Access *headdesk*

[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.

Comments

[liv]

Right, they really need to include gradients, camber and kerb cuts on the map for comments! And most probably, if they thought about putting that information on the map they wouldn't have come up with a proposal for routes that are obviously unusable.

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.

[davidgillon]

camber

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!

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.

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'.