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> in Chicago. ... And the sad thing is, in this respect Chicago is less bad than a lot of other towns and cities in the US and way less bad than many (most?) c

> in Chicago. ... And the sad thing is, in this respect Chicago is less bad than a lot of other towns and cities in the US and way less bad than many (most?) cities in other countries, including many that are much more progressive than the US. Chicago has been working on curb cuts for years and is in the midst of a years-long quest to upgrade all El (metro/subway) platforms for accessibility, and the ADA---33 years old---has much stronger requirements than, as far as I can tell, even current legislation elsewhere. In Canada, France, Spain, Germany I've seen whole rows of storefronts that are a half-storey up or down from street level, curb cuts are rare, and it's more usual for stores and other business to have steps than not. In other realms of accessibility, I've also noticed a lot more Braille and/or headphone access on ATMs and public kiosks in the US, and fire alarms that are rigged with lights as well as sound. It's not a perfect mechanism, and the US gets a lot of other things wrong, but the ADA is something we got really, really on the right track (and keep improving).

kortilla 3y ago
> And the sad thing is, in this respect Chicago is less bad than a lot of other towns and cities in the US Being a “progressive” city isn’t really correlated with being disability friendly. New York is terrible for disabilities. Many walkable and high dense areas are also terrible for them. Like it or not, suburbia with giant parking lots, dedicated disabled spaces, wheelchair ramps, etc is about the best access you can get (assuming you can drive a vehicle and have one).
- HWR_14 3y ago
  Or, new construction in general is more disability friendly. Historic construction isn't, and usually only has to update on renovations.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    Plenty of new construction in New York that is still miserable. Show me a city famous for its dense walkability that’s considered disability friendly.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
I kind of wonder if we're not solving a lot of these problems in the wrong place. We passed a law that requires buildings to change, but meanwhile we have the technology to make "wheelchairs" that can climb stairs. Something with a continuous track or whatever else human ingenuity can devise. That would cost money, but how could it possibly cost as much as modifying every building everywhere? A wheelchair ramp is thousands of dollars. An elevator is hundreds of thousands. A person in a wheelchair might encounter a thousand distinct sets of stairs in a year but the median set of stairs doesn't encounter that number of distinct people in a wheelchair. More importantly, there are stairs in places we're not going to do anything about it, like old buildings and private homes. And there are accessibility devices that become inaccessible, e.g. an elevator that can't be used because the power is out or the building is on fire. A solution that still works in those cases is better. As far as I can tell we got stuck with the existing one because of politics. The per-person cost of a ramp at a large high volume business is negligible because it has so much traffic, so much so that they'd install one regardless. The real cost is putting them in every small shop and low traffic area. But then you have no opposition from large businesses to a law requiring them because it puts a disproportionate cost on their smaller competitors. Whereas a tax that paid for more capable "wheelchairs" would sensibly be paid mostly by those large companies, and then they object.
- Centigonal 3y ago
  I once had a job where I listened to calls to a major US health insurance carrier. The amount of grief that people (especially retirees on privately administered medicare) go through to get a claim for a new wheelchair approved can be enormous. If we want to give disabled people better & more expensive medical equipment as a substitute for accessible buildings, we need to fix the system that is depriving many of new or replacement versions of the "dumb" mobility aids that are in wide use today.
  - sizzle 3y ago
    Went through this with parents, ended up paying for a wheelchair for $500 myself from the manufacturer. I hate Medicare denying disabled stroke patients with a passion now.
irrational 3y ago
My city has been on a curb cut rampage recently. Pretty much every single corner, whether in a suburban neighborhood or downtown, has been ripped out and replaced with an ADA ramp that is bright yellow with these bumps on it.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
A lot of this is undone by unofficially allowing parking in crosswalks and other routine "transgressions". The cutouts don't matter when there's a car over it. So many groups are affected by this other than wheelchair users too: parents with strollers, elderly or disabled with walkers or who simply can't lift their foot high enough to step onto a curb, young children on balance bikes or skates. The enforcement mechanism of ADA being, literally, "sue us" is an absolutely massive barrier that makes its practical efficacy a fraction of what you'd think it is based on reading the rules.
- neltnerb 3y ago
  I have spent four years, typically ~2 months a year between first complaint and it actually getting acted upon, getting Somerville to cut overgrowth from its own construction site that completely block a sidewalk that is used by hundreds of people per day (there is no sidewalk at all on the other side). You couldn't use the sidewalk anyway as it is not ADA compliant in the slightest (random light posts in the middle of a half width sidewalk with tons of cracks and holes). But at least it should be vaguely passable... Meanwhile literally 100 feet away they managed to redesign and repave an entire highway onramp without hiring a groundskeeper for their own property. I hate having to bring up the ADA as the reason the city should respect pedestrians. They spent how much money on that highway onramp but can't be bothered to make the frontage on property it owns usable by pedestrians?
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Highways are managed by the state DOT, not the city.
    - neltnerb 3y ago
      Oh boy, do I know... they say it's a city thing because the site is owned by the city or used for city construction or something. It's convoluted as you would expect. 311 and the state DOT disagree about who is responsible for no reason a mere citizen can navigate. It's a long and boring post. An aside in any case. A completely blocked and nearly useless sidewalk shouldn't be a thing that requires a resident to file a complaint just the right way to get fixed. Especially when it's in an easily visible area. Something being "compliant" isn't enough, and even publicly managed sites aren't necessarily compliant (and shouldn't take a lawyer to fix). It's not asking a lot for a site run by a construction company to find a groundskeeper for a few hours a year without figuring out just the right way to complain first. When the same sites were owned by a private company it went without saying.
Aerbil313 3y ago
> Chicago is less bad than a lot of other towns and cities in the US and way less bad than many (most?) cities in other countries, including many that are much more progressive than the US You are seriously… I don’t know what to say. I live in Turkey. The treatment in Chicago is something unheard of. I cannot imagine this behavior outside of a tech dystopia, and apparently this is what West is now. Funny to see you think physical accessibility, wheelchair platforms etc. are more important than traditional bonds of family and community to support disabled people. Thank God we’re still not that progressive.
joker_minmax 3y ago
Well the old famous pizza places are not accessible in the slightest. Basically anything super freaking old is a lost cause unless you magically have room to make the bathrooms bigger or put an extension on the storefront, etc. I'm from the South, and it also shocked me how cars in Chicago would basically inch directly up to where you're walking, like they're just gonna run over you if you stopped, even if pedestrians technically have the green to cross. And they could see we were going slower because we're pushing a wheelchair! People talk crap on the South and how we drive, but at least we usually slow down when someone is crossing. (I can't vouch for Florida, but most of Florida doesn't count as Southern anyway.) It's easy to take the braille in elevators or lights on fire alarms for granted, but thanks for pointing out how good it is that we have them.
- tssva 3y ago
  > and it also shocked me how cars in Chicago would basically inch directly up to where you're walking, like they're just gonna run over you if you stopped, even if pedestrians technically have the green to cross. I just spent the last week in downtown Chicago and in this regard I didn't find it any worse than the downtown areas of other major cities. Not saying it is acceptable but Chicago is not an outlier.
TylerE 3y ago
Many of the subway stations in NYC still don't have elevators, and when they do they're usually far from the platform, slow, and smelly. I'm not even in a wheel chair, although I do have foot and nerve issues that can make stairs rather treacherous so I usually avoid them when possible. Like, I live in a 3 story house with stairs, and it's fine, but on possibly slick concrete or tile, with many other people around me (usually going faster)...that's something I avoid when possible.
- gurchik 3y ago
  I've noticed this as well. It depends on where you live, but in Brooklyn, almost none of the subway stations are wheelchair accessible. Buses are, and there are many free transfer options from the subway into the bus network, but in my experience living in NYC the buses are very unreliable. You can get to where you're going but half the time the bus you need will not arrive. Just for fun I looked at a couple subway lines in Brooklyn. Very few wheelchair accessible stops: - F train: 3 of its 22 stops - G train: 2 of its 19 stops (a historically neglected line, but still I'm surprised to see this so low) - A train: 3 of its 17 stops ... in fact, lets play a game. Here's a map I made of part of Brooklyn. The stars represent stops that are not wheelchair accessible. Can you find the stops that don't have a star? https://imgur.com/a/8PdzrOK https://imgur.com/a/8PdzrOK
  - TylerE 3y ago
    When I visited this year I never got out of lower/midtown Manhattan and it was 50/50 at best.
HWR_14 3y ago
As I understand it, the ADA is one of those occasions where the US government leads the world in protecting its citizens.

kortilla 3y ago

> And the sad thing is, in this respect Chicago is less bad than a lot of other towns and cities in the US Being a “progressive” city isn’t really correlated with being disability friendly. New York is terrible for disabilities. Many walkable and high dense areas are also terrible for them. Like it or not, suburbia with giant parking lots, dedicated disabled spaces, wheelchair ramps, etc is about the best access you can get (assuming you can drive a vehicle and have one).

HWR_14 3y ago
Or, new construction in general is more disability friendly. Historic construction isn't, and usually only has to update on renovations.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Plenty of new construction in New York that is still miserable. Show me a city famous for its dense walkability that’s considered disability friendly.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

I kind of wonder if we're not solving a lot of these problems in the wrong place. We passed a law that requires buildings to change, but meanwhile we have the technology to make "wheelchairs" that can climb stairs. Something with a continuous track or whatever else human ingenuity can devise. That would cost money, but how could it possibly cost as much as modifying every building everywhere? A wheelchair ramp is thousands of dollars. An elevator is hundreds of thousands. A person in a wheelchair might encounter a thousand distinct sets of stairs in a year but the median set of stairs doesn't encounter that number of distinct people in a wheelchair. More importantly, there are stairs in places we're not going to do anything about it, like old buildings and private homes. And there are accessibility devices that become inaccessible, e.g. an elevator that can't be used because the power is out or the building is on fire. A solution that still works in those cases is better. As far as I can tell we got stuck with the existing one because of politics. The per-person cost of a ramp at a large high volume business is negligible because it has so much traffic, so much so that they'd install one regardless. The real cost is putting them in every small shop and low traffic area. But then you have no opposition from large businesses to a law requiring them because it puts a disproportionate cost on their smaller competitors. Whereas a tax that paid for more capable "wheelchairs" would sensibly be paid mostly by those large companies, and then they object.

Centigonal 3y ago
I once had a job where I listened to calls to a major US health insurance carrier. The amount of grief that people (especially retirees on privately administered medicare) go through to get a claim for a new wheelchair approved can be enormous. If we want to give disabled people better & more expensive medical equipment as a substitute for accessible buildings, we need to fix the system that is depriving many of new or replacement versions of the "dumb" mobility aids that are in wide use today.
- sizzle 3y ago
  Went through this with parents, ended up paying for a wheelchair for $500 myself from the manufacturer. I hate Medicare denying disabled stroke patients with a passion now.

irrational 3y ago

My city has been on a curb cut rampage recently. Pretty much every single corner, whether in a suburban neighborhood or downtown, has been ripped out and replaced with an ADA ramp that is bright yellow with these bumps on it.

giraffe_lady 3y ago

A lot of this is undone by unofficially allowing parking in crosswalks and other routine "transgressions". The cutouts don't matter when there's a car over it. So many groups are affected by this other than wheelchair users too: parents with strollers, elderly or disabled with walkers or who simply can't lift their foot high enough to step onto a curb, young children on balance bikes or skates. The enforcement mechanism of ADA being, literally, "sue us" is an absolutely massive barrier that makes its practical efficacy a fraction of what you'd think it is based on reading the rules.

neltnerb 3y ago
I have spent four years, typically ~2 months a year between first complaint and it actually getting acted upon, getting Somerville to cut overgrowth from its own construction site that completely block a sidewalk that is used by hundreds of people per day (there is no sidewalk at all on the other side). You couldn't use the sidewalk anyway as it is not ADA compliant in the slightest (random light posts in the middle of a half width sidewalk with tons of cracks and holes). But at least it should be vaguely passable... Meanwhile literally 100 feet away they managed to redesign and repave an entire highway onramp without hiring a groundskeeper for their own property. I hate having to bring up the ADA as the reason the city should respect pedestrians. They spent how much money on that highway onramp but can't be bothered to make the frontage on property it owns usable by pedestrians?
- TylerE 3y ago
  Highways are managed by the state DOT, not the city.
  - neltnerb 3y ago
    Oh boy, do I know... they say it's a city thing because the site is owned by the city or used for city construction or something. It's convoluted as you would expect. 311 and the state DOT disagree about who is responsible for no reason a mere citizen can navigate. It's a long and boring post. An aside in any case. A completely blocked and nearly useless sidewalk shouldn't be a thing that requires a resident to file a complaint just the right way to get fixed. Especially when it's in an easily visible area. Something being "compliant" isn't enough, and even publicly managed sites aren't necessarily compliant (and shouldn't take a lawyer to fix). It's not asking a lot for a site run by a construction company to find a groundskeeper for a few hours a year without figuring out just the right way to complain first. When the same sites were owned by a private company it went without saying.

Aerbil313 3y ago

> Chicago is less bad than a lot of other towns and cities in the US and way less bad than many (most?) cities in other countries, including many that are much more progressive than the US You are seriously… I don’t know what to say. I live in Turkey. The treatment in Chicago is something unheard of. I cannot imagine this behavior outside of a tech dystopia, and apparently this is what West is now. Funny to see you think physical accessibility, wheelchair platforms etc. are more important than traditional bonds of family and community to support disabled people. Thank God we’re still not that progressive.

joker_minmax 3y ago

Well the old famous pizza places are not accessible in the slightest. Basically anything super freaking old is a lost cause unless you magically have room to make the bathrooms bigger or put an extension on the storefront, etc. I'm from the South, and it also shocked me how cars in Chicago would basically inch directly up to where you're walking, like they're just gonna run over you if you stopped, even if pedestrians technically have the green to cross. And they could see we were going slower because we're pushing a wheelchair! People talk crap on the South and how we drive, but at least we usually slow down when someone is crossing. (I can't vouch for Florida, but most of Florida doesn't count as Southern anyway.) It's easy to take the braille in elevators or lights on fire alarms for granted, but thanks for pointing out how good it is that we have them.

tssva 3y ago
> and it also shocked me how cars in Chicago would basically inch directly up to where you're walking, like they're just gonna run over you if you stopped, even if pedestrians technically have the green to cross. I just spent the last week in downtown Chicago and in this regard I didn't find it any worse than the downtown areas of other major cities. Not saying it is acceptable but Chicago is not an outlier.

TylerE 3y ago

Many of the subway stations in NYC still don't have elevators, and when they do they're usually far from the platform, slow, and smelly. I'm not even in a wheel chair, although I do have foot and nerve issues that can make stairs rather treacherous so I usually avoid them when possible. Like, I live in a 3 story house with stairs, and it's fine, but on possibly slick concrete or tile, with many other people around me (usually going faster)...that's something I avoid when possible.

gurchik 3y ago
I've noticed this as well. It depends on where you live, but in Brooklyn, almost none of the subway stations are wheelchair accessible. Buses are, and there are many free transfer options from the subway into the bus network, but in my experience living in NYC the buses are very unreliable. You can get to where you're going but half the time the bus you need will not arrive. Just for fun I looked at a couple subway lines in Brooklyn. Very few wheelchair accessible stops: - F train: 3 of its 22 stops - G train: 2 of its 19 stops (a historically neglected line, but still I'm surprised to see this so low) - A train: 3 of its 17 stops ... in fact, lets play a game. Here's a map I made of part of Brooklyn. The stars represent stops that are not wheelchair accessible. Can you find the stops that don't have a star? https://imgur.com/a/8PdzrOK https://imgur.com/a/8PdzrOK
- TylerE 3y ago
  When I visited this year I never got out of lower/midtown Manhattan and it was 50/50 at best.

HWR_14 3y ago

As I understand it, the ADA is one of those occasions where the US government leads the world in protecting its citizens.