Access *headdesk*
Jan. 23rd, 2024 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidgillon Medway Council: "Have your say regarding Medway's Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan" - which proposes about a dozen 'priority walking and cycling routes'
Also Medway Council: "This survey is not currently available Please try again later."
*Headdesk*
Dropped some comments in the FB thread announcing this instead, but saving them in a couple of places so I can find them to throw them in the survey if I remember to check back for a time when it is available:
"The report notes: "Some challenging and steep gradients" (with an illustration of cyclists)
If you think they're challenging for cyclists, try them as a wheelchair user. A point non-wheelchair users frequently don't understand is that anything over 1 in 10 is unsafe for a wheelchair. There's at least one priority route I can't safely wheel down - Chatham Maidstone Road as its steepness outweighs my ability to brake - and as wheelchair users go I'm fitter and in a better chair than most. As for getting up it, yeah, not happening. There's a reason I only go out by car, and my street exiting onto the steep section of the Maidstone Road is that reason.
Very surprised to see that Chatham Maidstone Road Priority route without a spur to the train station, which would seem obvious if not essential, but which for accessibility would raise the point that the kerb-cut on the station side is impossible to navigate safely in a wheelchair if you're not trying to cross the road as it's set on a fairly significant slope cross-ways and sloped down towards the road without a level area to pass to the side of it due to the narrow footpath, which means the only path across it is up and down the angled side ramps, which can't be used safely by wheelchair users. Had to use it last week and was saved from tipping over backwards or being thrown out into the road by passing pedestrians going both ways. The entire crossing needs shifting several yards uphill so that the kerb cut is 1) on the level, 2) has space to pass behind it.
In general the maps were utterly useless, because they don't show gradient or kerb-cuts, the two things I need to know as a wheelchair user to know if a route is accessible. And as the interactive maps appear to have spot heights, gradient was clearly do-able.
This doesn't fill me with confidence that the planning is being done with any understanding of accessibility, which makes the likelihood of improving it as a result fairly remote."
It's not entirely abled short-sightedness here, they really are stuffed WRT accessible routes into town. The Maidstone Road is the main road into town and runs down a steep ridge, the only alternatives are almost as steep and funnel into the Maidstone Road, and can only be reached down even steeper roads (steep enough my car struggles, never mind my chair!). None of the 15 minute city theorists have ever really accounted for cities that aren't remotely flat and how disabled people are meant to manage them.
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Date: 2024-01-23 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-23 11:51 pm (UTC)It's a reminder for me, but I thought it might interest other people at the same time.
ETA: But thanks for asking, I had a horrified moment when I thought you were responding to my post from yesterday that really was meant to be private!
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Date: 2024-01-23 11:51 pm (UTC)I think he means in the sense of "access to public places isn't as good as it should be" rather than "access to this post is restricted".
[ETA: and he commented to say so while I was writing mine]
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Date: 2024-01-24 11:42 am (UTC)But regarding 15 minute cities, if a disabled person lives in a place where all the roads within 15 minutes of their home are too steep to travel safely, how does going even further from home help? If you need to travel an hour to get to the shop, you're still going to have to go through the steep bits in order to continue further. Only building amenities in flat places wouldn't improve accessibility, because not all disabled people live in flat places.
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Date: 2024-01-24 03:14 pm (UTC)Really good point! The footpath camber in some major streets in Medway - Rochester High Street for one - is so bad that I can only roll in a straight line along the footpath by pushing with one hand and simultaneously braking with the other. Which is rather energy consuming!
I agree entirely, my objection to the concept isn't that disabled people will need to go elsewhere, but that you need to ensure they can use their local, 15 minute, amenities, whether they're a wheelchair user faced by inaccessible slopes, someone who walks much slower and with more effort than others, and so on. And that's going to require much more intensive public transport planning than anything I've seen proposed for a 15 minute city, where the default assumption seems to be 'everyone will be able to walk everywhere, so we don't need public transport outside of longer journeys'.
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Date: 2024-02-13 02:07 pm (UTC)"The proposal for resurfacing is clearly needed, but needs to be in a material suitable for wheelchair users. Rolling resistance is very important to wheelchair users, but largely invisible to walkers - some kinds of surface, for example rough textured tarmac, drag you to a stop. Footpath surfaces need to provide enough traction that people won't slip, but no more.
Tactile paving is clearly essential to people with visual impairments, but uncomfortable verging on dangerous for people who are ambulant but have mobility issues or are at elevated fall risk (the elderly in general, plus some disabled people), due to the impossibility of putting your foot down flat. Use should meet the relevant standards, cf the government's 'Tactile Paving Surfaces', but no more, and ideally with routes to minimise the amount you have to cross.
The scale and detail of the maps across all of the proposed routes does not allow me to draw an educated conclusion, even on level sections, as to whether the routes are suitable for wheelchair use. As a wheelchair user I need to know both gradient, nothing over 1 in 10 as an absolute, and no more than 1 in 20 as an average, and whether every junction has a dropped kerb at both sides (and whether that dropped kerb meets Annex M specifications - there are several in Medway that do not and I've had accidents on at least two as a result). Cross-slope/camber is also important, both any cross-slope from physical geography, and from both standard cross-footpath camber and driveway slopes etc - there are footpaths in Medway (parts of Rochester High Street for instance) where I can only move along them in a straight line by pushing with the road-side hand and simultaneously braking with the building-side hand, because the camber is sufficient to turn my chair into the road otherwise - this is hugely energy consuming. Other important factors include whether the path is blocked by street furniture, including both advertising A-boards and permanent street furniture - for instance the dropped kerb at the junction of Crow Road and Rochester High Street is partially blocked by a CCTV post. Surface is also important, both for rolling resistance as mentioned above and for safety. Any section of cobbles, as seen in various places in Medway, and seemingly favoured by local footpath planners, is at best extremely uncomfortable, at worst actively dangerous to wheelchair users."
"Unfortunately there's absolutely nothing to suggest to me that the LCWIP is being designed with an understanding of the needs of people with mobility impairments, whether ambulant or wheelchair users. I fully recognise that Medway's options are severely constrained by physical geography, but choosing a walking priority route that's absolutely inaccessible to wheelchair users on safety grounds just makes my heart sink.
While I recognise that cycle routes physically separated from traffic are likely to increase the number of people using them, they do tend to complicate things for wheelchair users needing to cross them if poorly designed. If there's a continuous barrier, even one that can be stepped over by a pedestrian (such as the two kerbstones back to back seen in some schemes around the country), then you likely need to significantly increase the frequency of crossings and dropped kerbs. And when cycle routes and dropped kerbs intersect at junctions I've seen some nightmares of planning, such as the cycle route being routed across the level section at the top of the dropped kerb, precisely where a wheelchair user would expect to wait for a gap in traffic. The scale of the maps supplied was too low to allow me to judge if there are any such problems in the Medway schemes. (Forgot to add space to safely allow a taxi to drop off a wheelchair user)
Pedestrianized areas (mentioned in the survey) can also be problematical to wheelchair users and ambulant disabled people. Where can I park? Is the pedestrianized area flat enough to allow me to get to where I need to if I can no longer park next to it? Are the surfaces suitable? And so on. Remember that the standard eligibility for Higher Rate Mobility for an ambulant disabled person is an inability to walk 20m. 20m won't get you out of many disabled car parks, never mind from a disabled car park to your destination. "
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Date: 2024-02-13 02:11 pm (UTC)in 60 (0.17%).
Although gradients up to 1 in 20 (5%) over short
lengths are generally considered acceptable for
pedestrians and wheelchair users, gradients over 1
in 40 (2.5%) might be impassable for some manual
wheelchair users. A gradient of 1 in 20 (5%) is
defined as a ramp"