Alternate transportation lessons for city staff

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Nevada Daily Mail

To people driving cars Nevada's streets for the most part appear to be in good shape.

Take away the car and put that same person on foot, on a bicycle or in a wheelchair, and the view is very different. A perspective several city employees had in recent weeks while undergoing training from the Pednet organization.

"It's a whole different world," Julie Lewis, executive assistant to the city manager, said Monday afternoon.

One of the exercises they had was a walk from Woods to the Nevada Regional Medical Center.

"We saw a lot of things going down Adams. That is one of the better streets in town, but there are a lot of places that are really bad," Randy Marti said.

One issue was the low-hanging tree limbs over the sidewalk.

"The ADA talks about 7 feet of overhead clearance. There were places the trees hung so low you couldn't walk on the sidewalk," he said.

And that is not the only place that sidewalks are difficult to traverse.

Lewis said that at the ASC office on North Cedar the sidewalk is often blocked by farm equipment either on the sidewalk or close enough to make it difficult to pass in a wheelchair.

It is not just things blocking sidewalks that are a problem. A lot of the sidewalks in town are old and in bad repair. Sometimes tree roots have buckled the concrete and in other places the old brick sidewalks are still in place but overgrown by grass.

"A lot of people don't realize the sidewalks (along their property) are their responsibility," Lewis said.

Marti said that last year when the city built a new sidewalk from the high school to the community center, an area that appeared to have no sidewalk on Hickory, turned out be an old brick sidewalk that was overgrown.

Marti said that in the 1940s and earlier everyone walked and sidewalks were maintained, then in the '50s, '60s, and '70s everyone drove everywhere and sidewalks were allowed to deteriorate or were not even constructed in new housing developments.

On East Austin Boulevard there are long stretches with no sidewalks, which means that persons in a wheelchair must put themselves at risk by using the heavily traveled roadway to go to Wal-Mart for example.

Now with higher gas prices and the emphasis on getting more exercise the desire for sidewalks is back, he said.

This is a problem every town faces and few towns can afford to replace all of the sidewalks that are in disrepair.

Marti said that Nevada does not have the money to rebuild all of the sidewalks that need to be replaced, although the city does look for grants for that purpose.

Next year the city will be building a new sidewalk from the high school to Walton Park with a matching grant it received, Marti said.

During the class another exercise was to travel around the downtown area in a wheelchair, which showed them that just because something is compliant with the Americans With Disability Act, does not mean it makes it easy to negotiate in a wheelchair.

For example, the ADA allows a 2 percent slope across sidewalks to let water drain off.

While a 2 percent slope is almost unnoticeable to a person walking, in a wheelchair, it poses significant difficulties.

Marti said it makes the wheelchair pull hard in the direction of the slope and can actually pull the chair into the grass and overturn.

Dana Redburn said that another thing they learned is if there is a height difference between the street paving and the concrete gutter, that can be a hazard to a bicycle. This comes into play with the proposed bike lanes on city streets. The teacher for the class suggested that the curb area probably should not be included in the 7-foot bike lane area for safety reasons.

Redburn said another issue that was stressed was that according to Missouri law bicyclists have the same right to use the streets and highways as do motorists.

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