It seems that when the City switched from parking meters to Pay & Display machines a couple years ago, they repaved the sidewalk west of Preston on the north side of Young Street with asphalt, and put in pads at the road level for the P&D machines:
As John demonstrates here, you can't really get past that on a wheelchair. Not only isn't it wide enough, but it's so slanted he'd fall right into the machine.
Not that the sidewalk is good for anything but the car parkers. It ends before getting to the cul-de-sac, with a sheer curb..
Since it's the parking/traffic department that created this problem, we'll be following up with them to fix it.
More on the O-Train pathway is available on Eric Darwin's West Side Action, and on my blog series on the Somerset Street West reconstruction, starting with this instalment.
[Tune in on Wednesdays at noon for a new pedestrian-themed blog post. View the Pedestrians label for previous Peds on Weds posts]
It's hard to believe that things like this can still happen. I recognize that the responsible staff members are busy people, but are we not sensitized to accessibility issues enough by now to know that curb-cuts are essential?
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