City Publishes ADA Transition Plan and Solicits Comment

Here's a process that slipped under the radar.

The City has published a draft of a new ADA Transition Plan for public comment.

Pretty lousy percentages of good/compliant ramps

Wow. The picture is terrible! The City rarely inspects ramps, and when they do, they find around half of ramps are deficient.

One thing that is not in the plan is any discussion of car speed. The word "speed" appears once only in an appendix. As we saw with the new ramps ODOT installed on Wallace Road, ramps that drop a person into zooming cars have limited utility. The mere existence of a ramp is no guarantee of its usefulness or safety.

Ramp to nowhere at Bassett St

I don't know if a Car Master Plan would directly help on this narrow question, but this is an instance where people not in cars are non-normative, an exception, very marginal, and those in cars remain normative and primary.

It is possible that more explicit discussion of the way we prioritize car travel and car drivers would help with better ADA accommodation.

Indeed, just the phrase "ADA accommodation" reinforces the non-normative status of people who use facilities required by the ADA: We have to make special accommodation instead of just designing the roadway for all users with more egalitarian standards.

In any case, a City road and street system that is fully accessible will have slower speeds, and just focusing on ramps is too narrow. The plan looks to be too siloed and not embedded enough in the total system.

There might be more to say later.