, said the city is on track to deliver the 70 miles of new bike lanes it has promised by 2017.

That goal, set in the 2013 bikeway plan, would bring the mileage of bike paths of all kinds in the city to 118 miles.

Over the past three years, bike lanes have been added to major east-west arteries such as Detroit, Superior, Puritas and Denison avenues as part of repaving projects. North-south connections have also been forged on East 72nd and West 41st and 44th streets.

Additions to the city's bike network planned for 2014 and 2015.

"It will take us years to get to the point where we get to the network we want," McGowan said. "But we have a good plan and willing people to get it done."

Planning a greener city

As for the green part of "complete and green," the story is trickier.

McGowan said that the city lacks a detailed plan for green infrastructure, which uses landscaping to channel or absorb storm runoff, thereby reducing the burden on sewers and improving water quality in Lake Erie.

The city needs such a plan, VanSickle responded in a separate interview.

"If you're going to have an ordinance that mandates it, you should have a plan to guide it," he said.

Yet even though it may lack an overarching vision for green infrastructure, the city can point to early successes.

On Fleet Avenue in Slavic Village between East 49th and East 65th streets, for example, a reconstruction funded in part with a $2.3 million grant from the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District is rebuilding the street and utilities below.

The project will channel storm runoff to landscaped swales designed to absorb storm water rather than let it surge into the sewer system.

Other road projects, including segments on Puritas, Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Cedar Road and Professor Avenue, have had improvements aimed at absorbing runoff, McGowan and Silliman said.

"The quiet work Cleveland is doing is good," said Terry Schwarz, director of Kent State University's Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative.

But she said the city needs something dramatic and iconic, such as the $63 million Cultural Trail in Indianapolis, an elaborately landscaped pathway that loops eight miles around the city's downtown.

Additional improvements to Cleveland's bike network planned for 2016-2017.

"If you look at it within the microcosm of Cleveland, I think we've made great progress," Schwarz said. "If you compare us to peer cities including Cincinnati, Columbus and Pittsburgh and others in a similar recovering industrial city mode, there are a lot of cities that have done more."

Iconic statement needed

Silliman spent a day in Indianapolis last summer with a Cleveland delegation on a trip funded by the Gund Foundation, and said he came away impressed by the Cultural Trail and other projects.

But he pointed to the pedestrian bridge planned for downtown as an iconic project.

He also said that the northernmost section of the 110-mile Towpath Trail in the city should qualify as "iconic" when finished by 2019.

VanSickle prefers to focus on neighborhoods. He laments, for example, that repaving projects on East Ninth Street downtown, and on long sections of Chester and Woodland avenues, didn't include bike paths.

Silliman said that VanSickle knew in advance that those roadways weren't part of the city's bikeway plan because the activist served on a task force that oversaw its development.

VanSickle was unrepentant.

"We did review the bikeway implementation," he said, responding to Silliman's statement. "Our perspective was that the plan wasn't meant to exclude other streets for improvements."

VanSickle also said the city should try harder to add more high-quality bike paths, such as protected lanes, which separate bikes from cars and pedestrians, often with a curb.

To its credit, VanSickle and others said, the city is planning just such a project on Lorain Avenue west of West 20th Street in Ohio City. It would be the first in the city other than the lane on the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, to which it would connect.

A 2013 sketch of the Midway concept.

Barb Clint, director of community health and advocacy at the YMCA of Greater Cleveland, wants to see an entire network of protected lanes. She is a champion of the "Midway," a proposal that calls for installing a 50-mile-plus system of "bicycle expressways" that would occupy lanes once used by streetcar lines.

While she gives the city a "C" for its complete and green performance so far, she sees reason for high hopes, including the city's willingness to seek grants to flesh out the Midway concept.

"It's a big ship to turn around and retool in terms of how they think about allocated use of the public rights of way," Clint said. "We're making progress, but it's not as fast as I wish it were."

Yet McGowan, the sustainability chief, insists that the city is fully engaged.

"We're excited to be implementing complete and green streets," she said. "We have a good policy and plan and a pathway to get it done. We're really committed to it and we're going to get there."

VanSickle agrees progress is being made – but not enough, quickly enough. So he continues to ride, and to advocate.

"It's poking the beast a little bit in the name of progress," he said.