Last month the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) published an annual report on its progress toward making the city accessible to people with mobility disabilities.
Titled the ADA Title II Public Right-of-Way Transition Plan Update, the report is a requirement of the 2018 Consent Decree between the city and a group of individuals with mobility disabilities who claimed that the city was remiss in meeting its Americans with Disabilities Act obligations. The Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC) provided the text of the decree, which requires that Portland meet yearly targets for building curb ramps, as well as to report annual progress and other information.
At about twenty pages, the report was engaging and complemented the work of PedPDX, the citywide pedestrian plan. It cataloged the addition of new sidewalks, pedestrian signals, curb ramps, accessible parking, accessible bus stops, as well as features which are not specifically required by the ADA, but which make walking safer and more inviting for everybody. Things like like enhanced crosswalks, pedestrian head start signals, rectangular rapidly flashing beacons, and pedestrian refuge islands.
All in all, it made for uplifting reading and was a nice review of the design elements which have been popping up throughout the city. Within the first few pages, the report caught my attention with some figures about how many new sidewalks had been built in the city:
In 2023, PBOT projects built over 18,000 linear feet of sidewalk adding approximately 3.5 miles to the city’s sidewalk network. Developer projects added approximately 5 miles of new sidewalk to the pedestrian network.
That interested me, sidewalk building grouped into capital versus private projects. I contacted the PBOT Communications office for more information. Specifically, did they they have the developer-paid sidewalk broken down by quadrant.
UPDATE: 4/25/2024, 12:30PM — Hannah Schafer contacted me with a clarification regarding the “Private Development” column of numbers below. Those lengths refer to not only new sidewalks, but also sidewalk upgrades like widening, changes in use, and fixing poor conditions. I changed the title of the post to reflect this correction.
Hannah Schafer, the Director of Communications got back to me with the following information:
PBOT-constructed sidewalks:
- Errol Heights LID – approximately 1 mile
- 70’s Greenway Everett St between 76th & 78th – 1120 linear feet
- 4M Greenway – 550 linear feet
- Suttle Road LID – 3100 linear feet
- SW Barbur Sidewalks – 900 linear feet
- Downtown I-405 – 268 linear feet
- East Portland Access to Education & Employment – 4400 linear feet
Private development:
Total mileage is 31,635 linear feet (so closer to 6 miles), and here’s the breakdown by quadrant to give you a sense of where it was constructed:
- N: 3550 linear feet
- NE: 8360 linear feet
- NW: 1660 linear feet
- S: 510 linear feet
- SE: 12400 linear feet
- SW: 5155 linear feet
That’s nearly ten miles of new sidewalk. Schafer added,
Keep in mind this is sidewalk that was permit ready. It should be fairly equivalent, but based on scheduling and other items, it may not fully reflect what’s on the ground just yet. For example, someone could have an approved permit in 2023 but for some reason waited to construct in 2024. This is the best data we have for now.
These numbers, of course, raise other questions. For example, regarding private development, I neglected to ask for a denominator — six miles of sidewalk built out of what total of new frontage? But still, I was glad to see the city tracking this information, and I imagine we will see more data organized by district as we move into the new, district-based, form of government. City councilors elected by district will want information specific to their district.
The report also noted that “the ADA doesn’t require sidewalks to be installed on streets where there aren’t any.” And that’s the elephant in the room. Portland has a lot of arterials and collectors without sidewalks, and therefore it has entire neighborhoods where disabled people cannot live without a car. And if they don’t drive, it makes it hard to live independently.
Thanks for reading.
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Truth. We should hang our collective head in shame.
Taxing the rich
A land value taxwould solve this!The recent passage of local taxes where “only someone else pays” has led to some horrific taxes (poorly implemented, poorly managed). These are taxes such as the PCEF, Preschool Tax, Homeless Tax. Currently our tax base is eroding not only due our high taxes but also the lack of efficacy from these very costly programs. “Taxing the rich” may sound good but as we have seen here in Portland Metro there are significant negative repercussions from taxes that only a portion of the population pays.
“Which of these doesn’t fit with the others?” PCEF shouldn’t be on that list. It’s a local tax on sales targeted at large retailers with over a threshold amount of national and local sales. It affects anyone who purchases items at those stores.
Yes, we should. I can’t imagine why the ADA does not require sidewalk installed. That is why you see so many powerchairs riding in the street. Perhaps we need people to crawl through a few neighborhoods. Maybe that would spur some action.
My understanding of the national law is that it had to be written broadly enough to respect different population densities. A country road in the middle of nowhere does not need a sidewalk.
I wonder how Portland compares to other cities regarding sidewalk coverage. San Diego County doesn’t have sidewalks, but the city is completely covered. How unusual is Portland’s circumstance of having annexed large swaths of county land without sidewalks? I don’t know. Portland may be escaping through a loophole with the lack of sidewalks.
Yes, very broadly written. I’m no expert on it, but sometimes things you’d think were total violations are not. It’s got loopholes big enough to drive buses through, and people get away with violating it all the time because the people left to enforce it are often not in position to pursue complaints.
Serenity: yes…many persons travelling with powered wheelchairs choose to travel in the bikes lanes…and protected bike lanes have made it even more comfortable for them. (This is a great reason to promote the PBL network..if the sidewalk network is poor.) Assuming that a sidewalk exists with ADA ramps, there may be “dangerous” sidewalk cross slopes, especially at driveways and the expansion joints of many older sidewalks can cause vibratory discomfort for those with back injuries.
Todd: I am very familiar with dangerous sidewalk cross slopes, poorly maintained sidewalks, and how many more curbs in residential an are uncut than you might imagine.
As of 2019, there were around 350 miles of streets that didn’t have sidewalks. Doubting that much has been done since then, I’ll give them benefit of the doubt, but more than 300 miles to go.
Hi Solar, I’m going to push back on that a little. Not all streets need a cement sidewalk or curb. Those amenities are needed where there is a lot of car traffic.
Outer east Portland and southwest both have low sidewalk coverage,
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/lid-projects/documents/portland-street-surfaces-neighborhood-map/download
but they are in opposite situations street-wise, and solutions to their circumstances differ.
Southwest has poor street connectivity — you can think of the area as having tons of natural diverters. So we have a lot of cul d sacs and dead ends. Those very local streets that don’t connect to anything are often OK without a sidewalk. It’s our high-volume collectors and arterials which need bike lanes and a safe place to walk. That’s doable, but it takes $100M or so, and some political will.
The east side has a lot of connectivity, it’s a grid. The problem there is keeping car traffic off of local neighborhood streets and on the collectors and arterials. Diverters would help with that. I liked the guest essay suggestion of a passoire design which BP featured last year.
So your “300 miles to go” makes the situation seem hopeless, which it isn’t. Not every street needs a sidewalk, but we do need to be bolder about building for people who aren’t traveling by car.
I’m glad you’ve been mentioning this in comments in several recent articles–that the need for sidewalks depends on the street. It’s not even that sidewalks are always good. Streets with low vehicle traffic can work better without them.
Along with adding sidewalks where they’re needed, I’d like to see some focus on doing things to create/increase/improve the situations (through things like diverters) where sidewalks are not needed.
Re: Need for sidewalks. Yes, lower traffic local streets are often okay for walkers to walk in the streets, IF , the walkers are sighted and mobile. But a clear, detectable safe walking area (like a sidewalk behind a curb) are useful and necessary for the visually impaired to find their way. Without a sidewalk, folks (especiallly in steeper SW) are often forced to walk on the traffic side of parked cars, which can be dangerous if you can’t see the car coming a block away in order to get out of the way. Likewise, a wheelchair user often has to be on the traffic side of parked cars, and can’t quickly move out of the way when a car is approaching.
It’s good to hear from you Doug. SW is not an easy area for someone with any disability to live. If I had to choose the single biggest problem, I would say it is the infrequent buses and poor route coverage.
The best service is on BHH and Barbur, but my God, who wants to cross those streets? I’ll cross BHH in Hillsdale, but I am not able to make myself put one foot in front of the other to cross Barbur, just can’t do it anymore. (And I used to cross it all the time as one of my regular jogging routes.)
It’s hard to generalize about those narrow local streets, every one of them is different. By neighborhood custom, many only have parking on one side. The bigger problem happens once you get off that quiet street, then where are you? possibly on a collector or arterial which has no sidewalk, short sight lines, and a bunch of speeding cars.
The east side has a lot of connectivity, it’s a grid.
The inner Eastside is a grid with great connectivity. Outer east is very similar to SW with cul-de-sacs and no sidewalks along arterials and neighborhood collectors. We have the same issues with stormwater management (to a degree) as SW. Outer east Portland and SW are fighting similar issues when installing sidewalks, or getting them funded. BES funding is a critical portion of the funding required to install sidewalks, yet we pay, but don’t receive an equitable portion of BES funding. We all pay “off site” stormwater management fees, but much of that funding goes to inner SE and NE to improve their stormwater issues. If you have a tree on your property, but no sumps, you can claim a credit for “on-site” stormwater fees by disconnecting downspouts even if they drain directly down to the street drains which empty into the sewer system.
Inner SE and NE are the largest contributors to sewer overflows during a heavy rain because stormwater flows directly into the sewer system, but are the recipients of the bulk of BES funding. That is why we needed “The Big Pipe Project” to begin with.
Ever wonder why Bike Boulevards are now called Neighborhood Greenways? BES funding….
Thank you Curly.
It’s a grid, except where it isn’t. Then it is just a maze.
Luckily we can just pull up a map and look, and use whatever words we can to describe the differences. And there are differences.
Giving them benefit of the doubt? That’s very charitable of you.
I ride this section all the time now it’s a massive improvement over the Burnside bike lane. The greenway was actually extended from 71st to 80th they paved the block between 76th and 78th that was previously a private gravel road. It’s still marked on their maintenance responsibility map as private so I’m not sure if that means PBOT will be maintaining it or not. It appears to meet the requirements to be transferred to them.
This is a big problem in Montavilla. Cynically the city has been meeting it’s obligation to add ADA ramps in the neighborhood even on streets without sidewalks. So it’s a ramp (bridge) to nowhere.
Everett between 76th and 78th was not a private road.
It was always a publicly owned road, but the adjacent property owners’ responsibility to maintain the unimproved/nonmaintained road.
Amazingly, for them, 70s greeway money was used in lieu of a LID, so they got a paved road and sidewalks for free.
Also not sure how 76th to 78th worked out to 1120 linear feet of sidewalk if the distance is only ~290ft from end to end.
You’re being a little nit-picky don’t you think? It’s still marked as private maintenance responsibility. Yes it’s owned by PBOT I mistyped not really the point.
As far as the feet of sidewalk goes I’m guessing they didn’t measure it but instead used the average street length and multiplied by four because technically 76th to 78th is two blocks. 1120 / 4 = 280.
Yeah, a bit pedantic but people get very weird about public access to private property and private drives, especially in OreGun. I think it’s important to be clear who owns and has access to our roads.
I personally like some unimproved roads in our street grid because they act as natural car diverters and traffic calming while still allowing for foot and bicycle traffic. But when property owners feel as if they have a private road, they can start encroaching and expropriating the pubic right of way.
Take 77th between Hawthorn and Clay for instance. It’s actually super nice to walk through. But technically it’s public property and if the adjacent property owners who have fashioned a little park with trees, rocks and hedges were to be confused about who has ownership and access, it could be a problem. Best to be clear about these things.
As for the linear footage, that type of mistake in measurement calls into question PBOT declared total. To be possibly double counting this stretch, can we say that “Portland added 8.5 miles of new sidewalks in 2023”?
Thanks for sharing the maintenance responsibility map. I hadn’t seen it before, and now I’m surprised to see that the responsibility for maintaining my street is “private.”
If that’s true, how was PBOT able to grade the street as part of their “gravel street maintenance program” a few summers ago? And why is it that when my neighbors paved their street and added speed bumps, PBOT came along and ground them away?
The bottom line is that every street in Portland is a city-owned street. Somehow the city has been able to get away with not maintaining most of them, but PBOT will maintain a street when they feel like it.
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/maintenance/portland-gravel-street-service
Some info on the program’s site regarding frequency, cost (free), funding source, and ongoing maintenance responsibility (still “private”).
It does seem to be a bit of wild west rules or lack there of when it comes to unimproved roads. There seems to be some undefined responsibility regarding standard design and upkeep of the right of way, but then there are many streets where the surrounding properties either cut off access or restrict access by lack of maintenance.
I suspect unauthorized speed bumps/humps would be considered a hazard by PBOT, but they don’t seem to care if people throw down rocks and stumps across certain streets. Maybe if it’s so far gone, they don’t care. But if your neighbors did pave the street, then it’s much more likely to see traffic. And then the speed bumps need to be PBOT approved?
Portland’s current mayor has complained in city council meetings about “having to pay” for sidewalks/curb cuts because of the lawsuit and resulting Consent Decree. Which suggests that the best way to get the city to provide infrastructure that will make Portland safer is to sue, sue, sue. A said state of affairs; you’d think a mayor and council would want their city to be safe for all. But as long as that is not the case, we should be thinking what other legal mechanisms can be brought to play.
Using tax-payer funded non-profits to give a veneer of social justice to a lawsuit against the city, thus enriching the useless lawyer class that then thinks they won the lottery of life because they’re like Jesus AND making $300,000 a year, while the non-profit donates to campaigns that will ensure approval of further settlements is not a solution.
Its inefficient and its corruption. The problem it creates is worse than the problem of no sidewalks,.
These issues need to be solved by the voters.
Great story, Lisa. Where did PBOT construct 900 linear feet of sidewalks on SW Barbur in 2023?
I was going to call and ask you. LOL.
Hannah said that the numbers might reflect approved permits, not built sidewalks. I decided not to pursue further details for this post. I just noted that those figures are available.
I looked back At the East Portland Access To Education and Employment https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/construction/east-portland-access-employment-and-education-4m-100s-and#:~:text=PBOT%20staff%20put%20together%20the,lead to figure out where PBOT was getting their numbers and concluded that they’re numbers don’t align with the project status reports. IMO PBOT is throwing out a propaganda campaign hoping to get people’s votes for an extension of Fixing Our Streets. East Portland and SW contribute the bulk of the funding for projects that are done outside of these two communities, but PBOT needs our votes to pass the measure.
To my knowledge PBOT has been inconsistent monitoring where the funding is spent although almost every east Portland project has some some FOS funding associated with it.
I just spoke with PBOT communications director Hannah Schafer, who has been on vacation for about a week. She told me that the sidewalks built by private developers category may not necessarily be only new sidewalks, but could also include upgrades like widening, and upgrades because of poor condition or because of a change in usage.
She didn’t know what the 900 linear ft of city-funded sidewalk on Barbur referred to.
We had an interesting conversation, and I think it is worth another short post of its own.
Lisa Strader of PBOT confirmed that the project is in the “Barbur Area”, https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/construction/or99w-sw-barbur-blvd-area-sidewalk-infill-project. It is NOT sidewalks on Barbur. The original project came out of the Barbur Streetscape Plan (1999) and the plan’s top priority project was called the “Barbur Demonstration Project” to demonstrate how nice SW Barbur could be someday. The Barbur Demonstration Project was funded in 2013 and would have constructed sidewalks and bike paths on both sides of SW Barbur between SW 19th and SW 26th. In 2017 ODOT and PBOT decided not to build it because they said the Southwest Corridor Light Rail Project would bring funding to improve SW Barbur. Instead, PBOT constructed these two pieces of infill sidewalks in the “Barbur Area”. And the light rail project was not funded, although the light rail plan is somewhat shovel ready.
Lisa, THANKS for bringing this report up as a important resource.
Speaking as someone who worked 9 years on pedestrian design review / ped circulation plans and on 3 ADA in the public right of way (ADA PROW) plans for different NWP cities …the other “loophole” for communities without a consent decree requirement – is that it is currently “acceptable” within the federal law that as long as a community has an adopted ADA plan and is meeting its schedule of planned improvements that its “ok” if it will take 50 or 100 years to accomplish it. [LMK if the law has been updated recently.] Some cities have had multiple ADA consent degrees since 1995.
Regarding the elephant in the room:
Historically (USA), adjoining property owners were typically responsible for the construction, upkeep / repair of the “roadway” in front of their property to its mid point for sidewalks + roadway with either free labor or paid local taxes. (Unless it was a government road or toll road etc.) But ~100 years ago the public works field / newly formed highway departments ‘carved off’ sidewalks from roads per public maintenance. (Thus that is why many of our older urban neighborhoods have 120 year old original sidewalks vs streets resurfaced ~6 times every ~20 years. The first residential modern concrete sidewalks in the Vancouver Portland area date back to the development boom of the ~1903 Lewis & Clark Fair. Prior sidewalks were often wood planking often also extending across the street, as a raised crosswalk (look at old photos) to stay out of the mud, horse shit and to slow wagons down.
A lot of cities have been able to deflect this shared responsibility by tying it to developers and development. (It could be low cost housing policy to include it with streets.) Thus creating a much more fragmented walking transportation network vs driving transportation network. And then there is the silly mid century (~1965 to ~2000) practice by counties only requiring developers to build new sidewalks on one side of the road but without ways to cross to the sidewalk from the non sidewalk side. Assuming that any sidewalks were required.
One thing advocates can do is look into their communities’ development review practices as to what the trigger requirement is for constructing sidewalks on residential roadways with an incomplete network…50%+1% or within X feet of existing sidewalk, etc.
Just because a local government has a poor pedestrian network policy now does not mean it always has to be that way: A city/ county council could choose to adopt policies to align their transportation mobility policies with maintenance: to shift maintenance from each individual household and treat it like a true network. Plus require sidewalks to be brought up to code at time of the property sale (when its a cost that can be included in the mortgage and spread over 30 years vs an unplanned $5k to $10k out of pocket cost triggered when a city inspector responds to a ‘complaint’).
Since you seem well-acquainted with the law and history, I wonder if you can answer this quandary I’ve had for a while: Why do some intersections have sidewalk at the corners only? As in, just a little paved square at each corner with no continuing sidewalk down the actual street?
I’m not sure about the rest of Portland, but just prior to annexation (pre-1992) in East Portland, Multnomah County got a federal grant to install sump pumps at intersections and those corner islands were funded in that grant as part of the 1990 Americans with Disability Act (ADA). There was for years a classic example at SE Market and 117th.
Well in my neighborhood they were built as part of the storm drain infrastructure. More recently they’ve been building them out as part of their settlement agreement to build ADA ramps. They’re pretty much pointless with no connecting sidewalk but technically they’re meeting the yearly requirement.
Hmm, I think the storm drains are the answer! I just checked several that were visibly built long before ADA passed in 1990 (SE Raymond at 34th, 35th, and 36th Avenues) and they all have no curb cuts but do have a storm drain close by. Thanks!
MATT: per your question, it depends on when those corners you ask about were built. Often the older streets were either built without curbs or later widened and then the local agency installed the paved corners (nodes) as a “public” facility and leave the sidewalk “links” up to the property owners. (Installing the corners and “squares” also helped the property owner to build the sidewalk to a given point vs doing a survey or having mismatched sidewalk sections from parcel to parcel and it reinforced the street width so drivers did not cut the corners). Similarly recently many local cities will only install ADA ramps + the corner sidewalk landing but not install or repair the links between corners.
Thank you, Todd, for that nice long comment.
Southwest Portland does not have sidewalks because it does not have a formal stormwater conveyance system for run-off. We aren’t connected to the Big Pipe, most of the region drains to streams. As you know, impermeable sidewalks create a rapid flow of water which, for environmental reasons, needs to be either piped away or slowed down and treated in a holding basin.
Because of the Nollan/Dolan body of jurisprudence, Portland does not feel that it can require developers to build expensive holding basins for run-off originating on public works, like sidewalks. (It can require that they be built for run-off from the structures on the private property.) This situation is currently playing out on Shattuck Rd with the Alpenrose development.
I cover Nollan/Dolan and the Development Review process thoroughly in this post:
https://bikeportland.org/2023/07/12/alpenrose-permitting-process-provides-peek-at-sidewalk-bike-lane-potential-377015
The city built four stormwater holding basins to capture the run-off from the Capitol Highway Project. This post explains why they are necessary:
https://bikeportland.org/2021/06/14/sw-capitol-highway-project-breaks-ground-today-333696
This is a backgrounder on Portland and its history of sidewalks:
https://bikeportland.org/2021/08/12/sidewalks-and-portland-its-not-so-simple-336493
So the ADA obligations are hostage to the southwest’s lack of stormwater infrastructure. This is not something that can be fixed by bureaucrats or even advocates. What the area needs is representatives on city council and at the state level who understand the issue and can assertively go after state and federal money.
We’re all connected to the Big Pipe Project, but the inner neighborhoods SE,SW,and NE are the biggest contributors to sewer overflows because the streets drain into the sewer system. Literally no properties east of SE 60th Ave. connect their stormwater runoff into the sewer system. We are all fixing the inner city’s deficiencies, but contribute nothing to the problem. All our stormwater management is done onsite. Equitable?
Here in NC, and completely unlike Portland, the cities own and maintain all the sidewalks, not the private land owner, and the municipal government also maintains the brush, trees, and grass strips between the sidewalk and street, even on residential streets. Many other states and cities nationwide also do this. Obviously if a private owner wants their bit kept clean and orderly they do it themselves, but our city of Greensboro NC regularly cleans up many local streets, prunes trees, and hauls off garbage from the sidewalk strips, then uses a sidewalk slicing device to even up sidewalk lips where roots are disturbing them, all included in our local (admittedly high) property taxes. However, like Portland, areas developed before 1950 and after 1990 are more likely to actually have sidewalks (the period 1950 to the 80s, the thinking was that building sidewalks only encouraged “unsafe” behavior like walking and jogging, particularly by strangers and minorities.) Oddly enough, historically black parts of town are just as likely to have sidewalks as white areas of town here.
Thanks David! Perhaps BikePortland will have you write a guest article on this topic and share links to NC policies.
My comment above also assumes the any sidewalk the city/ county “adopts” and accepts maintenance responsibility for would be ones at the time of construction had met local design “standards”. Now there is a problem in that our home’s sidewalks were constructed in 1913 to the county/ city standards but now may not as it was of the older pre1920s design having two distinct construction layers: base rough concrete layer and a finer top layer (or wearing course). [Like how plaster walls were built.] This is why this era of sidewalks can more easily ‘dissolve’ once the top coat (the “frosting) chips off versus more modern sidewalks, plus there may have been poorer sand quality used in the base layer too (local river sand with more organics vs commercial sand).
To be fair I doubt if the engineers / masons who built these walkways would have expected them to last 120 years or even 50 years. This is why older cut stone, brick or slate slabs used in 19th century sidewalks are still functioning well into their 2nd century for many older US cities.
Concrete when well-built can last too: there’s the good old Pantheon in Rome, built of slow-setting concrete over a 30-year period to 122 AD, now over 1900 years old.
Does the City track how many crosswalks they closed in a given year?
East Portland Access to Education & Employment – I remember personally campaigning for that project in 2011 when it got approved, one of those “slimy back room deals” in which two local cities got their freeway interchanges in return for bike and pedestrian projects in the poorest part of Oregon. It was in the 2012 East Portland In Motion 5-year action plan, so 12 years to actually build it is pretty good by PBOT standards.
8.5 miles of new sidewalks in 2023, divided by 29 pedestrian deaths in 2023, equals .29 miles (1,548 ft.) per death.
Or, counting only the 3.5 miles built by PBOT, .12 miles (637 ft.) per death.
So, logically, how many people will need to die so we can get a complete sidewalk network in Portland?
Apparently a lot more.
My point in relating the sidewalk construction to pedestrian deaths was to put the construction in context to some objective safety statistic, since safety is a main reason to construct them.
The 3.5 mile figure seems like the key one, since it’s what the City decided was the amount it should finance beyond what private project owners pay for. Paying for just over a tenth of a mile per pedestrian death doesn’t convey to me that the City is responding to the deaths in any urgent way, at least in regard to building sidewalks.
In regard to public ADA compliance, the City has a wonderful online tool for reporting accessibility issues on City properties–removing sidewalk obstructions, adding crosswalks or accessible parking, removing other barriers on streets, parks, trails, etc. It’s confidential, has space for where, describing the issue, contact info, etc.:
https://www.portland.gov/311/ada-request
HOWEVER, you can NOT use it unless you certify that you have a disability covered by the ADA, or are reporting for someone who does who has given you permission to make the report, or have a legal relationship that allows you to report on their behalf.
If you don’t fit into those groups, you’re directed to the City’s 311 system. If you’re disabled, you can use to form to easily report any ADA issue on public property. If not, you can see people being endangered every day due to accessibility problems, but can’t use the form unless you go up to them and get their permission to report.
I tried reporting 3 accessibility issues through the 311 system that I’ve had no luck with getting the City to act on over the past several years. I talked, texted and emailed with several people–all nice, all competent. I was given many dead end leads, wrong information, wrong bureaus, etc. and even followed one string along through several steps until I was told I really should contact the 311 system–where I started! I ended up giving my report to someone (another kind, competent person) who said it really wasn’t their job, so I’m not sure what will happen with it.
The whole point is that the City makes it easy to report things much less important than ADA violations, including dangerous ones (one of my issues was missing tactile warnings that mean someone can walk into traffic without knowing it). Potholes, minor parking violations, loud radios, night leaf blowing, someone doing minor work without a permit, restaurant odors–all easy to report. ADA violations? It feels like the City is improvising.
I’m not surprised that much of the sidewalk work is being done only because the City lost an ADA lawsuit.