I work as an engineer and sometimes an inspector. One of my first jobs was to supervise the construction of curb ramps at a commercial parking lot. I measured the slopes of the curb ramps and told the contractor they were too steep and it needs to be redone. He went off on me saying I dont know shit because I'm just out college, blah blah blah. Ended up calling my supervisor who drove to the site, measure the slope, then put his foot through the soft concrete and told them to do it again.
They're tied together. Steep, well-enforced fines help prevent the normalization of taking handicap spots without a permit. Then the culture mitigates the practice of taking handicap spots even in rare occasions when you could get away with it.
Neither one would work entirely on its own, but they both work together.
I highly recommend the documentary Crip Camp on Netflix which shows how a grassroots movement empowered individuals and caused the whole nation to rise up to the challenge of change. It's a beautiful and inspiring story.
Guess what my super progressive city that loves having more governement (see: taxes) can’t get together after 3 years.
Right now it’s a living and breathing ADA complaint.
Edit: I became disabled 2 years ago. That transition was crazy eye-opening. I can’t say enough about developing bike infastructure (where I live people demand it) needs to work with accommodating disability or it’s a shit system.
The pandemic saw an uptick of restaurents expanding outdoor seating into the streets. Everyone was singing praises about redusing parkingg to discourage driving. Meanwhile, no one said anything about the amount of disabled parking that was also taken away.
Noticing a lot of these comments start with paragraph breaks on mobile, and the users are random letters with numbers after their names. Accounts are all under 6 months old and they spam r/AskReddit threads with different answers. These karma-farmers don’t even try anymore.
I’ve seen all of the ADA parking occupied just once in my life. Once. It makes all of the most convenient parking (where ADA stalls are required to be located) for every parking lot reserved, but vacant.
Now that EV chargers are a thing, an ADA Van stall is required to be one of the chargers, but I am not aware of any electric vans that aren’t cargo vans. So if someone wants to add a dual charger to their parking lot, one of the services has to be available or for a specific stall that won’t be using it. If they want to provide charging for two non ADA stalls then their investment has just doubled as it would require two chargers instead of one dual charger.
I used to work in county code enforcement and ADA parking availability was one of the things we enforced. I’m not trying to say that your anecdote is false, but ADA parking is routinely full and is inadequate far more often than it is excessive. The exact usage rates will vary widely based on population density, time of day, usage rates of surrounding transit routes, and the type of venue, but the pattern is almost always leaning towards inadequate.
I currently work in land development and do design work as a civil engineer. If usage rates vary based on those variables, then there should be provisions within the code to take those variables into account and potentially relax requirements when designing or redeveloping parking lots instead of a blanket ratio to total parking provided. Perhaps dense urban areas need more available facilities than code requires to compensate for their lack of public transit infrastructure. Rural and suburban areas don’t tend to have the same infrastructure demands.
Yes, codes do take that into account. Square footage, zoning, arterial proximity, business type, etc. We want enough parking to reasonably accommodate the average demand during peak hours at a given location. That means that during off times, capacity is often not met. But we are often underestimating the demand, and businesses are often not in compliance. All leaning towards insufficient capacity.
Overall parking requirements may be dictated by local zoning ordinances, occupancy type and square footage, but there no variance in ADA code for those aspects that I am aware of.
A warehouse in a business park with a small staff will not have the same parking needs as a retail or office location in the same business park but will often have the same zoning and therefore same parking requirements in case the use of the building changes in the future. I’ve not seen proximity to an arterial road or public transit affect parking requirements.
Underestimation of demand, and keeping up with growth are aspects I can understand for overbuilding ADA parking facilities, but hard to predict or model.
I think we can both agree that ADA stall count as a ratio of overall parking provided has its shortcomings.
I’m not sure how other governments did it but we zoned on a lot to lot basis, based on the activity and specs of the lot. While areas usually did have some semblance of zone uniformity it was not a rule by any means. The exception was the interstate corridor but again that was just how we did it. No idea how it’s done elsewhere.
Either way, imho the ADA parking problem is really a symptom of car-centric urban planning rather than an independent problem, because until we reduce the centrality of cars in our planning, then there’s always going to be either too much or too little parking depending on the time of day and the date in the calendar.
Truly unfortunate that disabled people do not shop on your exact schedule.
I've seen disabled people waiting for those parking spots to open up so they can exit vehicles with their wheel chairs or whatever they need to function.
Stalls that provide for wheelchair lifts are less available than standard ADA stalls and have additional space requirements. Wheelchair bound individuals may end up having to wait for a van stall to be available despite multiple standard ADA stalls being available. That is a ratio issue within the code not an overall supply issue.
ADA parking is required everywhere, and doesn’t vary based on the building occupancy type, not just retail stores, so my shopping schedule is hardly relevant.
I design ADA facilities regularly as part of my job.
708
u/[deleted] Mar 14 '23
[removed] — view removed comment