Tag Archives: ada

Signal changes at Broadway and John should make everyone’s trips easier

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A person crossing the street in the north-south crosswalk at Broadway and John

(Image: Ryan Packer/CHS)

By Ryan Packer

One of Capitol Hill’s busiest intersections should get easier to navigate this year, whether you’re in a car, on foot, or in a wheelchair. Broadway E and E John is slated to get a brand new set of traffic signals as part of the Seattle Department of Transportation’s Neighborhood Street Fund grant program. With the signal upgrades will come separate turn signals; drivers heading east on John Street or west on Olive Way will be asked to wait to turn left until pedestrian traffic clears the intersection.

Brie Gyncild of Central Seattle Greenways called the grant application a “last resort” in an SDOT blog post about the project. The city looked at including the signal upgrade with a previous Neighborhood Street Fund grant that made spot improvements to John and Thomas Street across all of Capitol Hill, but couldn’t make it happen due to high cost.

“The Neighborhood Street Fund was a last resort, because we have been trying to get these improvements made for a while,” Gyncild said. “This intersection has seen injuries and close calls. We all recognized the need for change here, but it’s expensive because signals are expensive and there are a lot of things that needed to change alongside the new signal, such as ADA upgrades to curb ramps.” Continue reading →

Here’s why they’re adding curb ramps to sidewalks all over Capitol Hill

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The Seattle Department of Transportation has installed more than 200 new curb ramps across the city in 2015 — you might feel like all of them were installed in the past few weeks on your block of Capitol Hill. You might be partly right.

Here’s how SDOT describes the flurry of buzzing cement cutters:

SDOT’s maintenance operations crews have been busy all year repaving streets, extending the life of residential streets and repairing damaged sidewalks. As part of these maintenance projects, our crews built over 200 new curb ramps this year. The ramps are required by a federal law which kicks in whenever we resurface a street or repair a sidewalk at a crosswalk. All the associated corners within these projects must have curb ramps which meet current standards for accessibility. These means SDOT crews replace outdated curb ramps with new ones that are easier to use, or we add curb ramps where none existed before.

What SDOT doesn’t mention is the work was inspired by a federal lawsuit brought against the city this fall:

The suit, filed Thursday by Disability Rights Washington, doesn’t seek monetary damages but aims to force the city to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates that newly constructed or altered streets have sloped areas to accommodate wheelchairs, walkers, and more. “We’re not asking the city to fix it today or even tomorrow. We really just want a plan,” said Emily Cooper, an attorney for the nonprofit. “We want a concrete plan on how they’re going to fix all the concrete ramps in the city so everyone can work or visit Seattle safely.”

Meanwhile, SDOT says the city’s “large scale arterial paving projects” also include new curb ramps to make it easier to get around “whether you’re in a bus, on a bike, in a car, on foot, in a wheelchair, pushing a stroller.”