Ramps and other aids to sidewalk and crosswalk accessibility having been one of the earliest and most successful demands of the modern disabled-rights movement, you might assume that the litigation and expense arising from the changeover was by now mostly a thing of the past. Not so, according to a Los Angeles Times piece last month. In California, plenty of legal action is in progress against cash-strapped municipalities, which say they can’t afford to comply. “The estimated cost in California alone is $2.5 billion. ‘The cost of retrofitting is phenomenal,’ said Gregory Hurley, a Costa Mesa attorney who has represented local governments. ‘Where is the money going to come from?'” The accommodations “include wheelchair ramps at curbs, level pavement, gently sloping driveways, minimum clearances for wheelchairs and crosswalk warnings for the vision-impaired.” (Dan Weikel, “Getting there is none of the fun”. Los Angeles Times, Nov. 13).
10 Comments
While sypathetic to the intent of the laws in practice it is a typical California bureaucratic train wreck. I wanted to install a shower in my facility in S. California from Home Depot for a few hundred dollars. I was promptly informed that to do so it would have to be handicapped accessible by law. This would be OK if there were just simple guidelines to follow but I was informed that I could not do it myself and that a handicapped certified contractor had to do the installation. Of course the estimate was well over $10,000 and needless to say the shower was never installed.
That’s easy. Just add a tax on wheelchairs and other movement assisting devices. That should raise plenty of money to pay for sidewalk improvements.
Maybe add a yearly excise tax on these sort of things too.
For every wheel chair bound person using the sidewalk cutouts, I have seen and felt 100 skateboard punks blow past me on those.
The ADA accessibility chapter has succeeded. The city sidewalks are now far more accessible to teenage skateboard punks.
There was a wheel-chair fellow in White Plains who rolled around the sidewalks back in the middle 1990’s. He hasn’t been seen in years and hasn’t been replaced.
I have never seen a wheel-chair in a diner; only in hospitals.
I was pleased by Supremacy Caus report that some (skateboard enthusiasts) actualy benefit from the ADA expentitures.
I remind those who demand these hugh per-person ADA expentitures that those funds could be put to good use in Nursing Homes.
Interesting place, this.
The prevailing view seems to be that rights are fine as long as they’re cheap and don’t inconvenience others.
To zak822:
I just reviewed my pocket sized copy of the Constition. Sorry – could not find a “right” to wheel chair ramps. Quite a bit of verbage about property rights, however.
zak822,
Rights are VERY important. Property RIGHTS (note the word) are abused regularly in this country (and the ADA is a common offender).
Your view seems to be that law trumps rights. No thank you.
zak822,
You missed the key point.
It is very difficult to move around in a wheel chair even with the ubiquitous curb cuts. A slight grade is daunting. We should be reasonably accomodating to those in wheel chairs, but a just society has many calls on its resources and we have to weigh wheel-chair access against better care for those in nursing homes, or better schools or more police.
The local shopping center is having it’s curb cuts ripped out and rebuilt again. Apparently, they didn’t fit somebodies idea of a “standard”. Less than a mile away the main branch of the public library has 10 handicapped parking spaces, only one of which meets the current code. This idea of letting lawsuits decide how a law should be enforced is not a very good one. Why can’t the lawmakers just write the law correctly in the first place? Here in California the committee to write our code had lots of handicapped people,many lawyers and not one representative who had ever written, enforced or built to a construction code. So much easier to sue when the code is badly written.
zak822, you should live at the bottom of a hill where a curb cut is, when it rains it makes a very easy place for water to overflow into a yard.
I’m just thankful we did not have the over-reaching ADA when my dad was in business. If it was, my dad’s kids clothing business would have had to:
(1) Take out at least one whole row of clothes (not enough width for wheelchairs);
(2) Move our front counter, which had been moved to the center and raised for better vision for employees to prevent shoplifting (too high for wheelchairs, no ramp);
(3) Put a push-bar on the fire door at the back (at least it was already wide enough!!);
(4) Widen access to the restroom by taking out the shoe department (door not wide enough);
(5) Install bars in the restroom next to the toilet;
(6) Take down the upper level in the storeroom or install a wheelchair lift (no wheelchair access)–this was after we had to cut a hole in the “second” floor due to fire regulations;
(7) Widen doors into the dressing-rooms (not wide enough, and I don’t know how that could’ve been done without sacrificing selling space);
(8) Lower the top shelves and racks and likely not have anything up high for sale (limited access).
And, Lord only knows what I missed or don’t remember!!!
So, zak822, before you make a smart-aleck post like you did, think about what I just listed for my dad’s business–it ain’t cheap and it ain’t “just wheelchair ramps” or “fixes mostly under $50.00” (as an advocate once quoted on a local talk show here).
Hmmm–that idea of a tax on wheelchairs, etc. to pay for curb cuts and other ADA-mandated projects doesn’t sound like a bad idea–maybe extend that to, say, a tax on ADA court settlements too . . . how much could be brought in, I wonder??
P.S. Supremacy Claus, It isn’t just “punk skateboarders”–add in cyclists, roller skaters/bladers, and those annoying roller skates in shoes!