The Township of 91原创 really doesn鈥檛 know how to develop in ways that don鈥檛 inconvenience, isolate, and frustrate people with physical disabilities.
That鈥檚 not to say that new developments aren鈥檛 intended to be wheelchair friendly. They are. There are quotas set aside in every new condo complex for some units to be made more accessible, or able to be modified to be accessible. New condo parking often features nice, wide handicapped parking spots.
But, in practice, the way new neighbourhoods are developed creates barriers that are invisible to the able bodied but often insurmountable to wheelchair, scooter, or walker users.
Let鈥檚 take a look at crosswalks.
I live in, and actually like, Willoughby. Go back twenty years and Willoughby had more livestock than people; now it has more than 26,000 people, with a few hundred more arriving every few months.
This means that Willoughby is a patchwork, a messy one. Compared to a settled neighbourhood that developed years ago like Brookswood or Fort 91原创, it looks chaotic.
Part of that is the way 91原创 Township chooses to build new infrastructure.
They have chosen the thriftiest of several routes available: make the developers do it all.
This is why Willoughby looks weird. It鈥檚 why the roads go from four lanes to three to two and back to four. It鈥檚 why there are street lights and sidewalks and artfully sculpted street trees, and then an abrupt transition to a 30-year-old cracked and rutted asphalt path, drainage ditches, and vacant lots.
But even if a developer has finished, say, 80 per cent of the houses on a lot, they aren鈥檛 considered done. They don鈥檛 have to finish up all of that infrastructure they鈥檙e building. Not quite.
This is why you can have a beautiful, smooth wheelchair ramp, that ends an inch or two above the road surface, leaving anyone who actually needs it a short, sharp, jarring drop.
And that鈥檚 getting down. Imagine trying to get back up this little step. If your motorized wheelchair can鈥檛 manage it, or your muscles can鈥檛 shove mightily enough, you鈥檙e stuck in the crosswalk. Maybe you can get into a bike lane or onto a shoulder (watch out for the broken glass, gravel, bits of construction lumber, etc.) and try your luck at the next ramp. Maybe it actually meets the road. Maybe not.
These useless wheelchair ramps are proliferating because the Township allows developers to put off the last paving of streets in front of their projects until the entire development is done. Roads are sandwiches of different layers of asphalt. Until the last layer is put down, the road doesn鈥檛 meet up with the wheelchair ramps.
And guess what? Some of those developments are one five, 10, or 15 year schedules. The last condos, townhouses, or homes won鈥檛 be finished until well into the next decade. So the wheelchair ramps? Totally useless. White elephants.
More and more seniors are moving to Willoughby, not to mention the residents with disabilities who already live there. We鈥檙e finally getting bus stops on 208th Street, and transit can allow a lot of people the ability to move around our community with greater freedom.
But that won鈥檛 help if they can鈥檛 get to the actual bus stop in the first place!
The Township needs to actually pay attention to what its development policies mean in practical terms. They mean a lack of access, and they mean that no one at the Township has bothered to notice this problem, which has now been going on for several years.
