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The sidewalk to hell is paved with stupidity
By adamg on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 7:59am
Why crews were chopping down the trees along Huntington Avenue - you might want to have an aspirin handy because the story will make your head hurt.
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Comments
what a shame
Couldn't there have been some way around chopping down the trees? We all live and work in this city -- it's a shame there couldn't have been a compromise.
Two questions -
Did the AAB review the design plans before construction to insure conformity to accessibility standards?
Did the AAB inspect the work during construction to insure conformity to the plans?
If the answer to either of these questions is no, then it seems to me that the City and the T may have a good case to get the fines thrown out.
Either way, this is another good example of what happens when you ignore functional design concepts for aestetic reasons like fancy trees and "historic" brick sidewalks.
Overboard
Sorry, but I'm close to the edge with AAB ADA and the like. How far past 2% was this grade? 2.1? I have concrete sidewalks near me that even I have trouble walking down. Why isn't the AAB getting those fixed??
The MBTA paid $600K to add a new Silver Line bus stop because the existing stop ONE BLOCK AWAY was too far for the elderly to walk to. When i asked how far the elderly walked once they got off the bus and went to their final destinations, i was just called insensitive, but never given an answer.
I'm all for access, but Boston is an old historic city in an area of the country that gets a lot of ice and snow. There are limits to how far stuff like this should be going...
but hey, it's only our tax money right?
The MBTA paid $600K to add a
As I recall, none of the elderly living nearby brought up the need for a stop there until AFTER the T had gone through the planning process and public comment period, etc.
Of course, after spending that much on the existing stop, the T couldn't just do the logical thing and trash it. They'd be raked over the coals for that one. So we're stuck with both.
I'm not sure why the "shelters" (and I use that term loosely) themselves cost $170,000 each. Maybe I don't want to know.
Doesn't Boston have many hills steeper than 2%?
I don't see how a sidewalk can be limited to that slope, given our local topography.
Pretty sure
I'm pretty sure it's "2% over or under grade" (e.g. if the grade is already 15%, then you can't make it under 13% or over 17%).
Wrong way
It's a 2% horizontal, or cross, slope. Vertical slope (aka grade) is another question. That can go up to 13%.
I guess it's a lot easier when the wheels are facing the slope. Cross-slope is more complicated for the wheelchair - it can make them tip sideways or veer towards the street.
Explanation here
Don't Blame the ADA
Blame the T. Most major US cities had been putting in changes to be ADA compliant well in advance of the 1993 start - the T did nothing, planned nothing, and celebrated Day 1 with the needless death of a blind woman.
The T doesn't get "accessible design". Their answer is always to IGNORE the requirements and then ADAPT or REDO things when they get busted on it. There is no forward thinking because they are still permeated by a culture of stupid that feels that people with disabilities should just shut up, go home and be crippled where it won't bother them.
In 1994, Portland and Seattle had buses that would load a chair in 30 seconds, because that capability was built in. Boston bought new buses after that and bitched about retrofitting. Now we have anonasshat moaning about the people in chairs, rather than realizing that 1) other cities don't have these problems and 2) the problems result from the T failing again and again to design accessibility into the system and opting to add on as little as possible at much greater expense in inefficient ways that make assholes like anon blame the chair users for wanting to go to work rather than blame the T for fucking up repeatedly as an operating philosophy.
Or maybe anonasshat works for the T - certainly has the "right" attitude.
Yes, blame the ADA
But just not in the way the previous poster was.
The thing that sucks about the ADA is that in order to enforce it, there has to be an actual person with a disability who files a complaint about something not being accessible. Of course, not a whole lot of complaints are made, because people have other things to do with their time like raise families and go to work, so most people just suck it up and go somewhere else that they can access.
What needs to be fixed about the ADA is that it needs to be enforced just like building codes are. If someone builds new construction that isn't accessible, they shouldn't be allowed to have the building be approved for use. They shouldn't just be able to have it be inaccessible until an individual comes along who has the time and the money to file a complaint with the Dept of Justice.
(Oh, and before people start flipping out and talking about how the ADA "requires" tons of stuff like TTY phones on every floor, talking signage, etc., go and actually read the ADA. This stuff is recommended if one wishes to build a fully compliant facility like a community center or something that gets tons of public visitors. The only things that are outright required in all new construction are a few big things like the ability to enter and move around the building using a wheelchair, having a TTY phone available if the building is of a certain capacity, etc. Basically, the big issue is that the infrastructure needs to be accessible in the first place so it doesn't require time and money to renovate the place the first time someone using a wheelchair wants to come in. Aside from that, most reasonable accommodations can be made more creatively, like putting in additional phones or signage when a PWD starts working there and requests it, or making sure staff realize they need to help customers reach things or fill out a form if the PWD asks.)
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
I think the Flintstones used a TTY phone
There are so many better technologies these days that supplant TTY/TDD technology, including portable TTY machines that can "plug" into a non-compliant phone system with a blackberry-esque keyboard for those times when you just have to TTY. These days a small bank of public computer terminals can provide you all the access you ever needed and even some cooler technologies like the free Video Relay Service provided by AT&T (and others) where you sign in ASL to a translator who speaks in English to your intended recipient and vice versa.
Brick sidewalks last longer
They'd have had to tear up the concrete sidewalk too. It's not because it's made of bricks. But they can at least reuse the bricks.
The pisser is that they probably sloped the sidewalk to provide adequate runoff. It'll be more slippery flat.
Cutting the trees down, now that's just nuts. Surely they could have left them in place while they resloped the sidewalk.
If I read correctly
FTA:
The trees didn't conform to ADA either because they took up too much of the sidewalk. This is a big problem in some areas where sidewalks are too narrow for access because of old trees planted before the ADA got applied. These trees were allowed to stay and get grandfathered in. But when anything is done in the area that requires the tree to be removed, there's no allowance for the grandfathered tree to be replanted because the new sidewalk has to be redone by ADA standards at that point. That's not the case here, they just put in new trees with absolutely no consideration to the ADA it seems.
Whoever designed that sidewalk and didn't allow for enough room to meet ADA standards AND put those trees in as well should be fined and fired.
See what happens when you don't listen?
It seems the T makes alot of concessions to people in wheelchairs. Are they considered a special interest group?
Keep that in mind when the train is 15 mins late on the green line because someone in a wheelchair had to board at Beaconsfield. All you liberals could have approve the tax hikes and subsidies in the 80s and 90s to build better improvements than those portable crank units, but nooooooooooooo you'd rather spend money on your fucking lattes and MacBook computers to work on that novel?
Whoa, who let the Herald cranks out?
Please try to be more careful with your spittle, I don't want this site coming down with swine flu or something.
Good one
A wingnut complaing that taxes didn't get hiked, because those damn libruls were in charge...
Now I've heard everything.
Yeah.
The judges catch little inconsistencies like that. That'll drop this troll's overall score down at least two tenths and considering the stellar performance of the other trolls, it may cost him his spot in the semi-finals.
They not only chopped down
They not only chopped down all of the trees, they cut down two that were supposed to be spared! What a total waste of time, money and trees!
I can feel my IQ dropping
I can feel my IQ dropping when reading through the comments on the Herald site. My god.
Why this sidewalk? There
Why this sidewalk? There are tons of bricked sidewalks in the city that get bumpy because that's what bricks do when there's cold weather, and get slippery because that's what bricks do when it rains.
Concrete sidewalks that are being disrupted and made into nearly-imperceptible (until you trip and go splat) by tree roots, a la St. Stephen's Street (to stay in the area) are a much greater hazard.
The only complaining I hear
The only complaining I hear about brick sidewalks are from women who wear spiked heels... damning historical brick sidewalks and cobblestone walkways for ruining their Prada shoes! Well, let's just uproot all of the trees and pour one big slab of concrete all over Boston!
People also complain about
People also complain about the bricks getting slippery when wet.
There's a simple solution for that
See, you just slope them to the side a bit and...
Hey, wait a minute!