Rough Spots Pose Perilous Challenges
By Marie Szaniszlo, Herald Staff
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Meet the most expensive patch of sidewalk in Boston: $320,000 and counting.
The state Department of Public Safety’s Architectural Access Board has fined the Hub $500 a day since Nov. 30, 2005, for an uneven, sloping stretch of brick on Huntington Avenue, part of what advocates for the disabled denounce as a pattern of violations in the city that puts them at risk.
“The irony is if the city had just made sure the sidewalk was repaired the right way in the beginning, it would have cost taxpayers a fraction of that amount and people like me who use wheelchairs wouldn’t have to risk getting hit by a car by riding in the street,” said John Kelly of the Neighborhood Access Group, which filed the complaint with the board.
Advocates note that under state law, the horizontal slope of a sidewalk cannot be more than 2 percent; in some spots, the slope of the 4-year-old Huntington Avenue sidewalk is 4.5 percent. That can send wheelchairs tipping over or sliding toward the street.
“The continued dangerousness of this bumpy all-brick sidewalk has these past four years been torturing the hundreds of elderly and disabled people living next door at Symphony Plaza,” the Boston Center for Independent Living, the Disability Policy Consortium and the Neighborhood Access group wrote in a July 26 letter to Public Works and Transportation chief Dennis Royer.
Royer did not respond to the letter until Aug. 17, when the Herald contacted Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s office, which released a statement in which Royer said he planned to meet with the three groups.
“I take all complaints about the quality of access in and around our city for mobility-impaired residents and visitors very seriously,” Menino said in a statement Friday. “I’ve told the Department of Public Works to make these complaints a top priority and to find short and long-term solutions to make our city’s streets and sidewalks safe and accessible for everyone.”
So far this year, the Architectural Access Board has received 106 complaints about other Boston sidewalks and curb cuts that allegedly violate state access code, according to the board’s director, Thomas Hopkins. None has yet resulted in a fine.
Advocates note there has been progress in disability access in the Hub. After a 2006 legal settlement, the MBTA undertook major improvements in equipment, facilities and services, including the installation of new elevators and bus ramps. Gary Talbot, assistant to the general manager for system-wide accessibility, and General Manager Dan Grabauskas have earned high praise from advocates.
But off the T, critics say, many of the most important civic buildings and institutions in “America’s Walking City” remain off-limits to the disabled because of inaccessible travel paths.
The state Attorney General’s Office has not sought to enforce the fines for the Huntington Avenue sidewalk, a spokeswoman said, because the city is expected to dispute them at an Aug. 30 hearing in Suffolk Superior Court. The city is expected to claim that although it owns most of the sidewalk, the MBTA and Massachusetts Highway Department oversaw its construction.
The state access board also has slapped the city with a $5,000 fine for failing to maintain an accessible route on Huntington Avenue during construction.
On Thursday, all three agencies said they would work together to make the sidewalk accessible but would not say when.
“If we can’t even use a sidewalk, that’s a basic right,” said Karen Schneiderman of the Boston Center for Independent Living, “and we pay taxes.”
Of the many embarrassing moments John Kelly has experienced in his wheelchair - and there are many - the worst was the time he ended up in a bush. About two years ago, Kelly was riding along Massachusetts Avenue in Boston when the wheels of his chair hit a hole left by a missing brick and abruptly turned, thrusting him into a shrub. He was stuck and had to ask a passer-by to help untangle him.
“It was humiliating,” he said - humiliating enough to make the 49-year-old founder and chairman of the Neighborhood Access Group notice things the average person doesn’t. “To you, it probably looks fine,” Kelly said on a recent Saturday, nodding toward the brick sidewalk at Huntington and Massachusetts avenues, across from Symphony Hall.
And it did, until a woman came along, pushing another woman in a wheelchair as it rumbled and tilted over the bricks. The unevenness of the bricks and the slant of the sidewalk make it particularly difficult for people who are blind or who use manual wheelchairs because the sidewalk’s horizontal slope - which in some places is more than double the maximum 2 percent grade permissable under state law - makes gravity pull them toward the street, said Thomas Hopkins, director of the state Department of Safety’s Architectural Access Board.
Among those also facing the challenges of the city are Deidre Lucas, who is in a wheelchair, and Andrew Forman, who is visually impaired. Both work at the Boston Center for Independent Living and decry what they see as the disrespect shown by the city for people with disabilities.
“Dangerously unsafe sidewalks and curb cuts now greet us in every neighborhood of the city, cruelly injuring us, pushing us out into deadly streets, or forcing us to remain in our homes as second-class citizens,” the Center for Independent Living and other groups wrote in a July 26 letter to Public Works and Transportation chief Dennis Royer.
To avoid steep sidewalk slopes, holes, uneven bricks and missing curb cuts, many people with disabilities shun sidewalks and take their chances riding in traffic, Kelly said.
“We have no choice but to risk our lives in the street,” Kelly said.
