CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Pedestrians will get the first birds-eye view from the deck of the new Inner Belt Bridge when the massive 4,347-foot link over the Cuyahoga River opens to the public Friday morning.

Observers can walk the bridge starting at the new Ontario Street on-ramp, at the corner of Carnegie Avenue and Ontario Street, from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. A ribbon-cutting ceremony follows from 10:30 to 11:30, when the bridge will be dedicated in honor of George V. Voinovich, the former Cleveland mayor, Ohio governor and U.S. senator.

The new bridge partially opens to traffic this weekend, with entry from the Ontario and East Ninth Street ramps. Vehicles will be restricted for a few weeks to two westbound lanes, during which there will be no access from the bridge to Interstate 71.

The 115-foot-high span is about 10 feet lower than the existing Inner Belt Bridge. It also has what the Ohio Department of Transportation calls “Texas rail” barriers. Instead of the current bridge's 42-inch-high concrete walls, which often block the view of anything other than the roadway, the new bridge has 32-inch concrete walls topped by a tubular rail 18 inches in diameter. A one-foot space between the wall and the rail, as well as the bridge's overall height, make for slightly better views of the Cleveland skyline.

“The city of Cleveland -- and particularly Planning Director Bob Brown -- have expressed repeatedly that to block the tremendous view of downtown with a high concrete barrier is doing a major disservice,” Inner Belt spokeswoman Jocelynn Clemings said. The design that ODOT settled on is a crash-tested barrier that provides the same safety and security as a taller concrete wall, Clemings said.

“As an added bonus, it looks very similar to some of the architecture on Progressive Field,” she said.

The deck of the new bridge has grooves for traction and improved drainage. And it has just two expansion joints, one on each end of the bridge, which should make for a smoother ride. Expansion joints let bridges expand and contract depending on weather conditions. The current Inner Belt has dozens of expansion joints, making for a loud and sometimes bumpy ride. The raised joints also make it hard for crews to plow snow. The joints on the new bridge sit flush with the pavement.

Around the third week of November, depending on the weather, traffic on the bridge will expand from two to four westbound lanes. Motorists then will be able to get onto I-71 South. By the end of November, two eastbound lanes will be opened, putting all I-90 traffic on the new bridge.

Then contractors will start tearing down the 54-year-old existing bridge and build the eastbound span, which is expected to be completed in 2016.

That means that from around Thanksgiving until the I-90 eastbound structure is done, the westbound Inner Belt Bridge will have two lanes in each direction, with another two westbound lanes feeding in from the Ontario and East Ninth ramps. An extra lane will be added to about a mile of Interstates 490 and 77 near the first bridge to help relieve congestion until the second bridge opens.

When the westbound bridge starts carrying traffic in both directions later this month, the West 14th Street ramp onto I-90 from the Tremont neighborhood will close. It will reopen once the eastbound bridge is finished. The Broadway exit ramp off I-90 eastbound will close permanently.

There's more to the spaghetti look of ramps and lanes that makes up Cleveland's under-construction Inner Belt. And ODOT urges drivers to "opt for the alternative" by using I-490 and I-77, where access to all downtown Cleveland exits is unchanged.

Overnight Thursday, the East 21st Street ramp to I-77 South will close until completion of the second bridge. ODOT said drivers should use Carnegie Avenue to East 14th or East 22nd streets, then get on Orange Avenue and continue to I-77 South. Also, when the Ontario and East Ninth ramps open this weekend, ODOT will close the East 14th Street entrance ramp to the existing bridge.

If all this sounds like a commuter’s headache in the making, perhaps an open-air stroll will mellow things, at least temporarily. Some 640 feet of deck on the westbound Inner Belt beckons you Friday morning.