Robert A. Hamilton

October 14, 2002

CITY OF MONROE


Office of City Manager

RE: Draft Revisions to ADAAG



Dear Sir or Madam:

This letter is written on behalf of the City of Monroe, with regard to the proposed revisions to the guidelines for application of the Americans With Disabilities Act to public facilities and rights-of-way. I would like to first express our displeasure with the fact that these guidelines have been published for comment only on the internet, and that no direct mailings nor advertising campaigns were undertaken to ensure that local municipalities were made aware of their existence. This is especially troubling given the fact that cities such as Monroe will be forced to bear the majority of all costs associated with the required modifications, should these guidelines go into effect.

To provide some background, the City of Monroe was founded in 1785, and the current core of the central business district was platted and constructed in the 1820s. A large percentage of the City’s urban core was completely built out by the 1950s and 1960s, including the current street grades, gutter lines, and sidewalk system. Like most urban communities of the first half of the 20 Century, on-street parking remains the principal facility for many residents whose homes were not built with space for driveway installation. The City’s boundaries extend to Lake Erie, and the City straddles the River Raisin, which varies in width from approximately 250 to 500 feet throughout the City. Like most of southeastern Michigan, Monroe is extremely flat, with less than 40 feet of fall to Lake Erie from the highest elevation point, a horizontal distance of nearly 6 miles. The City of Monroe has a current population of 22,076 persons (2000 Census).

The City of Monroe maintains an aggressive sidewalk installation and maintenance program, as facilities of this type are generally considered by our citizens to be a desirable and necessary facet of urban life. Within the past two (2) years we have completed the installation over 8000 feet of sidewalks along both sides of US-24, our principal commercial "suburban" type artery, the fourth phase of our downtown "streetscape" project, and over a 1000-foot-long extension of our downtown Riverwalk. In addition, our City has been actively pursuing a "greenways" initiative that would connect our recreational facilities to those of adjacent communities throughout southeastern Michigan. Certainly, it can be said that our community is constantly striving to ensure access to all facilities by persons of all abilities. As such, we feel it very necessary that our comments be presented, as these guidelines will have a great effect on our ability to carry out this task by diverting funds into meeting expensive new guidelines.

In order to best organize our critique of these draft guidelines, our comments have provided under the headings of each section. Some comments relate to items touched upon in the scoping section (1102) but detailed in other sections. Where this is the case, the primary discussion is placed in the more detailed provision.

Section 1101: Application and Administration

No comments.

Section 1102: Scoping Requirements

The City does not feel that "alterations" is defined well. With the multitude of differing requirements for sidewalks, ramps, and on-street parking, it is still unclear what type of modifications require what type of changes. For example, when a block of street is resurfaced but curbs are not changed, do on-street disabled parking spaces need to be added at that point? If sidewalks are replaced but curbs are not changed, do parking space loading zones need to be added or not?

• Section 1102.2.2 provides for exceptions where it is "technically infeasible" to do so. It is realized that not every possible situation can be taken into account, but this statement effectively forces courts and lawyers to determine what is feasible or not, rather than allowing engineers to make these decisions. Some modifications, while technically feasible, require thousands of dollars in expenditures to achieve minor benefits, especially in older downtown areas.

• Section 1102.2.2 essentially requires that any previously accessible site entry points to the right-of-way continue to be accessible following right-of-way alterations. This creates quite a quandary for downtown sites. For example, many existing downtown buildings have doorways flush with the adjacent sidewalk. However, the top of the curb line is often over 12 inches below the doorways, while the building faces are 15 feet from the curb horizontally. To replace the flush doorways with lips would make the buildings inaccessible and violate this section, however, replacing the sidewalk as is can result in cross slopes of over 6%, which also violate the 1:48 cross slope provision in the ADA. This problem is not unique to Monroe, but is virtually ignored by these draft guidelines. Although this could fall under the technical infeasibility stated in Section 1102.2.2, what invariably can follow is a long and costly litigation to prove what can be readily proven by simple mathematics and common sense.

• Section 1102.14 requires one accessible parking space per block face. This is absolutely absurd.

The City of Monroe allows, and its residents need, on-street parking on somewhere between 800 and 1000 "block faces", which we assume to mean each side of the street between two cross streets.

Forcing construction of accessible spaces on every one of these will place numerous spaces that will never be used onto the street system. Additional discussion of this item occurs later under Section 1109.

Section 1103: Pedestrian Access Route

• As stated earlier, requiring a 2% (1:48) cross slope is nearly impossible in built-up downtown areas where the sidewalk extends from curb to building While this requirement is somewhat easier to achieve in residential areas where grass terraces separate the curb from the sidewalk, we still feel it is unduly restrictive.

• If changes in level must be separated by 30 inches horizontally as per 1103.8, how can different slopes for a) the cross slope of the paved street, b) the street side slope of the gutter, c) the section of curb behind the flow line, and d) the ramp leading to the curb, be accommodated within the 24 inches that is typical for a curb and gutter section? Even if the ramp and curb behind the flow line have the same slope, it is very difficult to always match the gutter foreslope to that of the adjoining street, and thus, two level changes MUST occur within 30 inches.

Section 1104: Curb Ramps and Blended Transitions

• 1104.2.1 requires that all ramps meet the curb line at right angles. This, of course, is nearly impossible to do in all cases, and mostly will result in all ramp crossings being offset from the running sidewalk leading into them. For example, in the City of Monroe, most sidewalks are installed 1 foot inside the right-of-way line, and most rights-of-way are no more than 66 feet wide total, with the paved streets centered on the right-of-way. Assuming even a 26-foot-wide street (13 on each side of the right-of-way centerline) with corner radii of 25 feet (typical), this would place the ramp between 5 and 9 feet minimum outside of the right-of-way line extended of the intersecting street. All walks would have to be offset by 6 to 10 feet, obviously causing a great deal of confusion for visually impaired pedestrians, and encouraging cyclists to ‘jump" the curb in line with their chosen path rather than divert to the ramp location.

• 1104.2.1.1 requires a minimum ramp running slope of 1:48. It is ridiculous to further constrain design by requiring a minimum grade that has no apparent purpose.

• 1104.3.3. states that no utility castings may be placed within ramps. Again, as other utilities must share the right-of-way with sidewalks in existing developed communities, it is very likely that established manhole covers are located at the intersection of utilities serving opposing streets. Removing these castings from these locations will usually involve completely relocating the ramps to a non-sensical alignment, as utility lines cannot often be moved without great expense.

• 1104.3.4 and 1104.3.5 do not allow any vertical transition at curbs, which essentially disallows any "lips." Lips allow runoff water to usually be contained within the curb line itself thus preventing water from ponding into the ramp area during heavy rain events. Elimination of any lips, even those as small as 1/2" in height which can be easily managed by wheelchair users, will result in fill gutters spilling into the ramps as well, which during freezing conditions becomes a severe hazard to wheelchair users attempting to stop before entering the street.

• 1104.3.7 requires a "clear space" of 48 inches by 48 inches be provided within the roadway beyond the crosswalk and outside of the travel lane. This can be possible for streets where parking is allowed, however, where the travelled way is adjacent to the curb this becomes a mandate to eliminate travel lanes. In dense urban settings, roadway capacity is a scarce resource indeed, and reducing travel widths of arterial streets by 8 feet is completely unacceptable.

Section 1105: Pedestrian Crossings

• Section 1105.2.2 requires that cross slopes on crosswalks be 1:48 maximum. What about situations where the roadway at the intersection is steeper than 1:48? Although the City of Monroe has few intersections that would be impacted by this requirement, it could create numerous problems for other cities. For example, to flatten the crosswalk of a street with 5% grade to 2%, either the entire intersection would have to be flattened to 2%, resulting in a huge grade difference from the "lay of the land" that must be corrected on one side or the intersection or the other, or only the crosswalks would have to be flattened, which would create "humps" in the pavement, as the roadway transitions from 5% to 2% then back to 5% very quickly.

• The City of Monroe currently utilizes pedestrian crossing speeds of 3.0 feet per second near schools and areas where large numbers of elderly pedestrians cross. While this is certainly a worthwhile goal, it is inappropriate to mandate this at all locations as contemplated in 1105.3. Further, whereas the MUTCD requires the "crossing time" to be from curb line to the center of the furthest lane, 1105.3 takes this to the extreme of including the full width of the street plus one ramp. At many locations, the distance to cross Monroe Street, our principal downtown street plus one ramp is nearly 75 feet, which requires 25 seconds plus the 7 second "walk" indication normally provided, for a total of 32 seconds. This forces either excessively Long cycle times that will tend to clog fixed-time downtown signal systems, or the use of all push-button activated crossing devices, which would cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for all City intersections.

• Section 1105.5.3 would require elevator devices for any "overpass or underpass" with a ramp run over 60 inches. This is an utter waste of taxpayer money for something that will require an inordinate amount of maintenance and be subject to vandalism, given the relatively low benefit it would provide.

• Although the City of Monroe currently has no roundabouts, section 1105.6.2 would likely ensure that we would never install one. The requirement for signalization of pedestrian crossings would not only defeat the purpose of a continuously flowing, low-speed intersection, but would be a detriment to safety by requiring motorists attempting to leave the roundabout to stop for up to 20 seconds to allow a pedestrian to cross, backing up all traffic in all directions of the roundabout.

• Section 1105.7 (left turn and right turn "slip lanes") is very similar to 1105.6.2 in that traffic signals at these locations would defeat their purpose and cause traffic to back up into through lanes unexpectedly.

Section 1106: Accessible Pedestrian Signal Systems

• The City feels that audible pedestrian crossing signals are not appropriate for use in residential areas, where nearly half of our signals our located. Vandalism would be a particular concern where residents become annoyed with the constant "chirping" sounds. Further, the cost of devices that would adjust the audible sounds to the ambient noise level will certainly bean added expense with minimal returns.

• 1106.2.1 requires all pedestrian "devices", which is assumed to mean push buttons, be located at least 10 feet apart. This may be impossible in many cases, and does not seem to have any real benefit to disabled pedestrians.

Section 1107: Street Furniture

No comments.

Section 1108: Detectable Warning Surfaces

• The City in general feels that these are an unnecessary expense, and will become damaged very easily in climates where snow removal is required in the winter.

• It is further questioned why no change in level is allowed at curbs, but ¼" truncated domes are considered acceptable on ramps.

Section 1109: On-Street Parking

• This section of the proposed guidelines has by far the most potential financial impact on the City of Monroe. As stated earlier, this amounts to a requirement to place 800 to 1000 accessible spaces in locations where they may not be of any benefit. In addition, the presence of a "bump-in" from the curbs in a residential area will rob fronting residents of terrace space, and create strange-looking curb lines. In historic neighborhoods, this can have a very detrimental visual appearance. Since all cases would be different, the City of Monroe has not computed cost estimates for this work, however, using a very conservative figure of $1000 per space (including curb removal, and new pavement curbs, and ramp to sidewalks), this has the potential to cost the City of Monroe well in excess of $1 million for spaces on each block. Rather than build all of these, the City would likely choose to prohibit on-street parking in many locations, which would serve to decrease the accessibility of the street system now enjoyed by our residents.

• Beyond the sheer costs of this construction lie the construction difficulties. As stated earlier, the typical right-of-way on City streets is 66 or 60 feet. Assuming a 28-foot wide street (14 on each side of the right-of-way centerline), 60-foot wide right-of-way (30 feet each side of centerline), and 4-foot wide sidewalks placed one foot inside the right-of-way line, this leaves 11 feet between the "running" curb line and the sidewalk. 5 feet would then be "borrowed" from the terrace for use as the loading zone, leaving only 6 feet for the ramp at a maximum slope of 1:12, or maximum rise of 0,48 feet or 6 inches. This would require the sidewalk to be no higher than the normal top of curb, assuming a 6- inch high curb. All terraces would essentially be flat, and drainage would pond in the sidewalk areas, also creating a hazard to pedestrians. Since the distance from the "normal" curb line to the property line is 16 feet in this case, which is quite common in Monroe, no exception would be provided as per 11092. This provision is unbuildable in most of the City of Monroe.

Section 1110: Call Boxes

No comments.

Section 1111: Alternate Circulation Path

1111.3 requires that all alternate circulation paths be located on the same side of the street as the original facility. This is impossible to achieve in projects like the downtown streetscape, where the entire sidewalk must be removed and replaced, or for some types of work involving large scaffolding for building renovation. In residential areas, this requirement essentially amounts to a requirement to place a "temporary" concrete sidewalk in the terrace when sidewalk removal closes the original sidewalk. This is a complete waste of taxpayer money that could be spent on permanent sidewalks in other areas of the City.

These proposed rules have the effect of encouraging developers and communities not to build sidewalks, thereby making society less accessible for disabled persons and pedestrians in general. They also encourage wide right-of-ways and urban sprawl. While these rules may fit reasonably well in urban fringes with lower-density development that are generally not as pedestrian-friendly to begin with, they do not work at all in dense urban settings. Also, due w the huge burden imposed by forcing the installation of accessible on-street parking spaces on every block face, they will also encourage communities to remove on-street parking to avoid installing these spaces, which in turn will create higher speeds on neighborhood streets that further discourage pedestrian activity.

A study produced by Kara Kockelman indicates that a cross slope of 5.5 to 6 percent should be the required maximum cross slope of sidewalks, not the 2 percent presented in these draft guidelines. In order to encourage the installation of new sidewalks and additional facilities that result in greater accessibility to pedestrians, new ADA rules should be developed that are actually buildable. More pedestrian-friendly communities will only be achieved when they are encouraged by rules that work well in urban settings, not just far-flung suburban areas.

The comments presented above do not necessarily include all possible criticisms of these proposed guidelines, simply those that have the most potential to impact the City both financially and legally. We feel! as stated before, that local governments have not been given ample time and / or notification to provide comment on these proposed requirements before they go into effect. While nearly all can agree with the spirit of allowing accessibility of public rights-of-way to persons of all abilities, the above-presented guidelines do not achieve a reasonable balance in doing so. We strongly urge you to consider all of the comments stated above before making final recommendations in this matter. Please feel free to contact me if you should have any questions.

Sincerely,

Robert A. Hamilton
City Manager


cc: Senator Carl Levin
Senator Debbie Stabenow
Congressman John Dingell
Mayor Cappuccilli and City Council Members
Don Stypula, Michigan Municipal League
Don Borut, National League of Cities
Donald A. Link, Director of Engineering and Utilities
James E. Tischler, Community Development Director
Patrick M. Lewis, City Traffic Engineer
Bany S. LaRoy, Project Engineer