HomeMy WebLinkAboutcouncil anholm sidewalkcurb cuts jan 22
Jan. 22, 2022
Re: Anholm bike plan and pedestrian improvements
Dear Council,
The official promise of the Anholm bikeway was that it will provide safe and “pleasant”
walking for pedestrians, who will thus be encouraged to make up an increasing proportion of
the city’s modal shift future.
There are two aspects of that promise I’ll address in this letter: 1, sidewalk corner “ADA” curb
cuts, and 2, sidewalk conditions in general.
1. Corner curb cuts.
The Americans with Disabilities Act is a 1990 federal civil rights law guaranteeing equity for all
regardless of abilities. ADA Title II requires cities to provide equal access to all city programs,
services and facilities regardless of users’ abilities. Public sidewalks are thus covered by the
ADA: the city is obligated to make them fully accessible to all. And this, being a condition of
federal civil rights law, takes legal precedence over mere wish-list items like bike lanes, which
have no such high-falutin’ legal mandate.
The city has done a reprehensible job of fulfilling its obligation to provide curb cuts at corners,
especially in its older neighborhoods. There are still cutless corners within a few hundred feet
of The Village senior and assisted living, 30+ years after “ADA”cuts were required (and even
longer if one looks at preceding regulations). Few corners in the Anholm district have curb cuts,
making mobility for those who need them difficult to impossible. In the adjacent district south
of Foothill and west of Broad, 21 of the corners I encounter on my daily walk, a majority of the
corners, have no cuts. This record of neglect is not one the city can be proud of. It also leaves
the city a tempting target for a federal civil rights lawsuit and costly settlement.1
The sales campaign for the Anholm bikeway sold the project in part by saying all the many
Anholm corners still without curb cuts 30+ years after the ADA’s enactment would finally get
curb cuts.
Council members seem to believe that’s what’s going to happen.
However, that’s not what’s planned. Only some corners will get curb cuts, and – as currently
planned – many will remain without curb cuts.
1 Sacramento’s long-standing ADA pedestrian malfeasance was challenged in court and resulted in a settlement
requiring 20% of the city’s annual transportation budget to be used on ADA pedestrian corrections for 30 years!
Contemplate what that precedent applied here would do to SLO’s long-term transport budget.
By my count, there are 31 corners on the longitudinal streets in Anholm that have no pretext of
a curb cut (Broad 13, Chorro 7, Lincoln-West 11), yet apparently the project will entail building
only 19 cuts.2 In selecting which corners to cut, staff says they aim for “a continuous path of
travel along at least one side of the street.” That may sound good, but it’s not; an alleged
“continuous path” is discontinuous if you start from some location not on it. Staff is taking
language associated with certain specific ADA regulations, “continuous path,” and misapplying
it to a neighborhood sidewalk network that’s supposed to serve neighborhood residents, not
some imaginary foot traveler seeking a “continuous path” from one end of town to the other.
If the Anholm project is not to become a breach of promise, all 31 corners without curb cuts
must have cuts installed as part of this project. As noted above, curb cuts are many legal
orders of magnitude above bike lanes, and therefore must take priority. If the city builds this
project and leaves out a lot of curb cuts, it is truly selling out its Anholm project promise while
also playing legal roulette.
2. Anholm sidewalk conditions.
Anholm’s sidewalks have suffered from years of intentional city neglect.3 As a result they are
dangerous collections of broken, uneven surfaces punctuated by out-and-out trip-and-falls.
They are, in short, in disgraceful and dangerous condition. So, let’s take a look at a few typical
sidewalk conditions in Anholm:
2 Council members, listen carefully to what you think you’re hearing. Staff is DESIGNING cuts at all corners without
cuts, but does not plan to BUILD them all. BUILD is what matters.
3 Neighborhood sidewalk non-maintenance was a deliberate policy of the previous city manager, who also once
bragged in a memo to the then-council that SLO’s payout on individual trip-and-fall claims was lower than that of
other cities. Hopefully the current council and administration have moved beyond that mean-spirited and
negligent frame of mind.
Sidewalks like this have split longitudinally and parts have uplifted/settled to create tripping
hazards. A common thing in Anholm.
Cracking and resulting displacement like this are commonplace on Chorro.
Layered makeshift city fixes like this don’t fix anything.
Using asphalt to connect differences in elevation between uplifted/settled sidewalk sections
doesn’t really work. The resulting asphalt slopes also violate ADA guidelines. And while the
blacktop does offer a visual clue to the sighted during daylight hours, …
… at night the partially-fixed toe-catch trip-and-fall offsets become a major hazard to all
pedestrians. And imagine negotiating this safely at any hour if you have sight problems!
I could show a lot more varied examples, but you should have the point by now.
No city can claim these are good sidewalks.
Again, the promise by which this project was sold spoke of safe, comfortable and “pleasant”
walking. Such, however, can only be achieved by providing sidewalks with solid, safe surfaces.
If the city’s serious about providing “pleasant” pedestrian works, the Anholm project must
include a serious repair and rebuilding component. But this is not merely about pedestrian
comfort; bad sidewalks are also an ADA issue as they threaten and limit mobility for many
protected by that federal civil rights law. The city’s asphalt patches at sidewalk uplifts, for
example, do not meet ADA guidelines for slope or smoothness. Bad sidewalks are not only
pedestrian-unfriendly and dangerous, they further compromise the city’s ability to respond to
any ADA challenges.
3. Conclusion.
The city must make completing all of Anholm’s ADA ramps and an extensive sidewalk safety
repair/rebuild an essential inseparable unpostponable part of the Anholm project, and the
council must see that this is done as part of the project, and is not kicked down the road to
some future uncertain time. All have waited long enough for equitable action by our city.
Sincerely,
Richard Schmidt