The Struggle with Where the Sidewalks Won't Go
bittersoutherner.com
bittersoutherner.com
When I had kids and started walking them around in a stroller, you learn really quickly where the sidewalks with ramps are, and you (and your toddler who likes to help!) come to appreciate the buttons that open doors automatically.
I run as well, and it's not fun to trip on uneven sidewalks. Sometimes at night I'd rather run on the road where I can count on a more even surface and no branches hitting me in the face. I think I'm more inclined to shovel my sidewalk in the winter because I don't like running on compressed snow that melted in the sun and refroze overnight.
So...yeah! Fix this stuff for disabled people, and other people get to benefit. Sidewalks are for everyone.
That's why here in Germany we have a separate term for that: "barrierefrei", which means "free of barriers". It is the politically correct variant of the other popular word "behindertengerecht" which merely means "suitable for disabled people".
Many people here think that "barrierefrei" is just about political correctness for its own sake. But the term "barrierefrei" emphases a completely different way of thinking about this issue: It is about removing barriers for everyone, with disabled people being the most important target group, but by far not the only one.
Political correctness tends to shut down discussions, empathy extends them.
PC is prescriptive, empathy is descriptive.
Of course, PC only works if you are doing it on your own, not if you impose it on the people you are trying to convince.
But it's a bit weird to equate empathy for a condition beyond one's control with empathy for people who don't choose to use empathetic language.
I've been in a few classes or workshops where the instructors have taught people how to correct insensitive speech. It's something that can be done well.
http://www.dianegoodman.com/documents/RespondingToBiasedOrOf...
Personal anecdote: I was playing a game in college with some other students. One was periodically bragging about some particular sexual exploit in a roundabout way. I think he was looking for validation, but when he didn't get it, he tried again. I said something along the lines of, "That comment isn't acceptable and if you keep saying things like that I'm not going to play with you." It was definitely confrontational, it drew a line in the sand, and I didn't hear him say inappropriate comments for the months that we played together.
Half the struggle here is just deciding that someone else's behavior isn't acceptable and that you want to do something about it.
There's also something called 'decompression therapy' that supposedly helped youths with psychopathy become less psychopathic.
The theory as I understand it goes like this: Everyone has a 'sphere of empathy', they empathize with those inside it but not outside. To a psychopath that boundary is their own skin, to a vegetarian it includes all animals, to a pescatarian all land animals... you get the idea. What makes people's sphere of empathy expand is feeling safe and empathized with, it allows them to risk the vulnerability of empathizing with someone who might betray them. But it's like voluntarily relaxing a muscle - the process is slow, and while the right pressure can help the problem point relax, too much pressure will make it tense up more.
e.g. ESPN pulling veteran announcer Robert Lee off a University of Virginia football game because his name is too close to Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general is an example of political correctness in action, and that has nothing to do with treating people fairly (certainly the announcer wasn't treated fairly in this through no fault of his own), but to prevent the risk that someone might get offended;
Censoring Huckleberry Finn (for having the n-word in it, despite being a great anti-racist novel of the time) done at some institutions was another example of political correctness - again, there's nothing in the act about treating people fairly, it's simply a fight against "taboo" words or thought, and that is pretty Stalinist in some aspects.
Pretty sure that the announcer himself asked to be moved to another game.
The most "anti-PC" people in the US have their own jargon and codewords and "safe spaces" with all the same restrictions, just turned on their heads. For instance, there are very few places you could go where people would tell you to your face that black lives don't matter, but a much larger set of places where it wouldn't be "PC" to wear a Black Lives Matter shirt.
Personally I translate it to 'good manners'.
I know that the term "barrierefrei" is PC, and I know that quite a lot of people will hate it for that reason alone. I use it nevertheless, because I think that PC terminology is actually a good thing (to be used, not to be enforced), and that "barrierefrei" is an especially well-chosen term.
I suppose there is some chance that they are being slightly more sophisticated and making the argument that the expectations are strictly performative. But I doubt it.
The use of political correct terms makes people mad because it contains within it an implication that they are being rude, and often the person coming up with these euphemisms has not the faintest idea whether the existing term was offensive or not!
But as an atheist of Jewish descent, what do I say to my co-workers, who are from Turkey, India, Korea and China? Of those who I know to follow a religion, none are Christian. It would feel outright silly to say "Merry Christmas".
(For comparison, try saying "Happy Hanukkah" to your non-Jewish friends as a non-Jewish person when the season comes, and see if it makes much sense to you).
My question is more whether you care if someone you don't know says it to you on the street or when you buy a coffee or whatever.
On the other hand, different people are rubbed the wrong way by many different things. I do try to avoid going out of my way to avoid offending people, by, say, assuming they're Christians. And on the other, other hand, I'm fine with offending people who want to go out of their way to be offended.
That's probably true, given that "happy holidays" predates "political correctness" by more than a few decades.
This is something that bears repeating. Accessibility means making things accessible for everyone, not just people with disabilities. It's much easier to push a heavy dolly up a ramp, than it is to pull it up lips, steps, etc. Self opening doors are a god send when carrying packages.
Until I broke my ankle in a bicycle accident last year. Then I became acutely aware of how poor some of the infrastructure is around me. The closest subway station to me doesn't have an elevator, for example, and the one nearest work only has a single elevator at one end of the platform that is often out of service. I supported accessibility standards in theory before this, but now that I've seen how they play out in practice, I strongly and emphatically support them. Empathy is hugely important.
I am also so goddamn thankful that there is the requirement to have sturdy handrails alongside all flights of stairs, and that this requirement is strictly enforced (thank the ADA or building codes or whatever is responsible). With these handrails, an otherwise able-bodied person on crutches can handle staircases relatively easily. Without them, stairs are death traps, especially going down. I would have been mostly confined to my apartment without the existence of these handrails. Fortunately, they exist everywhere, so I was able to tackle the stairs at my apartment, at the subway station, at work, and in the entrances to buses.
Another "temporary disability" that most people don't think of is carrying a baby. Suddenly, doors that can be operated one-handed (or even better, hands-free) are wonderful when you're trying to get your kid someplace where you can change that blow-out.
He had no idea how to check which stations were handicap-accessible and which weren't, and when we showed him, it turns out he would have to go halfway further into Brooklyn, then get on a bus just to undo the journey above-ground. At something like 1 or 2am, too.
He just sort of deflated when he realized the journey ahead of him, so we just offered to lug him up the stairs, and did. Good thing he wasn't there alone.
It's not 'empathy' if you don't notice it until it affects you personally, or you're only doing something because it might affect you in the future.
Being affected personally at one time can (and, I assume, often does) help one develop empathy, though.
We will never have perfect sidewalks, it's a noble goal, but it's pie-in-the-sky thinking to want perfect sidewalks. Instead, we should be building better accessibility devices, ones that can navigate tough terrain. Why are the wheels on mobility devices so damn small? Can they be made to be swappable so you can put on the outdoor wheels when you're travelling, and indoor ones when you want something smooth and quiet?
How is that different from roads?
> you can't depend on people to maintain the sidewalks in front of their property
"in front of their property" is one way of looking at this; "alongside a road" is another.
Logically, if the state were going to cover the costs of one of them, it'd be sidewalks, since they can be used by all taxpayers. You could have road users pay tolls to pay for the roads, and people who don't drive could simply opt out.
We'll never have perfect anything. But I think you're being more than a bit defeatist here. I'm in the US Northeast and the sidewalk in my house was installed in 2008. Still basically flawless today. As homeowners, we accept that we need a new roof every 25 years because the consequences are real and tangible to us. I have to think that sidewalks are just part of the cost of living in a walkable community, even if we don't walk that much.
A few communities down, they require sidewalk maintenance for residents if the pavers are uneven at all. It's a very affluent borough, but you'll see people grind down the edges of the sidewalk that stick up in order to meet the code. So you can maintain without replacing.
And besides, we don't have this logic for roads. I mean, SUVs can handle anything, so why bother with all of this even pavement with good drainage?
>Instead, we should be building better accessibility devices, ones that can navigate tough terrain.
You're being downvoted for the first paragraph, but I think your second paragraph is sensible. My running stroller is way better at handling broken sidewalks than the scissor stroller with tiny wheels that fits great in a small trunk and works well at the mall. Strollers aren't super expensive (at least not $30k like that wheelchair) so I can have more than one and use the best one for my situation.
We see concept robots that can handle rough terrain. Wouldn't it be great if that got integrated into wheelchairs somehow?
That's kind of why I'm being defeatist. You just need a ton of money to keep sidewalks in good order. And you need the people that live in the area to care enough to report the issues.
>You're being downvoted for the first paragraph, but I think your second paragraph is sensible.
Yeah, I was really trying to setup the second paragraph to be impactful, but I don't think people got that far.
No, you don't. You just need to make them properly the first time and keep people from planting trees where they don't belong.
In my parents house in Canuckistan, I've never seen them fix the side-walks in 20 years and they're mostly fine.
Surely you see the comedy in that statement? I don't think anything happens right the first time. And preventing people from doing anything is pretty tough as well!
How is equipping everyone with expensive wheelchairs a better solution than enforcing a standardized construction code?
And how do wheels help someone when they're trying to jog on a sidewalk?
This is irrationally pessimistic.
Nothing is perfect, but there is a huge, meaningful difference between slightly flawed and completely flawed. It doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be good enough.
Many things _can_ be done decently well the first time. Often times it just takes a small cultural mindset shift, and some minor improvements to the approach.
Southeast Ontario, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc. will re-freeze near the surface dozens of times every winter, and each time, more pavement damage is possible. Halite and other ice-melting chemicals can exacerbate the problem by making the ice in or under different parts of the pavement freeze at different temperatures.
You don't even need to do it properly the first time. You can seal pavements (and the underlying soil) against moisture infiltration at any time. Dropping a layer of asphalt on top is a common way to do this after the initial construction. Many places in the US simply do not bother, because that would cost a lot more up front, and then there would be fewer maintenance contracts to hand out. There's always the possibility that no one will ever complain, and the problem can be ignored forever--that's money that never needs to be budgeted.
If you build a proper foundation for a sidewalk, and then seal it against moisture, it will stay smooth and level for hundreds of freeze-thaw cycles, barring some natural disaster that would let the water underneath it. But if you're only mayor for two years, and the sidewalks last 30, nobody is going to come back to you 20 years after you leave office and pat you on the back for your wise sidewalk decisions. It is more likely that there will be some crisis right before the election and the money that could have solved it already went into great sidewalks. Or even worse, if you're a subdivision developer, you're out of there a year after the last lot gets sold, long before anyone notices how many corners you cut on the sidewalks.
All of this comes back to the prevailing attitudes in the US about who should be responsible for community infrastructure. We often expect private entities to build it, and public entities to maintain it. This screws up all the incentives. The reality is that subdivision developers probably should not exist. The municipality should be performing that function, instead of annexing every ad-hoc, ex-farmland housing development that springs up on the borders. That's how you get straight streets that connect at both ends, and good sidewalks that go everywhere that cars can. And then you can fire the zoning board, because when you build all the streets, you can control all the lot sizes and business parking requirements directly.
We do have some problems with ZOAB-based paved roads if the freeze/thaw cycles are too high, but any big problems are repaired in two or three days, and all roads are maintained and replaced relatively quickly anyway, so it's not a big deal.
It's strange to see the broken roads and patchwork in the US. Every time I visit I wonder why there is no majority that agrees on fixing it. Short term "it works now" is such a bad idea...
When weed seeds fall into a crack and germinate, the roots dig down into the sandy substrate looking for soil. If you prepare the foundation correctly, the weeds die before establishing a viable foothold. So then you have a choice. Pull the weed out, and the crack widens and a little bit more of the substrate is disturbed, or let it stay there and decay, leaving some nutrients. Either way, they next weed seed that lands there will have a much easier time of it. No matter what you do, decaying organic matter will eventually filter down under the sidewalk surface, and something will be able to grow in it. Temperate evergreen pines and magnolias drop leaves all the time--not just in autumn--so you would have to sweep them off daily.
Ants just love making huge excavations one grain of sand at a time. If you build a brick sidewalk, and do not continually spray it with ant-killing insecticides, you will eventually experience a big section of it collapsing into swarming ants, possibly without any obvious prior indications that ants were digging under the sidewalk.
Some of the mentioned sidewalks are one hundred years old, and are thoroughly decayed as a result. I bet if every road you had to drive on was in that condition then you'd be upset about it and would demand repairs, rather than just throwing up your hands at the inevitability of entropy. Maybe you want to go live out in primitive conditions in the jungle somewhere, but the rest of us want civilization. Your logic applies equally to roads as it does to sidewalks, so should we just give up on them as well?
No, but I wouldn't drive a low-riding sports car if I lived in an area with crappy roads. I'd buy a pickup truck with good suspension and large knobby tires.
The problem is that accessibility devices don't have the option of "good suspension and large knobby tires".
Every problem that woman experiences is because her wheelchair is not built for the environment she operates in. We need better wheelchairs. Yelling at local state government to fix sidewalks will not work. There are millions of miles of sidewalks to fix and hundreds of thousands of people responsible for them. You can't change that quickly. But you can build a better wheelchair.
Again, I don't think you read the article. The sidewalks are in the best condition in cities like Boston, where they are the responsibility of the city. Cities are already responsible for constructing and maintaining roads; is it really so crazy that they do the same for the sidewalks that are built adjacent to roads? In what way does it make sense having hundreds of thousands of individual owners of patches of sidewalk 20 m long? You're throwing away all economies of scale there.
Good sidewalks benefit everyone. I've almost injured myself from tripping over a particularly uneven patch of sidewalk, and many people have actually injured themselves. The elderly and the blind who walk won't benefit from better wheelchairs, but they certainly will benefit from better, flatter sidewalks. Everyone benefits.
Who used to fix sidewalks among other things.
Trees are certainly an issue.
Then I read the second one. Wow. You've internalized the "have bad infrastructure and get an SUV" mentality. We're not paving the world. We're paving a small part of our environment where people live. Yes strollers have stupid wheels. But having good infrastructure in a small area means I don't need a techno-distopian robot walking me everywhere.
There aren't always perfect solutions to problems. Sometimes futurologists are found waiting for the perfect, inexhaustible source of energy to power the world, but the practical consensus is that our renewable world be a mix of solar, wind, hydro, and some sort of more-advanced atom-splitting. Find multiple angles to chip away at the problem until you get where you want to go.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say "let's try to get all sidewalk cracks under an inch" and then say "let's get wheelchairs that can handle an inch-high crack", as an arbitrary example.
I mean, if we want to talk about unintended benefits - my most mobile stroller was purchased as a running stroller to be used on a rail-to-trail, then I found out it could handle bad sidewalks pretty well. Isn't that the same argument as my top-level post, just from the opposite side?
(1) Not always and usually in moderation, but definitely sometimes.
In our country, our roads, bike roads and sidewalks all have to adhere to the same base set of rules, everywhere. They all have to be there, be maintained and it's not optional. If you have a sidewalk in front of your house and you want to clean/maintain/service it, that's great, but the country will check it, clean it, maintain it. We have sidewalk-streetcleaners about once a month, driving to every sidewalk and if any structural damage or loss of markings is seen, it's noted and fixed during the next maintenance round.
Regarding ramps (as outlined in the article), there is a guarantee that you will always have a clear path between two points, with no hard barriers. So no fences in the wrong place, ramps always facing ramps on the other side of the street, all with the same inclination. No hard edges, everything is rounded off ever so slightly (reduces wear/tripping/hooking dirt), and it's against the law to block any of it.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/design/inclusive
Maybe you’re normally fully abled but you benefit when you’re a new parent carrying a child, sprain an ankle, etc.
The framing of short/mid/long-term is really nice for breaking the self/other empathy gap.
I think it's weird to make sidewalks your hill to die on but without context it seems like it could be a reasonable policy decision.
IMO, it's a way to fight the in-demand construction for today, which is medium density apartments, and more kids looking for access to the schools.
There's a lot of dynamics at play. People who own property don't like the mandates because they potentially impact the value of the subdivided value (the builder makes the sidewalks, the municipality maintains them), many people don't want more people & school enrollment because that drives taxes, and old people are afraid of people who ride the bus for various reasons.
It might be appropriate for them and the community. We don't need sidewalks connecting farms, and maybe if the neighborhood wasn't built with walkability / accessiblity in mind, people who need walkability / accessiblity don't live there and it'd be burdensome and wasteful to make it more accessible than anyone demands it to be.
Sure you're able bodied today. But if you're lucky enough to live to an old age, your body won't be what it was. And you could be hit by a car tomorrow and paralyzed.
Yes. The first time we took our daughter on a subway trip in the city, and had to take many escalators to get from street to platform, back to street, was a real eye opener.
No kidding. I'm a large person with a weightlifting hobby - so about as able bodied as a person can get - but after a frustrating experience of moving into a very poorly designed apartment building, I've started seeking out impediment-free spaces.
There's just so much unnecessary bologna, pointless stairs, poorly placed ramps, etc. are all functionally the equivalent of traffic and poorly timed traffic lights: they're taxes we pay with time and frustration because some designer made poor decisions.
If we're collectively paying for something, we're the boss and we have the gold so we make the rules. That means open source code, functional designs, and comprehensive cost-effective management.
Pavement cracks. It should be fixed, but that takes time and money. And able-bodied pedestrians are unlikely to report minor cracks. Shouldn't a $30,000 wheelchair be capable of traversing commonly encountered impediments? Cracks in pavement, small branches, doorway thresholds? The article states her wheelchair cannot. That seems like a major design flaw to me.
My wife broke her ankle this summer and we spent 2 months with her rolling around with a knee scooter, it was interesting to see the number of sidewalks without ramps is larger issue then I expected.
It doesn't seem like it should be a huge expense to add one in the grand scheme of things and seems way more flexible than adapting everyone with varying needs with some sort of device. Also, given this isn't a new problem it seems like it might be possible that building wheelchairs that can go up stairs and be practical might not be as simple of a project as many here seem to believe.
Yes the world is a disorganized, bumpy, and unwelcoming place for folks using wheelchairs (or scooters), but the question is how to ameliorate that problem economically. "Not huge in the grand scheme of things" does not help us decide which strategy is better, and is an attitude that fails to address the huge invisible drag induced by thousands of individually modest requirements.
Going up multiple stairs is a completely different problem. It's naively quite plausible that it's maximally efficient to modify wheelchairs so they go over curbs while still putting ramps and elevators in public buildings wherever there are multiple stairs.
Also, I'm a physically able-bodied person who exercises most days. Even I have almost been injured from tripping and falling over uneven surfaces in sidewalks while walking or running. I don't understand why you think it's so unreasonable to demand that sidewalks be built and kept in good working condition. It costs a totally insignificant fraction of overall tax revenue, way less than we spend on roads and mass transit, for instance.
This is Bulverism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism
Do you really not see the problem with a fully able-bodied person saying that we shouldn't bother making any concessions to less able-bodied people by asserting that "it's obviously not worth the cost", without providing any evidence of such? To me, it is obviously worth the cost to build proper sidewalks, as everyone uses and benefits from them.
We have a question: "is it cost-effective to build better sidewalks?" You think the answer is obviously yes. Jess does not think the answer is obviously yes. The thing to do here is to try to work out why the two of you disagree.
The thing not to do is to accuse Jess of being unable to put himself in others' shoes. That's Bulverism, and it's shit. You can't just assume that anyone who disagrees with you is fundamentally deficient. Apart from being factually inaccurate, and unconvincing to anyone who isn't already convinced, it's a massive failure of empathy.
Likely factually true.
> and maybe then you will change your tune. It's unfortunate that you can't yet put yourself in the shoes of those people.
Not a statement of fact. The subtext is: "If you understood what these people are going through, you would agree with me".
And, quite frankly, yes, if you had empathy, you'd be all for making sure that these people could get around and participate in society.
Also: yes hello, I am a person and not a cold, unfeeling automaton, and generally speaking I do not talk that way. (I probably slip up sometimes. I would like to be called out when I do.)
Also also: people do and say lots of things that are bad. I think that "that's how people talk" is a really weird defense. Obviously some people talk like that some of the time. I'm trying to get them to do it less.
Do you think you understand why Jess believes what he believes? Because I'm fairly confident he does not lack empathy. I think that accusation demonstrates a failure of empathy. (Not a lack, mind you - just a failure.)
Completely wrong. As I said, we are not robots. We do not operate solely on cold, unfeeling logic.
"Also: yes hello, I am a person and not a cold, unfeeling automaton, and generally speaking I do not talk that way. (I probably slip up sometimes. I would like to be called out when I do.)"
In what way?
"Also also: people do and say lots of things that are bad. I think that "that's how people talk" is a really weird defense. Obviously some people talk like that some of the time. I'm trying to get them to do it less."
Do what less? Speak in things that aren't programming statements?
"Do you think you understand why Jess believes what he believes? Because I'm fairly confident he does not lack empathy. I think that accusation demonstrates a failure of empathy. (Not a lack, mind you - just a failure.)"
I very much do believe they lack empathy. And quite frankly, I believe this push for speech to be "nothing but a pure factual statement, akin to a programming statement" to be part of the problem.
I said like four different things (not incompatible/persuasive/Bulverism/should not have been said), and I'm quite sure you don't disagree with all of them, but I'm not sure what you do disagree with.
I certainly do not think that people are robots who operate solely on cold, unfeeling logic. That is not even close to a thing that I think, and I think I can vaguely see how you got that impression, but it's just wrong. I'm sorry, I sometimes trigger that impression in people, I know this but I'm not very good at avoiding it.
> In what way?
In what way would I like to be called out? "This is Bulverism" would be fine.
> Do what less?
In this specific case, Bulverism. At other times, other kinds of speech too, like slurs, gibberish, factually untrue statements. (This is not an exhaustive list.)
> I very much do believe they lack empathy.
Well, uh. Okay. Tangents upon tangents, but - do you think that because that's the only possible explanation you can think of, for why he said what he said? Or some other reason?
I note that your stated beliefs about my internal experiences do not match my actual experience of my internal experiences. Does that make you less confident in your beliefs about Jess' internal experiences?
> I believe this push for speech to be "nothing but a pure factual statement, akin to a programming statement" to be part of the problem.
Again, not even close to what I'm pushing for. (For example, "it should not have been said" is not a pure factual statement.) Also, I'm not sure what problem you're referring to.
Here's some counter-evidence: It doesn't cost anything more to include proper curb cuts and such when the sidewalk is first built. The stadium infrastructure in the linked article post-dates ADA legislation requiring such, and yet was simply not built properly.
This is just false. The only use of "obvious" was in the line
> We would never consider building ramps everywhere for strollers or suitcases because the benefits are just obviously not worth the cost.
Which is not even close to how you describe it.
America is disorganized, bumpy, and unwelcoming. Western Europe is much better in this matter. You should visit.
This is a random street in a random French town (Lille): https://goo.gl/maps/9g8xSwnobKv
This is a random street in a random American town (Pittsburgh): https://goo.gl/maps/LSNJdN3L2Cr
I just picked randomly from Google Maps, of course we would need a larger sample.
Or a bit less random comparison of some small towns:
Princeton, New Jersey: https://goo.gl/maps/mek7u1zJFmC2
Lund, Sweden: https://goo.gl/maps/dKe8k9EDuUT2
Princeton is also a special case because it's a community that has a lot of fights about trees. Cutting down trees is heavily regulated there, you literally have to apply for a permit to cut down a tree (though I believe there are exemptions for emergencies), and the township and community are committed to the aesthetic of shaded roadways throughout. That almost universally (basically everywhere but right downtown, and even a fair amount there) means planting trees between the sidewalk and the curb, which in turn leads to increased damage to sidewalks from tree roots, so maintaining sidewalks becomes more expensive. It also means that sometimes you have to decide between having a flat sidewalk and doing enough damage that winter might kill a tree that's been growing for 30+ years. Those are things that are important to a lot of people living in town.
I've lived next door to Princeton off and on for 20 of the last 30 years, hence the unnecessary knowledge of their social emphasis on trees. I think it's nice. I haven't seen any complaints about disabled access at the township level, and nothing came up in a quick google search.
Sure, we can go to a random street next town over to New Brunswick: https://goo.gl/maps/uCrkh5fuMC62
You seem like you're fishing about until you find a decent parallel, rather than actually having a decent one as a result of well researched comparisons.
But more importantly, is the random production of poor sidewalks ever going to be convincing? If your point is "Western Europe does it better," it seems like the appropriate evidence would be statistical in nature, and if you don't have it random examples aren't actually a convincing alternative.
Rutgers University in New Brunswick: 69 000 students (but some are in campuses in other towns; Newark, Camden).
Lund University: 42 000 students.
If you don't like the towns I chose, why don't you suggest some town that you think would be acceptable here?
I'm not sure that even given your selection criteria I could do so, but if I did your methodology is still fundamentally flawed. There is very little reason to continue attempting to prove an argument if you know the outcome is fictional because the method of proving it is flawed.
Most of our roads are old colonial paths. They are twisty, high speed (these are main roads people use to get places), and cut into the hillsides in places. There's no curbing, no shoulder and no storm drains.
The roads are lined with big old trees, utility poles are a foot or two off the side of the road, bridges are barely wide enough for two cars, fences and even houses are sometimes right up on the edges of these roads.
----------
They looked into putting in sidewalks on one of those roads at one point. It was going to cost millions of dollars and embroil them in lawsuits forever.
Huge numbers of old-growth trees would have to come down, multiple bridges would have to be built (or the road ones would need to be rebuilt wider), the drainage ditch would have to get replaced with curbing and storm drains, a couple people with old houses that closely abut the road would no longer be able to use their driveways (which are currently just long enough to fit cars and not be in the road)....and on and on.
Not surprisingly, the idea was dropped and never brought up again.
Sometimes the street is paved with cobblestones, but missing stones are still replaced. I doubt any street in any city has been untouched for centuries, since at points it will have been dug up to lay sewers, water pipes and power cables. The difference with America, is that it's more likely the street was put back the way it was after the pipes were laid.
The UK doesn't have any sidewalks...
... they have footpaths.
It should definitely be possible to make a wheelchair that can go up a single step. Especially for $30k.
This is far from true. Curbs are a huge issue for people who aren't totally able-bodied. You've really never seen a frail elderly person who is walking with the assistance of a cane or a walker struggle mightily with a curb? Not even your own grandparents or other aging relatives?
The most relevant section:
"It is often difficult or impossible for a person using a wheelchair, scooter, walker, or other mobility device to cross a street if the sidewalk on either side of the street ends without a curb ramp. It is also dangerous. If curb ramps are not provided, these individuals are forced to make a difficult choice. They can either stay at home and not go to their chosen destination, or they can risk their personal safety by using their wheelchairs, scooters, or walkers to travel alongside cars and other vehicles in the streets. This is a choice that people with disabilities should not be required to make."
You know how awful this sounds, right? I'm not sure you meant it the way it sounds. Please clarify. Do you mean that by reducing the physical weight of her body you think the sidewalks would somehow be easier for her wheelchair to navigate? Hopefully not because that's absurd.
> It should definitely be possible to make a wheelchair that can go up a single step. Especially for $30k.
It's not like there is no innovation in this area (see the "tank chair" for a good example). But there are many obstacles, of many kinds, here. Of course.
This is not just your comment: All through this thread people who haven't thought the issue through in detail seem to be waving their hands at the real problem (environment is not suitable for all users) and proposing these ad hoc solutions as though nobody has thought of them before.
Until we can all float around in hoverchairs, we need the damn sidewalks to be functional. I have no problem thinking outside the box but at some point you have to come back to reality
Yes of course. For uneven pavements and similar. It's simple physics. It sounds like it would need a redesign of the wheelchair to go up full kerbs, but it would definitely be easier to design that wheelchair if the weight limit was 100kg rather than 150kg.
We cannot control the person's physical size or abilities. We can broaden the range of humans for whom we design things by doing better work. That's all we can do. That's what we should do.
According to the article, "Chicago [...] spent $140 million in five years repairing sidewalks and pedestrian rights of way". The cost of the author's wheelchair is $30 thousand. If we assume this cost is typical, fixing sidewalks would have been cheaper than replacing 5000 wheelchairs with new all-terrain models - and would have benefits for residents and visitors without wheelchairs too.
That's on top of making life easier for seniors with walkers, parents with strollers, kids riding bikes on sidewalks, etc. I mean you have to build a curb eventually, might as well slope it down when it intersects with a sidewalk. Its not a radical idea and those Chicago curbs would have been replaced eventually with the new ADA standards, its just that federal money made it happen sooner.
> A standard, manual wheelchair costs an average of $500, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation . A chair meant for everyday use costs between $1,000 and $2,000 depending upon the features of the chair, which can include an individualized seat, various types of wheels and a lightweight frame.
And how many electoral cycles do you think it'd take for that program to be canceled, given the 'American disease' of not wanting tax dollars spent on 'other people'?
That is because I was envisioning a standard wheelchair with large wheels designed to be propelled by the user as well as a helper. YouTube is full of wheelchair curb hopping (and more) instructional videos. I had visions of picking my ~100LB wife up over a big stair/whatever.
Anyway, I'm going to basically agree with you, and say that it appears that motorized wheelchair manufactures are partially to blame here. That wheelchair is more like a motorized bed than what I would consider a wheelchair.
So whats the excuse (regulation cant be all of it)? Particularly now that battery technology has gotten to the point where the battery packs to move a person around for 10-15 minutes (see electric scooters) are just a few lbs, and materials technology allow us to build mechanically stable structures which are also super lightweight. Without going into questionable tech, i'm sure I could build a large wheel segway style device with a low center of gravity seat that could just drive over most curbs. Probably could even do it for less than $30k... We wouldn't even be talking about cracked/broken sidewalks at that point. In fact, I was having a similar conversation with a friend the other day about certain SF style devices probably being in reach for locomotion today.
My point is, if it was just as simple as producing a better wheelchair and selling it, it would have happened already. This is like hearing aids all over again, and why most certified "medical device" hearing aids you can get on medicare are over ten years behind the technology curve (or more) and cost more than an iPhone X.
"...plus only 16.9 percent of Atlanta households have no vehicle..."
Really? "Only" 16.9%? If I told a product manager that "only" 17% of people use iOS 9, so we don't need to support it, I'd get laughed out of the meeting.
Hence why the new Braves stadium isn't getting Marta. Cobb County views Marta as "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta", and previously both voted down public transit and made a 10 foot wide city on the border called "Chattahoochee Plantation" to protect against the perceived encroachment.
This is why public transport and good urban design are so frigging important. Imagine if some other demographic of this size were forced to be dependent on others for going shopping, going to the doctor's, etc. It would be an outrage, because, in truth, it is a outrage.
Many city and the suburbs at Large in the United States have a failure of urban planning and people friendly travel at a disastrous level. The reasons for this are multi tiered, but this is something that should be fixed.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/sunday-review/future-subu...
there are still a lot of opportunities for more but even the silver comet trail is mostly accessible from where I have used it (that is a very long and convoluted trail system built upon old rail lines).
the state even has a great guidebook for pedestrian planning, see http://www.dot.ga.gov/DriveSmart/Travel/Documents/ga_ped_gui...
So someone builds a new apartment complex and BAM, they're forced to pay for a sidewalk, which I'd be fine with, except there are no sidewalks anywhere else, so it's just a waste for everyone.
Belgium is one of the brightest spots on the planet because of their overuse of it (and that's an improvement from how bad it used to be): http://thismustbebelgium.com/belgium-spotted-space/
Crossing streets is easy if you're fit and a reasonably fast walker, but the lights are timed to be quite fast, leaving those less able bodied or slower to simply be stranded in the middle (usually there's a stop) meaning a single crossing turns into two. Fortunately, drivers in this area seem to be fairly friendly to pedestrians, and will yield to people crossing the street.
One of my cousins came to stay with me for a few months this summer, and this is when she truly got what I've been saying for years I think. She got by mostly with her own two feet, wherever she was going. When she needed to travel further, I got her a travellers card. I'm not sure she even knows where to find a bus stop in her home town. (Neither would I.)
That's part of the infrastructure too. Unfortunately it's a part that is easily lost. I went to university in a city that had that culture -- 25 years later that culture is gone as a resource boom pulled in a significant number of newcomers.
Living in Munich now, urban design is easily the #1 thing I'd transplant over to the states if I could.
- James Howard Kunstler, Home From Nowhere (1996)
Which isn't entirely wrong, but the fact that American cities are hostile to walking was still a collective choice on our parts, the advent of the car didn't mean that we had to explicitly favor them at all times, that was something we decided to do.
Yielding to pedestrians, like you said, is an element of infrastructure, and it's cheap as hell to change attitudes about it.
Parking is absurd. Planning codes have mandated numbers of parking spaces for businesses, so if you want to develop land your only option is to turn it into a strip mall. LA is an asphalt hellscape precisely because of this, parking requirements have made it so there is over 4.2 square meters of asphalt PER PERSON, just for parking alone.
I only own a bike but live with a partner who has a car and I know it would be difficult to go completely without in my city (~300,000 pop.) I, like many people my age, am planning on moving to a larger more urban city that will have more public transportation and bike infrastructure, but I recognize that this isn't really the answer. Comparatively poor American millennials and gen-Z's that continue condensing populations into urban centers leaves even less incentive for long term change in mid-sized towns.
I suppose it's an attitude that is cheap to maintain, if it is already common. But I don't know how to change into that system in a place that does not have it already. Teach it in driving schools and wait for old drivers to die?
Or pass and enforce laws about yielding to pedestrians. The difference between Oregon (with some of the most pedestrian friendly laws that are actually enforced) and California (where I've watched cop cars slowly roll through crowded crosswalks) is pretty marked.
It's more than a matter of habit or novelty, you can't get people to change unless you offer them an environment where that change is beneficial to them.
I think the problem starts looming when you're trying to buy food for many people once a week. You either need all of those people to come with you to help bring back the food, a motorized vehicle, or a cargo bicycle.
Regardless, though, I think a lot of my family (obviously a small sample size) just don't really think it's possible. They're so used to everything being a barren asphalt landscape that it just isn't possible to conceive of a practical place where you don't need to drive. I don't even blame them; I lived in it for 30 years and had a hard time imagining anything different myself (though when I did experience it, I desperately wanted to live in it and worked hard to make it happen).
You don't even have to be highly compensated for it to be well worthwhile. Where I live (in NZ) it costs less than 6USD to have groceries delivered. There are other major advantages other than the time and fuel savings. For example, if some non-perishable item is on special (say tinned tomatoes), you don't hesitate to buy a couple of dozen tins because, hey - you don't have to lug them about!
Also, not having a car meant you didn't go anywhere. When my grandmothers stopped driving, they stayed cooped in the house all day (except for one, now deceased, that tended to her small garden).
As an aside, Brasilia probably holds a special place in pedestrian hell.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
It's a tradeoff, like everything else. When taking the trees into account, Atlanta's sidewalks are about as well maintained as the rest of Atlanta's infrastructure
I believe you're thinking of "city in a forest". Atlanta does have about ~10% more tree coverage than average for US cities (36% compared to 27%).
More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_tree_canopy
Not only that, it's the top tree covered city on the source article for that wiki entry:
http://www.deeproot.com/blog/blog-entries/tree-cover-how-doe...
Also based on that list, the 27% average seems to be artificially high by giving equal weight to cities of all size given how the largest US cities are all well below 20%.
Thanks for posting, and highly recommend the book for anyone that hasn't read it!
PS: every time I visit Europe I often wonder that there are so many wheelchairs. In Eastern Europe you may go around capital city center for weeks without seeing one. It is that bad, even in 2017.
Even though your wheelchair ramps are shitty, you are still, in a way, ahead of America because you at least made an effort to build those ramps, whereas America mostly doesn't have them at all.
In many Silicon Valley towns like Mountain View and Sunnyvale the sidewalks suddenly just stop and you’re forced to walk on the side is the road.
And in Cupertino many streets aren’t lit or very badly lit that it’s almost pitch black...
I never noticed these things before coming to California and I grew up in a small town near Boise, ID.
Streets were well lit and sidewalks did not just end.
And Idaho has a minuscule State tax revenue compared to California is so it shocked me this was an issue in these high income Silicon Valley towns.
So perhaps the capitol city tax revenue was also used in Meridian (my hometown).
Rural poverty is a nontrivial issue in Idaho, especially when it comes to healthcare.
There are recent efforts in SV by people and groups[1] who advocate for more pedestrian and bike friendly development, but that is happening on the margins in an area whose development pattern has been established and hence is difficult to change.
Michigan recently passed legislation protecting local municipalities from lawsuits where sidewalks in disrepair are to blame.
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2015-2016/billintrod...
Gist here: http://www.michiganvotes.org/2015-HB-4686
While Michigan (esp. Detroit) is exceptional in many respects this kind of legislation whereby neglected infrastructure is no longer a liability for the state is likely to spread.
The sidewalks in Detroit are especially heinous. https://iainmait.land/img/photos/1920/street_crossing_2_2017...
I live on a small farm in the middle-of-nowhere NC. (20min to even a gas station) I'm currently working with our local zoning dept. to get approval to use my barn in a home-occupation. Even though I'm far away, will have zero employees, and no customers on the property - I'm STILL being forced to spend close to $3K to retrofit for ADA compliance.
Life is not fair. Trying to sue and regulate this country into everyone's idea of "fairness" will bankrupt us and destroy any concept of freedom we still have left.
edit: Are you retrofitted your entire house to be fully ADA compliant? If not, why should the parent be required to?
If it's 100% incorrect as you claim, surely you can provide evidence supporting your claim?
A place zoned residential can fall under ADA compliance if the use is commercial. Exactly as that link states. So the first part of your statement "Houses are not commercial establishments" is correct for zoning classification, but you fail on the second half "as such are not covered under the ADA." - a residence operating as a business can be under ADA.
My comment "A residential structure can still be required to be ADA compliant dependent on use." - is 100% correct based on the very evidence you supplied.
At this point, why dont you just accept that this is a very complex topic and one that just maybe I've spent more time navigating than you.
I think you are exaggerating the issue though.
Ideally, an intelligent and flexible application of the ADA rules could be envisioned.
(Ideally we would prioritize research into regeneration and fix the real problem.)
One of my friends was born quadriplegic and literally cannot live without help. He can't go to the bathroom without help. He can't pick his nose. Traveling around Seattle with him made me realize the fact that accessibility makes us a worthwhile civilization. We care, and spend to show it.
Consider: If you spend ten thousand dollars on accessibility for your barn, and no one ever uses it, that's a good thing.
Pick your nose and count your blessings.
As for "flexible" and "intelligent" govt. regulation., I'll admit I chuckled when I typed that in. We'll be regrowing limbs long before that, I'll wager.
I'm not sure how to remedy the situation until then. It sucks that you have this extra burden just to use your own barn.
But if you suddenly had to up and move, and sell the space, well, it's still zoned commercial, and presumably someone's running a business out of it, and they might have an employee in a wheelchair.
Commercial spaces have different requirements than residential spaces. It's not just a matter of stamping a form. It's also not surprising that it'd take some extra construction to bring a formerly residential space up to code.
AND, I get that you'd like to defer the actual cost of rezoning onto someone else, but, well, someone's got to actually pay to turn the residential space into commercial...and you're the one who wants to do it and will presumably benefit now from doing so.
$3k to make it accessible to people without two working legs seems pretty reasonable.
We're not talking inconvenience. We're talking not able to get around at all. That's not an inconvenience. That's not being able to participate in society at all.
"but the solution is not to force regulation and maintenance costs on everyone - that is a road to bankruptcy."
I completely disagree. If it wasn't for those regulations, no one would do it, and these people would not be able to participate. You may wish to look into why these regulations were enacted in the first place, and it wasn't because of lobbyists looking to make a buck.
Maybe instead of regulation and lawsuits, people that are so worked up over this issue should actually try to invent better tech, instead of expecting the govt to solve all our problems and compensate them whenever we dont meet 100% perfection.
And no, it is entirely realistic to have 100% access in a city. There is zero reason whatsoever that the sidewalk in the story wasn't usable, other than a complete lack of empathy.
In the frozen north where the frost depth is four feet, somehow our sidewalks look new compared to the pictures. Mere simple mismanagement in Atlanta. The sidewalk in front of my house was poured in 1983 per the stamp, and its basically level and even. That's after 34 northern winters. The decayed sidewalks in the article must be over a century old or horribly corruptly installed.
There must be a severe lack of parking or even alleyways. If you want to live the hyper high density urban bug man dream, there will be costs such as no where to park and no ramps from parking to the street to drive wheel chairs upon.
There might be more to the story intentionally not reported so as to slant the coverage; perhaps its a historical district where if there were no ramps in 1830, then installing a ramp in 2017 will get you sued by the historical commission. Again, if you voluntarily live somewhere unsuitable for modern standards of living, there is no reason to feel sorry for a fool, if that is the case.
Here's the approximate route: https://goo.gl/maps/AXj2Agtfvx92. Compare this aerial photo, showing a previous lack of curb cuts:
https://i.imgur.com/Aawb0l8.jpg
with this Street View image after construction was completed, showing completed wheelchair-friendlier ramps:
https://i.imgur.com/A0vf6hV.jpg
(Side note: The 3D cell towers and billboard in Google Maps are awesome.)
But yeah, the intersection of Centennial Olympic Park and MLK Jr was not built with any thought to disabled people taking a wheelchair back to the parking garage, or even to regular walking pedestrians:
https://i.imgur.com/4rPa9Rp.jpg
I'm pretty sure that's not an intended route for anyone not in a car. I can see how it would be terrifying for someone in a wheelchair; I'd be scared to even ride my bike there. Looks like they were expected to take a different route to the parking garage than exiting Northside avenue and walking around the streets. While that should be possible, they were probably intended to take the skywalk between the dome and the parking garage. Oh wait, that only has stairs:
https://i.imgur.com/uxi0JRg.jpg
Wow, what an image.
- The red "Stop" pedestrian sign versus the green light for the the police SUV.
- The person waiting. Even with his face blurred, I see trepidation and concern in his posture.
- The 6" cement curb to the crosswalk
- The moldy construction cone
- The stairs for the pedestrians, no elevators or ramps for wheelchairs
- The bag of trash just laying at the base of the post
- The coils of razor wire above the fence
As a Michigander, I'm familiar with both frost heave and urban decay. But the warm, welcoming, hospitable South doesn't look particularly friendly in that spot. The location of the image: https://goo.gl/maps/RAFyYfWa5Xs
After one particularly harrowing crossing, I insisted that she call the City and ask about what they could do. She just brushed me off, saying that they wouldn't care. I pushed her and pushed her, but she wouldn't do anything.
So I called City Hall the next day, and I said, "Hi, I'm Jemaclus. I'm in a wheelchair and attend the university. There's no wheelchair ramp at the intersection of 1st and Main, so I have to go down the street and cross from someone's driveway. Is there anything we can do to fix this?" (Yes, I made a white lie.)
The lady snapped into action immediately. "Don't you worry. I've got this," she said.
The very next day, construction workers were putting in an accessible ramp on the corner, and four days later, my friend and I were able to safely and securely cross the intersection.
I have two hypotheses that are not mutually exclusive about what happened:
1. The City probably has a budget allocated to ADA compliance or infrastructure improvements or something. It's also probably a use-it-or-lose-it situation. If you call and point out something, they're HAPPY to do it, because otherwise they lose the money next year.
2. The City definitely doesn't want to be sued for ADA non-compliance, and they will probably move with all haste toward a reasonable solution. In this case, it was a no-brainer: a wheelchair-accessible ramp at a busy intersection with tons of pedestrians.
I would encourage anyone who runs into these kinds of problems in public areas (the author's problem was actually private property, so...) to actually call the City Hall and politely inform them of the problem, explain how it's dangerous, and ask how "we" can fix it. In all likelihood, they will probably respond immediately and in a positive fashion due to the above reasons. It might not happen overnight like mine did, but eventually they'll want to cover their asses from an ADA lawsuit.
For the record, my backup plan would have been a letter to the editor of the local paper, and then talking to an attorney.
The roads, though? Promptly plowed and salted by the city on a continuous basis.
In any case, unless funding is secured all at once, it's likely to be the case that there are bridges that don't connect anything and sidewalks and trails that end abruptly. But both represent movement towards a complete path.
"How dare cities in southern states refuse to build sidewalks for their residents! Sidewalks are essential to quality of life!"
There is no mention of money. No mention that people in southern cities PREFER lower taxes which means less government services.
For anyone from the New England or Colorado or the West Coast: you have great livable cities with lots of amenities but those come at the cost of higher taxes and more regulations. Southern cities may not share your civic culture.
I don't think it's too much to ask for a little equality here. Not everyone paying taxes drives.
If this was a city where there were wealthy urbanites who didn't drive, you would be right. If only the poor don't drive, then "Not everyone paying taxes drives" is basically a false statement.
Canadians would never tolerate sidewalks in such horrible condition. And governments in Canada (municipal, provincial, federal) are used to spending money on the wellbeing of citizens.
Let's face it, the USA is broken and even if Trump does manage to fix it, the repair work will take many years.
Pissing off motor traffic is probably the fastest way to get the sidewalks fixed.
Even if it is illegal, I can't imagine a judge not throwing out the citation if you show pictures like that.
edit to address the replies: my suggestion was admittedly somewhat tounge-in-cheek and, no, I wouldn't recommend anyone take the risk. Would I do it as performance art? No, because a judge/newspaper/observer would see it as a stunt undermining the whole argument and possibly even harm the cause.
> Pissing off motor traffic is probably the fastest way to get the sidewalks fixed.
Tell that to cyclists who have been working for decades to get a bike lane, meanwhile getting hit (sometimes killed) by automobiles regularly.
In my own neighborhood there are arguments back and forth. I'd be happy to see sidewalks added where they aren't, but I'd hate to see mature trees damaged.
Combining no street lights with crappy (or no) sidewalks is literally deadly. Teenaged girl was killed in a hit and run 100 feet from my front yard a couple of years ago. People in wheelchairs have been hit and killed in other parts of the city.
So many ways to improve, so little political pressure to do it.
EDIT: It was Louisiana and the cost was $8K, here is the study. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
I suppose the car makers lobby really killed proper city planning in such places.
in the story, why didnt the husband go get the car and pick her up?
its also a little confusing, because they are trying to make their way back to the car, but didn't encounter any problems when leaving it
Did you read the article? It was about access to their car, via city sidewalks, after the event at the sporting arena. Your comment about sporting events "having wheelchair access" is not really relevant at all, since it was clearly not about the facility itself.
person a: not sure why the husband didnt just go to the car and pick her up person b: thats unpossible at sporting arenas! dont you know! person a: sporting arenas have wheel chair access
Also, you're not thinking about this broadly enough. Sidewalks in bad condition or lacking curb cuts affect way more than just people who use wheelchairs. They affect the blind, the elderly, and even just your every day normal person who trips on uneven sidewalk and injures themselves.
Is it really too much to expect of our government that we have sidewalks that are repaired more often than every century, that are flat, and that have curb cuts at appropriate intervals?
The woman in the article simply wants to be able to go to various buildings in her city. She's not demanding an accessible sidewalk paved deep into the wilderness. So I don't understand where you're coming from in making a slippery slope argument about sidewalk construction.
I can't even begin to describe to you how absurd I find it that you think sidewalks along every non-interstate road shouldn't be mandatory.
When I was younger I lived in a much more suburban area than I do now, and when I stayed late for extracurricular activities in high school (two days a week) I had to take a different bus route home. The closest stop on that route was half a mile away from my house. That's not far at all, and I definitely don't mind walking, however, most of that walk was along a two-lane highway with no sidewalk that routinely had people cruising through at 45+ mph. The county has since thankfully put in some speed cameras to help enforce the 30 mph limit.
Why didn't I deserve a sidewalk for my safety, exactly?
Typical sidewalks are 4ft wide.
So your half mile walk home would cost $105,000, again NOT including cost of the land, planning, permitting, or anything else.
I'd much rather build 2.6% fewer roads and add sidewalks onto all of the existing ones. Keep in mind that far more than 2.6% of people don't even own cars, yet they do use sidewalks.
The expense argument you're making does a much better job of justifying not building more roads than it does in justifying not building more sidewalks.
That is for a half mile on one side of the road.
You need to find a source that shows what the cost to the government is per mile of road versus mile of sidewalk. You can't compare retail prices of sidewalk that would be charged to homeowners to what the government is paying to build a road.
If you can only afford to do it half-assed, maybe instead try harder on fewer linear miles of road.
Using banked curbs everywhere is another more useful alternative to normal sidewalks (less useful to some pedestrians but create a larger perceived separation from traffic than a shoulder and impossible to kill a tire while parallel parking)
Edit: At least offer up a counter opinion if you're gonna down-vote.
Sidewalks work in cities where traffic (vehicle and pedestrian) is always high and areas where you have massive amounts of space for them (mostly places built up after WW2). For areas where sidewalks are not practical a wide shoulder is almost as good IMO. Obviously it depends on the nature of the road as well.
Personally I bike and walk exclusively (do not own a car) and would much prefer separated cycling/walking paths. I get that there is a cost associated with this, but I think the cost is comparatively low to that of even marginal improvements to highway infrastructure.