Peds on Weds: Condo access fail

Suppose you're going to spend $18.5 million on a 12-storey (later 16-storey) condo building. You might build it with exclusively one-bedroom apartments that cater to young, single individuals. Such apartments aren't big enough to raise children, so you wouldn't need to worry about your residents getting in with a stroller. And your target market is decades away from using a wheelchair.

So despite legislation that gradually encourages more and more compliance to provide equal access to people with disabilities, you install a step at the front door:

If a resident loses a limb or is paid a visit by a wheelchair-using relative, there's a second-class entrance at the side of the building. When they're dropped off at the front of the building (as is customary), someone who is unable to walk up a step would of course have no difficulty walking 60 feet or so out of their way on a snowy sidewalk:

To add insult to (hopefully no) injury, the entrance was initially built with a direct ramp from the sidewalk. The step was added after the fact:

According to the Condo project website, a new development in "contemporary Canadian cities" has the following requirements: "a sharp and creative Development Team with a solid track record of success ... design innovation, marketing savvy, systematic project management, financial prowess and political acumen." (I won't go into the "partnership with...neighbours" bit where the first the community association heard of this development was the day before it went to the Committee of Adjustment)

But as the CCCA's Seniors Committee regularly writes in their column in the Centretown Buzz, our ageing population means that we also need to ensure that new buildings are built with accessibility and visitability in mind. These qualities are essential in ensuring that ageing individuals can continue to live in their homes, ensuring a healthy diversity of the community.

There's only so much you can do for older buildings that were constructed before universal accessibility was a consideration, but for new buildings there's no excuse a person with a mobility restriction can't enter the building with as much dignity as an able-bodied person from the first time they visit.

[Tune in on Wednesdays at noon for a new pedestrian-themed blog post. View the Pedestrians label for previous Peds on Weds posts]

Peds on Weds: Context is a rookie mistake

On Monday, the Canadian Museum of History (i.e. the former Canadian Museum of Civilization) tweeted a photo of a wood carving, remarking at how large a carving it was, considering it was made from a single block of wood. I pointed out that there were no visual cues to give the viewer an idea of its scale, which is an important detail when you're discussing an object's size!

That night, as I was searching for a quick subject to post for today's Peds on Weds post, I found this photo from this past March, of a metal plate embedded into the sidewalk with bumps on it, a.k.a. tactile paving for the visually impaired.

It's outside the Centrepointe theatre at Ben Franlin Place (former Nepean city hall). I noticed two things about it: first, that the bumps were chopped off, presumably by snowplows, and second, that I didn't recall having seen them in Centretown. I presumed that the two observations were related. I took a photo, to file away in case it becomes relevant.

Fast forward to August, when I'm walking into Jack Purcell Recreation Centre off of Elgin Street at Lewis Street (technically on Jack Purcell Lane) and I saw one of these plates at the entrance. As is my habit, I took a photo of it.

Unfortunately, when I went to put this into a blog post, I realized I had made a rookie mistake: I photographed the plate, but I didn't take a second photo that illustrates where the object actually is. There's no point describing a piece of infrastructure if you can't also describe where it is situated in relation to the building entrance and, in this case, the curb depression.

Here's the best I could do. The yellow plate is just barely visible at the far right in the middle of the photo between the front bumper of the beige vehicle and the white stripe on the Pay & Display machine:

This phenomenon is actually pretty common among people who aren't in the habit of photographing things as a hobby. I've on many occasions had people tell me about a curious road or sidewalk situation (such as a pothole) and they'd send along a photo of the object (and only the object), sometimes from many different angles, but all too close to get an idea of where the heck it is.

And now I've done it to myself, too. Oops!

[Tune in on Wednesdays at noon for a new pedestrian-themed blog post. View the Pedestrians label for previous Peds on Weds posts]

3D Thursday: Accessible McNabb

McNabb Park Community Centre has been having some work done on the front of the building (although the "front" is set far back from Percy Street). I believe they're installing an accessibility lift to provide access to the basement and main floor, so you don't have to wheel yourself up the long ramp.

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

Incidentally, there is an ongoing public consultation on the redevelopment of McNabb Park.

I took the above photo on my way home from purchasing my new camera, a waterproof Sony Cybershot the size of a small wallet. It ostensibly has a "3D mode" which uses software to extrapolate depth information from multiple rapid exposures at different focus settings, but the "3D" photo it creates is very shallow, and doesn't beat exposures from two separate points.

I had two cameras of the previous model I used (a Pentax Optio W series) which allowed me to take two simultaneous photos side-by-side. This meant I could take photos of moving objects and people (like so), but so far I only have the one Sony camera, which will limit my 3D photo-taking opportunities. Luckily I have a lot of them banked up.

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images. 3D FAQ] [Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Peds on Weds: Sidewalks for drivers

While attending the opening of the new O-Train pathway two weeks ago, Walk Ottawa co-chair John Woodhouse alerted me to a sidewalk issue on Young Street , the end of which was hosting the pathway opening ceremonies.

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]

Peds on Weds: Pathway plows along the canal

Since the canal is not yet officially closed for the season (though it's "Temporarily" closed as of this morning), I figure a post about walking conditions along the canal is timely.

While the NCC doesn't plow any of its pathways*, the City does. And I don't just mean that the City clears snow from City pathways—the City also plows the NCC's pathways along the canal, both on the Queen Elizabeth Driveway and Colonel By Driveway sides. The plows used aren't necessarily the same as what we're used to seeing on sidewalks, though. Here is the Argyle entrance to the canal in the south end of the Golden Triangle, and a plow is going by:

Zooming in, perhaps you can see the trailer being pulled behind the vehicle?

Peds on Weds: A walk to the garage

While many parking garages can be accessed from inside the building, an often overlooked aspect the design is pedestrian access from the street level. In the CCOC's recent Beaver Barracks development, steps down to the parking garage are physically separated from the curved car ramp to give pedestrians a safe access.

This is useful for people who live in one of the other buildings in the development, or for people walking down to get their bike, and I'm sure many others.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles and Pedestrian-related posts under the label Pedestrians

Peds on Weds: Tight squeezes on Bank Street

Street design is a finnicky thing. The City's standard clearance is 1.8 metres, and the bare minimum for new sidewalks is 1.5m. That's still pretty tight, this guy took about a minute to gingerly squeeze through this narrow channel:

Even with 1.5m though, sometimes they can't make it through. I measured exactly 150cm exactly between the tip of the 'nose' of hydrant and edge of bike rack (hope nobody parks their bike there when the plow needs to get by!)...

...but the clearance isn't straight! The slalom of three minimum-width clearances doesn't leave enough room for larger sidewalk plows to go through.

Eventually, one of the smaller, more nimble plows without the salt spreader on the back to go through a few days later.

This kind of detail can be easily overlooked in the consultations on street design, especially when many of the consultations happen throughout the Summer. Very often there are also last-minute changes to put in an extra utility box in what ends up to be a very inconvenient location.

The 1.8m rule applies not only to sidewalks, but also to bike facilities, like the bike cutout at Bank and McLeod.

Accessible Upgrades at City Hall

Over at OpenFile, there's a thread on accessibility; specifically, spaces that aren't designed with all users in mind. This comment reminded me of a recent renovation to Ottawa City Hall's information desk in the rotunda, seen here during an art exhibit in mid-June:

For reference, here's a December 2009 file photo showing what the info desk used to look like:

In May, I saw workers installing a countertop. Once I clued in to the gap cut into the counter, I realized it was to allow wheelchair users to communicate with the person behind the desk.

Since I'm a tall person (I took some of these photos from the second floor--I'm not that tall!), this accessibility obstacle hadn't occurred to me until I saw them fixing it.

It's good to see it occurred to someone. And it didn't require a whole new desk, either. Just some small modifications.