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Comment by mhalle | Hacker News Reader

"Stupid rules" for one person are what enable another person to live an independent life. The Americans with Disabilities (ADA) act has been law since 1990 and codifies mobility and access as civil rights in the US.

ADA does add to the costs of projects, but so does, say, safety code compliance. It's the law, and it exists for a good reason.

As for the example of a minor accessibility project costing $1.4M and taking 3 years, I would suggest that there is probably more to the story that helps explain the cost or the time.

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Replacing curb ramps can mean relocating the curb cut, which can mean relocating the underground sensor loops.

Adding a beg button can mean upgrading or replacing the signal control module, which could mean replacing the housing if it's not large enough for the new module. (Audible-tactile buttons and controllers themselves cost $5-6k each, just for parts.)

Aside from that, the issue with ADA compliance costs isn't when a municipality or DOT pays for them. It's when they remove the crosswalk entirely because they decide compliance isn't affordable enough.

The rules are fine, the stupidity is latent and revealed:

1. New construction must meet ADA requirements. 2. Old construction can remain. 3. Repairing broken old construction requires meeting ADA requirements.

So between 2 and 3 you end up with broken old construction that cannot be repaired to "what it was" because repairs must meet ADA requirements.

Each step makes sense on its own, but combined they result in something worse (in particular) even though overall it works out better.

What's the alternative that reaches eventual compliance everywhere on a shorter span than "wait for the grandfathered buildings to be bought and demolished" though?

Impose a supplemental property tax, increasing over time, on buildings out of compliance with current requirements, so that upgrade or replacement becomes comparatively more desirable vs. doing neither than it currently is.

Or, just have a fixed window to achieve compliance or the building is condemned.

Cool. Let’s start with NYC subway stations. Public infrastructure should be ADA compliant yet NYC permitting will hammer a small business for a toilet two inches out of compliance when the city itself has massive issues that are ignored.

A daily fine for everything noncompliant. Make the fine approximately proportional to the number of potential users impeded.

Then a popular crosswalk gets upgraded before a rural crosswalk that nobody uses anyway. An easy upgrade is done before a hard upgrade. Sometimes even new stuff might be built non-compliant if, for example, there are other substantial benefits that outweigh the fine.

Just burn the fine revenue. (Burning money is the inverse of printing money, helps reduce inflation, and means nobody has an incentive to maximize fines)

I have trouble imagining anyone convincing a city to 'burn revenue', even if it's a good idea in principle. Maybe the next best thing is applying it to a negative income tax so that it goes to the lowest-income residents.

It's a reference to Modern Money Theory which states that a (federal) tax is disconnected from spending because the government prints money.

But ADA stuff is almost always handled on a local, not even state, level.

It only makes sense for the federal government to mandate burning dollars.

They're the ones who can print them anyway. The end result is they just print less each year.

The local maximum of "fix it but don't improve it" is a problem, and the requirement for major reconstruction to be done to current codes is foundational to almost all building codes. Note that small repairs and routine maintenance don't activate this requirement - it's activated when major work is being done, and there is a percentage of total project cost cap to the requirements.

If the new local maximum is "well, we won't fix it at all then" - the usual building code solution is property maintenance codes that mandate repairs.

The buildings often get repaired/updated pretty quickly - it's the items like sidewalks that are under the purview of the government itself that "slip through the cracks".

As implemented ADA compliance requires that even trivial changes to a moderate complexity intersection require an engineering study at $300-500k, minimum.

There are other requirements as well relating to multimodal travel depending online the funding source.

All the while, we had an increasingly dangerous intersection with no visible crosswalks and outdated signals for years.

The stupid isn’t ADA, it’s compliance activity. Cities and towns cannot afford the engineers to meet the standards, so the Federal and State governments fund projects. So there’s no framework of best practices beyond the state standards - each project is a special snowflake.

I bet closing the sidewalk for longer is much worse for disabled people.

> ADA does add to the costs of projects

Not in the long run.

ADA just forces better designs. Retrofits are costly.

> As for the example of a minor accessibility project costing $1.4M and taking 3 years, I would suggest that there is probably more to the story that helps explain the cost or the time.

Committees, political turf wars, getting funding for the project through grants (that are complicated to apply for, that's why you need a dedicated bureaucrat to do it!). Then there's union rules since construction workers from the city are government employees.

That's half a million in employee's salaries right there and not a single concrete steps has been taken yet!

> ADA does add to the costs of projects

I'm not going to argue that it isn't necessary or right. But it absolutely costs more. A bathroom stall, for example, literally takes up more space, and that costs. A ramp and stairs takes up more space, materials and time and that costs.

There are things which are right to do, but disingenuous arguments to support them aren't helpful.

IMO ADA is probably a net harm at this point. When I look at the sidewalks here in socal, where 50 years ago they planted these rooty trees that make the region look like a tony hawk game today versus something you'd be able to get a wheelchair across, I'm starting to suspect its all ironically ADA's fault. They put the costs to meet their criteria so high that cities find it a better bet to just absorb lawsuits and not do anything than to actually make their cities manageable for disabled people. We need a more practical ada, that isn't nearly so costly to implement, so cities don't find it financially sensible to just sit on their hands forever.

The allowed slope for a ramp according ADA 1.5-3%. The recommended slope for drainage is 3-6%. Better hope you're really fucking precise.

Oh, your road itself is at a slope greater than 3%? Oops, you can't legally do it!

It's okay to have standards. It's not okay if they're bullshit.

You sure?

ADA ramp max slope should be 1:12, i.e. 8.33% which is (IMHO) reasonable.

https://www.ada-compliance.com/ada-compliance/ada-ramp

Don't make things up.

Recommended slope for drainage on concrete and asphalt is .25-.5:12, or 1/4" to 1/2" over 1' of length.

Recommended slope for wheelchair ramps are 1-1.5:12, or 1" to 1.5" over 1' of length.

Permitting process hell is the explanation.

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