alt Hacker NewsThe article says the city claims the biggest issue is federal regulations (the ADA) not city regulations.
My neighborhood in NJ just got those fancy ADA compliant curb ramps last year, along with a repaving. It did take them much longer to install the curb ramps (like a week or two?) than it did to pave (one day) so I can imagine there is a significant cost, even if it's a smaller amount of materials.
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According to the cdc 1 million.people are blind and 7 million people have serious vision impairment.
It would be cheaper to pay 60k a year per blind person to hire them a full time guid for waling outside.
Damn. I've been curious what the deal is with the rubber lego knob coverings on sidewalk ramps and here it is. I mostly notice because they're such hell for skateboarding, so it never occurred to me they'd be an ADA thing as I assume they're equally hard to navigate in a wheelchair, but apparently the idea is to provide a tactile warning that the street is nearby for people with vision impairments.
One wonders if you could prefabricate kerb ramps and drop them in, rather than (I assume) casting them in place.
Maybe they'd settle badly if vehicles drive over them, kick up in the opposite corners and become a trip hazard.
The UK mostly skirts this by using tarmac and paving slabs instead of concrete.