I don’t get uptight about much (that’s a lie — I get anxious and stressed about everything), but I do get uptight about accessibility.

I consider myself disabled due to multiple chronic illnesses, though I don’t have any mobility impairments. I don’t drive due to my illnesses, and my primary mode of transportation is walking, with public transit (fairly modest service in my metro area) as the secondary for injury, illness, or unwalkable distances.

As a result, I’m pretty passionate about pedestrian safety and accessibility, and today, in the aftermath of the Arctic storm that hit my city (and half the country), I saw my city fail — yet again — to take pedestrians, transit riders, and people with strollers or mobility aids into consideration at all.

Much of my commute (normally about 30 minutes) was impassable, thanks to the city’s negligence in clearing pedestrian crosswalks and curb cuts, making signals accessible (the berms on which they were mounted were often snowed in or plowed under), and not clearing sidewalks where private property owners (required to clear under city ordinances) had neglected their own duties. But let’s be clear — the city mandates the property owners do it because the city is obliged under the ADA to keep publicly provided pedestrian walkways clear and doesn’t want to maintain the manpower to do it. Property owners neglected their responsibilities does not excuse the city from its own obligations under the ADA.

And the sidewalks weren’t even the worst — the crosswalks and curb cuts were the worst. I saw a couple with a baby — I see them walking most mornings — nearly slip and fall with their stroller in a crosswalk because the median wasn’t clear, the curb cuts weren’t clear, the road was still slushy, and the asphalt was slick. So two adults and a baby could have been injured. At the next block, they had to walk in the street with their baby in the stroller because the sidewalks weren’t clear and the pedestrian crossing signal was unreachable without wading in nearly knee-deep snow.

To get to my own workplace, I had to traverse a plowed mountain of snow and ice blocking the crosswalk and public sidewalk around about three and a half feet high in places. It was fully taller than the bench at the bus stop (which wasn’t clear and at which no rider with a mobility aid could have been safely let off with the ramp), and in one spot was about as tall as me.

The extra effort of walking in the snow made the journey just plain take longer, leaving me exposed to colder temperatures for longer (not good for one of my chronic conditions), and my blood sugar plummeted abnormally quickly as well, meaning I was shoveling fast carbs in while slogging through snow and over plowbergs trying to get to a place where I could sit down, dry off, and warm up before I passed out.

Someone asked me about taking the bus, and I had to explain that the bus stop was snowed in and all but inaccessible, and about half of the journey from my apartment to a bus line would have had to been walked on the same route I took to work anyway, and the transfer/wait would’ve made the journey take twice as long.

I’m drafting an email to the mayor, my alderman, the city streets department, and the city’s ADA coordinator to ask what their procedures are for meeting their obligations under the ADA and, if possible, what citations they’ve issued for uncleared walks and how they intend to enforce the mandate to clear public walkways so that pedestrians, transit riders, and the disabled have just as much access to the city as abled people who drive personal vehicles. But when I started writing it, I got agitated and felt myself losing my temper (I was still glycemically volatile at the time), so I’ve put it on pause until I’ve had a little distance. Hopefully, tomorrow’s commute will be easier and I’ll be less irritated and able to compose something professional.

#accessibility #disability