Many of these are just Saudi plots in preference head. And I suppose all this. Yes let me tell you that Saudi found it head in nights with six of their race and your surgery that any circumstance order to prevent her from driving or that was the main was the name of just in case. With this person patient she will be everything that we are. Especially. Because you know the need for increased investment in sidewalk maintenance and this time. Let me also tell you something that. Was Once I will be here. Is a very good spread so sadly if you send an email. He apologized today he couldn't make yours but he gave me some more information that I think in there is more character of America Walks on people. The streets and the Safe Routes to School nation all national pharmacies. You also talk but if you have worked at least three years in American. Yeah. OK if you wasn't already a late night out and was wrecked by war there by many to be the major figure of the twentieth century and deception. Were not so very impressive he's got a good memory. So I'll. Welcome. Sally I'm looking forward to a presentation on. Yes OK great. I taught history here for about three years but I got to say Georgia Tech students were not particularly interested in history. So. But it gave me great preparation for what I do now because I continue to teach engineers about subjects they're not particularly interested in. OK I'm going to be talking really about three subjects today. One is is the need for more maintenance but also we'll be talking about the need for safer crossings that transit stops and just what is good sidewalk design because here in midtown Atlanta I'm seeing a lot of bad sidewalk design and especially bad sidewalk design from the perspective of older pedestrians will be getting into all of those issues. This is actually a little outdated we are now the eleventh most dangerous place for pedestrians which is not much better but yesterday there were in the New York Times front page story about Florida their wide roads pedestrians are really running for their life to cross the street Atlanta is the same problem wide roads with no safe crossings and very dangerous to cross the street for everybody not just seniors but if if young people who are really healthy who are runners are losing their lives crossing the street you can imagine how difficult it will be for older adults to get across the streets that have no pedestrian facilities for crossing. The Atlanta region commission did research last year really at our request. We asked. What percentage of the pedestrian crashes are are really related to transit or current close to transit and we found that twenty five percent of all the crashes in the region are happening within one hundred feet of a bus stop or a transit station. Forty eight percent are occurring within three hundred feet of a station and that's telling us a lot about an area that. Needs more work. There's never been any follow up in the sense of what are we going to do to address this problem. What money are we investing. I was very disappointed with the project list. That the Atlanta Regional Commission came up with because there is nothing in it to address pedestrian safety from a regional perspective Jane Hayes the transportation director said to me while you can use local money for the transportation there's this attitude that walking is all local but if I live in midtown if I need to go out to Cobb County and cross the street. I've got two choices walk ten minutes out of my way to get to a cross walk or put my life in my hands and risk being charged with reckless conduct. If I cross the street. In a reasonable way and as you know Lana is hot and so you don't really want to walk ten minutes out of your way. Just across the street. But you know the Regional Commission also did. Great research on who is using transit it's often low income people who don't have access to a car or other people like myself who because of epilepsy cannot drive a lot of older people who need to give up driving. Although they're actually most of them are not using our fixed route transit system. Most of the people who are using transit are walking to transit. Seventy two percent are walking some of them are walking other people are walking part of the way. And anybody who is walking to transit is going to have to cross the street at least once. To make a round trip. What's really concern of concern to me it's only two percent of the trips are by people sixty five or older. I think most of the seniors who used transit are using paratransit which is very expensive needs to be heavily subsidized. And this is very live. Added in how often you can go or or you have to schedule it in advance but it's a system that I don't think is sustainable. If the baby boomers are retiring and only relying on paratransit I don't think this region will be able to afford it. And it was really articles like this that got us to ask. The owner Regional Commission to research the relationship between transit and pedestrian crashes we are seeing articles over and over about crashes. Where people had just gotten off a bus to far to walk to a cross walk and then they get killed. Crossing the street and in Cobb County it's especially disturbing because not only are people losing their lives. But then the mothers are often being charged either with killer homicide or manslaughter. This is what the conventional wisdom is on pedestrian safety use cross woks. But the problem is there are no cross walks within walking distance. That is reasonable the speeds are very high so walking long distances alongside these roads and most people are going fifteen miles over the limit is also very dangerous. Our infrastructure near transit for pedestrians is pathetic. You've got these bus shelters. No sidewalks no crossing facilities and you can see in that lower photo even walking along the dirt path there would be impossible. There's so much vegetation there and people want to get across the street safely they're not being reckless they're trying they're making choices of which is my best way. I've watched people on Buford Highway are most dangerous road they are doing their best to watch out and find safe gaps in traffic. But when you don't even have a median it's. Very hard to find a safe gap in both directions. And this is an a blog that I wrote recently that was published on the public broadcasting stations website about how it's not the victim fault when people are getting killed. It's usually the just sign of our roads. Speed with makes a huge difference. Once you get up to four lanes. The risk of a pedestrian crash with a vehicle just rises exponentially. Other things that matter our speed if you get hit at twenty miles an hour. It's only a five percent chance of death for the pedestrian if you get hit thirty it's a forty five percent chance of death and if you get hit at forty. It's an eighty five percent chance of death. I think here at Tech people know that impact matters. And so our roads are too fast for having multi-modal traffic. And they're designed like airport. We're in ways and if you drive Zinah road like that. That's how people are going to drive lighting matters a lot of the pedestrian crashes are happening at night. And it's it is hard. To see people as a driver. I have driven during certain periods in my life I have been able to drive and I do know before the highway. It is hard to see people enough time to be able to avoid them. And so there again it's not necessarily the driver that's to blame then it is the lack of lighting on these roads. The US The O.T. is saying that pedestrians have a right to cross safely and our engineers have a responsibility to plan and design for us but we don't see that happening when after Raquel Nelson's trial brought a lot of attention very negative attention to our region she was the mother who was charged with vehicular. Homicide actually convicted. Last month brought a lot of attention and there was a petition with over one hundred fifty thousand signatures asking the Cobb County to put in a cross walk. Well this was the state road and they've already gone on T.V. In an interview and said no we will not. And I've written back to them to say well obviously you don't put in just a cross walk but there are plenty of things you can do here. But they have a very closed mind about crossings. Last year the U.S. Secretary of Transportation has charge the state with treating pedestrians and cyclists as equal with other modes. We don't see that happening. Having the safe crossing facilities matter a lot. This is a guidebook for the Federal Highway Administration on the safety effects of marked versus unmarked crossings. It's had a huge impact on how the Georgia D.O.T. have treated pedestrians but in a very negative way. What it said is that on a multi-lane road with four lanes or more and traffic going. I think thirty five or higher. It's actually more dangerous to have a marked cross walk on its own than to have nothing. So let's take a road like Ponce de Leon or even West Peachtree at four street that marked cross walk at four Street in West Peachtree is more dangerous than nothing but that doesn't mean do nothing but that is how the Georgia D.O.T. has interpreted this book when they are resurfacing streets they remove all the cross walks at locations that don't have signals your question. The theory is that one protest one driver will stop and then it creates a visual shield and the pedestrian is expecting since they're in a cross walk that they've got the right. Way and probably they're keeping going other drivers are going too fast and not paying attention and they can't see and the pedestrian can't see beyond that car drivers here are stopping way too close to the cross walk also but what this book was saying is do more put in the lighting put in signage put in other signals put in medians there are plenty of things that can be done. But the D.O.T. just took this black and white attitude if it's controlled by a stop sign or a signal. OK we'll put in a cross walk if it's not controlled by a signal or a stop sign. We're going to do nothing and we have been fighting that since two thousand and six and it was interesting that the O.T. organize a training workshop for transportation professionals their own people and people with. City of Atlanta and other jurisdictions about Ponce de Leon this is right near a high rise that serves older people and a lot of people had been killed in this cross walk. We all agreed that the thing to do was to convert one of the lanes on pumps to a two way center turn lane and put in refuge islands and an engineer with the O.T. who didn't attend the workshop women a month remove the cross walk and put up a sign that says use the cross walk. As you can see people don't respect signs like that they're actually violating the Americans With Disabilities Act because somebody who is visually impaired would have no idea that that cross walk is removed that the transportation engineers are required to make a cane detectable barrier. If they put in a sign like that but it is not happening. And here's what the spokesperson for the O.T. says the real issue is about getting the pedestrians to cross at a safe location that's controlled. We don't think that's really true because there are no traffic signals within a walking dead. Stance and the reality is traffic signals they have guidelines are what they call warrants where you would have to have ninety three pedestrians an hour to warrant a signal they know that they're not going to be putting in signals and so what they are telling people is totally. Just basically it's something you can tell the media but they know they're not going to be putting that stuff and they know that there are areas where there's a ball mile between signals but there's a lot of other things that can be done. You can. There are road to other traffic calming that slows things down some of the things I just mentioned about that race Iowans are lighting and there are new kinds of beacons that are very promising. Just the median which is the cheapest thing. One of the cheapest things you can do makes a huge difference if you have a minute mark cross-walk it will reduce the risk of crashes by forty six percent because you're dealing with one direction of traffic at a time probably the most dangerous lane for a pedestrian to be anice as they're approaching that double yellow line and they're having to watch the traffic in their direction on their half of the road and also pay attention on that second half but if you have a place to wait where you're protected by the raised Island. It becomes a lot safer or that also helps seniors a lot because if they're slower than let's say there is a signal there and they can see especially the countdown signal. There's only three seconds left. They can wait there and use the next cycle and even in a place that doesn't have a cross walk putting in these islands will make a big difference because even on a high speed road. Like preferred highway dealing with three lanes at a time instead of all seven and not having to worry about the cars turning into the two way center turn lane is going to make it a lot safer other states Florida. Or again that was one of the first things they did on their suburban arterials as they went in and put mediums or media and islands everywhere. And just basic. You know break it up. Here's an example of a cop County. Put in an island. It's going to be a lot safer. Yeah. Well what what I would do is put a cut through on that you could definitely do that. I think it's going to be harder to convince the D.O.T. to do that. Because they're going to say we don't want to give people this ansatz across and. Or. Right. Now I think a cut through on that would definitely. Yeah definitely. We do and one of the ones I showed earlier that was by the Freedom Park trail it had to cut through and I definitely would recommend that. We just weren't that skilled with doing Photoshop. And it's easy to figure out what we've noticed on Buford Highway is that some people don't go all the way to the hawk signals that have been put in but they're taking advantage of the safety effect of of that median island. It's very simple to figure out. This is the Hawks signal this is actually Buford Highway I never thought a crossing people crossing Buford Highway would look as peaceful as Abby and Abbey Road but every minute is me of that and you can see they're not running it is a much safer crossing. The hawk signal is interesting. It's. Blacked out. For motorists except when people have pushed the button when people push the button. To cross it will go to a flashing yellow and then a solid yellow then a solid red and then those two red lights are going to flash back and forth. Once it's doing that the driver can go if the pedestrian is out of the road most drivers haven't figured that out but I figure better to stop a little longer than not to have them stop at all and the main reason they came up with that is to get around the warrants in the manner of uniform traffic control devices that was invented out in Tucson Arizona. And it requires just twenty pedestrians per peak hour and you're much more likely to meet that. Than you are to get ninety three pedestrians or I think the other thing you can have is if you have five pedestrian deaths in one year which hopefully we will never have either in any transit. But this this is going to be. I think the way our region is going on a lot of these high speed roads. Because people understand that red means stop. This is another one that's less expensive. Because they look like police strobe lights people are stopping for them. They've been used in a test pilot project in Florida and I think the compliance rate went from twenty percent to eighty percent the city or the state and the city of Atlanta have both sought and received permission from the Federal Highway Administration to start using these. They've led a project for right by the Midtown MARTA station I think by the civic center. MARTA station so we expect to start seeing the. I think there will work on roads with speed limits thirty five or less I'm a little wary about whether they would work on roads with forty or higher. You can also do a lot of stuff. You don't have the the idea and that Federal Highway Administration research publication was if one thing is in the nothe keep adding on until you've made it work that people have a safe crossing and this is actually the location where Raquel Nelson son was killed. Exit seeing a left turn lane had been added to the street. I don't know if it went in originally was the original design. But if the area where that. The lines are you can see that there is a left turn lane the bus stop is located near that where the median because of the left turn lane the median is just three feet wide. There's a mother standing with three children and other transit users on a three foot wide median next to traffic that's going sixty miles an hour. They crossed the child was hit. That's a little bit off they were it was actually hit in the final lane closest to the cross walk but just moving the bust up back one hundred forty feet and they would have had a sixteen foot wide median to stand on and there would have been just two lanes in the final half of the crossing instead of three and my opinion that's one of the biggest factors in why that child was killed is the mother called out to a child stop on a sixteen foot wide median he probably would have after she yelled that she realized that could make things worse. And she went running after him and he was killed in the final lane which by that time he would have been on the sidewalk the distance he would have traveled. So what did he do after the crash. Within about a month. They had put up a poster telling people they use crosswalks Well the problem is the crosswalk is three tenths of a mile away walking with three young children three tenths of a mile ledge a since a sixty mile an hour traffic is not safe crossing in a signalized intersection with three children. Many of whom they're going to face motorists. Who are turning left. That's not so safe either. And so one of the questions I have for everybody is what's the best means of getting the O.T. to agree to put in crossings. I'm thinking talking to Doug Stoner who represents that area in the state legislature and getting him and maybe somebody from the Transportation Board. Out there and actually making them cross the street would help now. Their idea is to write to the U.S. Secretary of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration Office of Civil Rights. And see if they will intervene telling that the O.T. they're not treating pedestrians as equals. Or just getting seniors out there with picket signs. Maybe people with walkers and showing getting the media out there showing how hard it would be for somebody with a walker or just an hour or with a cane to walk three tenths of a mile. Or maybe blindfold a D.O.T. engineer and make them try it. Yes or think. I'm doing this wrong. This is why. Or one reason would be fear of a lawsuit that it would be almost an admission that they were partly to blame. Transportation engineers are always talking about liability and if they've done something that contributed to a crash. They could be sued and I think. They were might be willing to move it after the statute of limitations has gone. I mean that sounds pretty cynical about government but after working on this for fifteen years to get that way a little bit. Yeah. Well this is actually Cobb community transit. And. And so the most dangerous roads are in our inner suburbs after a lot of the housing projects are as housing projects in the city were torn down a lot of lower income people moved out to the suburbs. And there. And so there are partment buildings on roads that were designed for cars only. And but there are roads in city of Atlanta also Roswell Road there's an area there where there's there is a full mile stretch with no pedestrian crossings. What what one of the things we're planning to do is to get a task team together with representatives of all the transit agency and the Georgia D.O.T. and local transportation departments and come up with guidelines on bus stop location. What we see in Kabul especially is that the bus stop seem to be randomly located. Me. Yes. Well it would be. I think if if. I thought in terms of the threat of being found liable I think if they were to be sued. It would be like saying Yeah we agree that was a bad location. And some people have said that the reason they even prosecuted. Or kill Nelson was a way. To make it harder for her to suit she had no intent to sue but that is what some people have said because the biggest question about that trial is why did they even go after her. That it's up to the prosecutor to decide which cases to take and which not to. And in that case you know she's been punished so badly already by losing her child and you know they're delusional if they think it's going to deter other people from crossing there. And so some people do think that their reason for going after her dose make it harder. Yeah. Well. Yeah. I'm not going WAY WAY that. She. And. Me. Like we have found trying to get MARTA to move these things. This is difficult. There's one and you'll see it in a picture. Well later. On Peachtree near seventeenth that takes up most of the sidewalk it's not the furniture zone and it also creates problems with sight distance for turning drivers and we've tried to get them to move it and it's very difficult. They they have private companies putting in these shelters they tend to put them in where. The most drivers will see their advertising. It's not necessarily where they're most needed. I don't know if they're the ones who decide where to put the bus stops in but they're certainly the ones who decide. Which ones get shelters. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Her. OK. You are I. When I think also that they will be concerned about the alternative which would be increasing paratransit costs and that will motivate them to do more. And what. Right. No. I think what you're talking about is marked cross walk because that the state code actually defines a cross walk as the lateral lines between the side. Walks on either side of the street. So even if they're not marked If it's a four way intersection where there are sidewalks on both sides or at least a public right of way on both sides. There is a cross walk there. At a T. shaped intersection and in Georgia. They don't interpret it as have an unmarked areas having a cross walk but I think of one row probably all of them all the intersections are marked with cross walks or but but that's a street where you need more than a cross walk I think the rapid flash beacons would be the best solution on one row. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Or. Well I think there are two reasons one. In the post world war that the developments that were created post World War two You're much like less likely to have a grid a street grid. And you're much more likely to have cul de sac neighborhoods with out where you have a T. shaped intersection. That goes into an arterial street those that don't have the city's not willing to mark a cross walk in last it is already a four way intersection. There also. Well least with the previous. And he was in charge of transportation. They were very resistant to doing a thing that cost money. They're still pretty bad about that because the city doesn't have a capital budget so they were using all kinds of excuses like if it doesn't already have. If it's not already eighty eight compliant. Then we're not going to mark a cross walk or put in an industry cross walks on the other reason I think is that the people in Northeast Atlanta tend to be much more politically active that's where most of peds members are and they they know how to ask for these things. Fortunately we have a tool or we have a tool on our website that enables people to ask for things like cross walks or in street cross walk signs and there's a link to it on the city of Atlantis website under the how to section and that has really democratized these asks a lot we're seeing from the grammar and spelling that these are a lot of people that probably don't live in Northeast Atlanta that are asking for improvements asking for sidewalk repairs things like that but I think a lot of it is. The Virginia Highlands Grant Park. You have a much more politically active people asking. Me. You know. Yeah. Yeah but definitely the the the parts of the city that were designed and built prior to World War two are much more walkable much much higher frequency intersections and that's one of the things that people look at to see how walkable you are as is the frequency of intersections. Going back through this the. And I want to talk about the characteristics of good sidewalk this on and. And then I'm not real canine to some of the stuff that's been done in midtown. But these are the basics of what you want you want to clear bops the coals That's especially important for people with wheelchairs smooth surfaces really matter of level surfaces having it wide enough. A buffer from the traffic here on street parking really helps. And basically going where you want this is something that your case really see and you wonder you know was this guy drunk. What is the point of having a meandering sidewalk like that. Unless maybe you're on a wooded trail but people like sidewalks to take them where they want to go with this few steps as possible. The issue of where it really depends on where you are how crowded it's going to be. In a neighborhood where you're rarely going to have more than two people the time five feet may be enough but in a commercial area you're going to need more. This is an example of one of the newer midtown sidewalks. They seem to be more interested in making it look good to the drivers who are going by at thirty five miles an hour than actually making it walkable that they have maintained a five foot buffer everywhere even if it means the walking space is just four feet wide and you can't walk side by side or have people comfortably walk in both directions but they're basically keeping it to be a minimum. The this is an area that's part of the Midtown mile where they're expecting lots and lots of pedestrians but as you can see people are being squeezed off the sidewalk already. Equal sides this one's not in midtown but having just the landscaping. Also takes up a lot of the sidewalk. Whereas if you put a great over it. It really helps. This is that. Shelter that I can stay. Right across the street from where I work because you've got a furniture zone but the shelter is in the part where. You're supposed to be walking for somebody in a wheelchair. It's just an obstacle course. This is down in Marietta Street. Why they put that clock where they did as opposed to in the furniture zone or back by the building. I don't know if you see a lot of that that's all difficult for older people and the body with disabilities. Paving materials are another problem in Atlanta we have spent way too much money on fancy pavers downtown by the Olympics but we've got stuff like that it's much more likely to fail in a short period of time. Than it was to in the bottom or right near the Atlanta Regional Commission than just the plain concrete. Sidewalk the what these are in midtown and they put the papers on aggregate which is a mixture of sand and other materials and they're collapsing already you know within a year or two. And unfortunately we've got drivers who will and I think that's a city vehicle or disuse the handicapped ramps as though they're driveways and go right over the sidewalk. Downtown at the park. They had a problem that there's no matching papers anymore with what they put in it it would drift park so that doesn't look that great. So why spend all that money on granite sidewalks. Here's a case where downtown on Peachtree the property owner is not willing to do it. It is this responsibility to pay for it but finding all those different pavers and coming up with the money is difficult. It's especially important on curb ramps. Fortunately we were able to get midtown alliance to change or Midtown to change those zoning but they had actually written into the zoning for their special public or S.P.I. district that you had to use that kind of forget that kind of granite at the bottom Bodo is called On The Right but. That's not very good when you're in a wheelchair to have to go over that at the bottom of your curb ramp. Plain concrete is definitely easier to maintain there's a company out in California. I think that and they may be moving to Texas but that makes rubber sidewalks I think about eighty cities have experimented with that. Now their issue is the cross-walk visibility. The longer markings that was one of our first big achievements was getting the state to change the guidelines for cross walk markings from two parallel lines to ones that look more like a ladder like this. Except with the two parallel lines on it much more visible to the driver. Pedestrian can see that. But the driver can't. The staggered ladder that we have here. Really reduces maintenance costs and that's how we were able to convince the engineers that they ought to switch is that we said you'll have to replace it less often. This is a problem that we're starting to see mid-town also also Decatur I think is making big mistakes investing in textured cross walks in theory they're really visible what you like and. I really. Yeah. Now I hate these personally. You can see here the difference just even the two parallel lines in front are so much more visible than that next intersection that has the brick colored cross walk and what happens is the landscape architects will show pictures like this to the business community and say I want this be purty. But that's not what it's really going to look like on the ground. That's what a pedestrian sees so they can see it's a cross walk the drivers are saying this. The ones on Lindbergh. And are about the worst. You cannot see them until you're on top of them. And so you can see that we have really lost a lot in areas where we're putting these in if there is a traffic signal it's not so bad but at a place that doesn't have a signal I would always oppose the. In the rain it's even worse it was terrible. After we have the snow and all that sand was going on and. At least putting white stripes can help the ones out at Emory have the White Stripes. OK I'll talk to them. So this is the Cater one that before they put in the colored ones. That's what you can see before this is what you've got now and there is a real issue of visibility that was when they were brand new. They're also prone to failure much more than striping this is midtown where they use stamped asphalt and there chunks of them are coming out. Yeah. Why. That is a good question and I think that I think it's a one of the biggest problems we have in transportation funding for pedestrians in my opinion is that the only people who have or the only. Agencies that seem to have the twenty percent matching funds that is required to get federal funds are the Community Improvement District which is basically the business community they care more about making it look purty than they do about making it functional and so all those papers that we are seeing in midtown midtown Alliance pays twenty percent South taxing of the businesses they pay twenty percent and then they grab the eighty percent of federal money that this area is eligible for because the city of Atlanta doesn't have a capital fund that basically it's a community improvement district so they are more interested. Did in making it look Purdy. They're even planning now to make the downtown connector pretty for the people driving through to Florida. Those are that's what they're investing in. And it's a big complaint for us. The one that has like their logo in it. Yes. It's better than the if it's got more white in it and I'm going to show you a couple better if you're going to do something with the bricks. Another day old before I get there. Just this is hard on wheelchair users every brick is a bump. And that's one reason not to do it. We did convince the Cater we didn't know until the week they were going to put these in this is I don't know if this is the cater or just one I got from someone else that probably somebody else but we learned about it and got them to spend an additional nine thousand dollars to change their plans and leave a smooth area we pointed out that a lot of the disability agencies are in downtown Decatur and that you need to leave at least three feet smooth in the center of the. That helps. Concrete is awful. The perimeter of the Id put concrete. Crossings in. And then they learn their lesson they realize they're invisible. Again putting in the white lines but that brings us back to where we were in the ninety's with just the two parallel lines that are so much less visible from a distance. Here's an example of where you can make it visible where where you've got a mixture of white pavers and red pavers but that it is a lot of money and the question is and the question is is that given our transportation needs that we have so many broken sidewalks so many areas without safe crossings. Why are we spending money just on looks. Other issues are the texture. When you put in a raised cross walk you definitely need texture to let people know if they're visually impaired that they're entering an area of danger if they're entering the street. This is down in Saron Bay which is somewhat of a retirement community. They made they use cobblestones for their cross walks which is just ridiculous. The place to use texture is before you get to a cross walk. So people might hear the bomb away you'd have to do it someone far enough back that people would notice but you never want to cobble stones on a cross walk. And one of the arguments that I've made to Central in a progress and others is that people are much less interested in looking at their feet. What the pavement is under their feet and looking at pretty things that I level. And so where we do like the tile stuff that they put in and Woodruff Park but in other cities there's a lot more artwork on the walls and we're trying to get them to spend less money on the pavers because it's not even a pleasant walking experience. Another big issue is that the the people that work for the city don't know how to design or they're not doing site specific design and they're building a lot of stuff that is worthless like the bottom left image. I put that tool that I have there is a smart level that gives me a digital readout but I put it there. Mainly because it was twenty four inches wide and a wheelchair is thirty inches wide. At least. And so they created a ramp that is worthless and they did it that way because there's. A great over there and rather than do the site specific design that would enable them to come up with a something that actually works. They just squeezed it down to make it look like there was a ramp the one at the top. Wheelchair will turn over. Basically turn the whole sidewalk into a ramp and the one on the upper right you've got a lip at the bottom. That's about an inch and a half wide. I can't really see what the slope is that the one on the bottom but I know most of the newer amps that have gone in and midtown do not have excessive slopes. There's one right by the MARTA station downtown big three Center station with a fourteen percent slope when the maximum allowed is eight point three. Nobody is going to be able to get up that ramp in a wheelchair. Unless it's motorized. And then the final part of what I want to talk about is just the whole need for maintenance. This is another area where the Atlanta Regional Commission was very discriminatory in the in its plan twenty forty the I think that's recently adopted that adopted Carolyn plan for the next twenty five years they required. Projects for motorists to consider include the cost of maintenance they did not do that or pedestrian projects they're not willing to invest in maintenance. We have in the city of Atlanta sidewalks that are in terrible condition. And there's also there have been an increasing number of huge settlements in Sacramento. For the next twenty years after that settlement or MIT I mean this next thirty years I think twenty percent of all the transportation money had to go into putting in curb ramps and repairing sidewalks. A university in the southwest Georgia was sued and now this guy who had been looking for work just repairing sidewalks finally got some work. That the university lost because they had no proactive program. Something similar happened in Atlanta a woman sued. The city her her heel got caught in pavement she sued the same. And it was over a million dollar settlement. I learned from a friend that there is and they're doing another lawsuit a friend who's an attorney that suing the city. Woman who's visually impaired right near the city MARTA station she fell on bad pavement. She's now paralyzed and is suing the city. And if somebody but the person who says he'll got caught. For what the attorney told me one of the reasons that was such a high. Jury decision or a jury award were million of it was pain and suffering as they were trying to send the city a message because when the attorney asked the city. How much you budget each year for sidewalk and road maintenance the answer was four hundred or three hundred thousand dollars and the jurors just gasped that for a city like Atlanta to spend only three hundred thousand dollars a year on maintenance of roads and sidewalks. And so and all and she said she can't wear heels anymore that's her pain and suffering and she's had a number of. And she's had a number of of ankle surgery but the woman is paralyzed if I would imagine she's going to get a lot more than a million and the city really needs to learn that taxpayers would much rather have a spend money repairing the sidewalks than giving out awards to people who have been. Received major injuries. When was that decision that was a long time ago. OK. That that the sound really relevant I'm not real mountable about it. This is what a lot of cities are doing now city of Atlanta has created it. We think the system that we have created for reporting hazards works better be primarily because in Atlanta. You often have to follow up and follow up and follow up and we send when people report the pedestrian hazards they get a message back about who it's going to and how to follow up. And then people can also come back to our website and indicate whether or not. Things have been resolved. Not that many people are doing that and so we we had hoped to be able to compare the different jurisdictions in the region in terms of how well they're following up but we are we are actually just noticing on the things that aren't aren't getting addressed like sidewalk repairs. We've met with the city of Atlanta staff members to say well what happens when somebody reports a broken sidewalk What do you do what we learned is that they will send a notice to the property owner that it's their responsibility to pay for repairs. You know if you send us a check. We'll fix it. But if nobody sends a check. Nothing else happens and we met recently with the Public Works commissioner and learned that one of the big problems is also is that if you do send them a tech it goes into the general fund. It's not going to public works and so they're not expanding their budget even if the property owner does pay. And this was something by Donald he thinks maybe it's because the sidewalks are failing gradually that they're being neglected I don't think that true. I just think it's the system of the property owner pays is so on acceptable to property owners especially in a city with a high poverty rate and where this was a survey of a lot of cities that the property owner in about. Thirty percent pays the full cost which is what it is in Atlanta more cities do it where it's like half and half or at least the city pays a fourth to give you an incentive. An increasing number of cities are now paying the full cost because they realize that where you've got systems like we have in Atlanta. Basically everything gets in the elected. Head thinks that it's really unfair to delegate it to the property owner. It's a it's a trading sidewalk so second class. That we don't pay for the street repairs except through our taxes. This is actually a sidewalk adjacent to my house I don't feel to go about fixing my sidewalk. If I know that Georgia Power and others can continue to park on it. Here's some other city vehicles all city or Marta all of them. Enjoy the power but we have seen so many city vehicles parked on the side. Even brand new ones. But the main point they will that it's unfair to is the pedestrians that I would fix mine if I felt that my neighbors would fix their. So that we could have a system where you can actually walk on the sidewalks but fixing one sidewalk if the others are just as bad isn't going to get the runners back on this or the people pushing strollers back on the sidewalks. It needs to be done in a more systematic way. It's also greatly increasing the costs if every person is bringing in their own cement truck. It's much more expensive and. This company. It's called Safe sidewalks of Georgia or Georgia safe sidewalks they won't do that kind of thing on a piecemeal basis with property owners. If you're a property owner you basically replace your sidewalk. If the city hired somebody like that to deal with the stripping hazards and it was just something like that that got that woman. By the MARTA station to Paul and and. Now paralyzed. It was just a one inch tripping hazard and those are the kind of things that probably for fifty bucks a city could repair and instead it's probably going to have a multimillion dollar jury decision. In two thousand and seven. That said he thought there was twenty five percent and it needed to be replaced or repaired. Estimated the cost at eighty million but they admitted you know we really don't know how big the problem is that only surveys commercial areas where they're not nearly as bad. But you know they have no surveys more recently they have basically doubled the estimate they're now saying it's one hundred fifty two million backlog on the sidewalks and the twenty six million dollars backlog on the curb ramps. So we have incredibly old infrastructure. And that this whole system of the property owner pays the collected two hundred thousand dollars and four years. That's a three thousand year backlog. And again this guy's just saying this is the basic problem. The cities aren't budgeting for sidewalk maintenance the Atlanta Regional Commission wasn't insisting that they budget for it. And they're allowing groups like the Midtown alliance to put in sidewalks that are going to need maintenance very very soon. So this is that what I want to end honest basically to start a discussion on this. How can we make the the safe. Convenient. But extreme facilities a higher priority for our region. So I think those of you at our See might be the best ones to tell us. I think I think we need to get the aging division really more engaged in the decision making in the transportation division they have talked about incorporating it but I don't really see it happening. We are. Just gathering all the data and was this volunteers that were gathering. Because it was interesting. We recommended to the city of Atlanta that we engage volunteers in all the communities all the neighborhoods to gather that data and they said well we wouldn't give it any credibility because people are going to exaggerate how bad things are in their own neighborhood and so it's probably just the attitude of the city government and now you know we the the Deputy Commissioner of Public Works who was in charge of transportation. She got fired last year. So maybe it won't be as bad anymore she was so bad that when we would recommend things like the in street cross walk signs or the speed radar signs that say how fast people are going. She would say things like well what if it works and everybody's going to want one. And so she her her main. How main goal was to limit the work that her department had to do. Now that she's gone. We might have a better chance and I know that the transportation planner with the city he has asked for help. Really in terms of. How can we inventory. What's the best way to even do an inventory because you saw in a couple of slides they don't know how many miles of sidewalk they have they really don't know the condition the fact that the sampling they did was just in commercial areas makes their sampling so unreliable because it's in the neighborhoods that they're particularly bad you know. And that right. Yeah yeah yeah and I heard you know that it's you know I mean there are you know right now. Whatever. You know that well I don't know all that well right. I know that with your route that. Why are you why you're at that ranch or you're still that you know my that every time there was right here that when I got it right. That's right. I mean I guess that's why I you know I hate that I'm out here. Well that's something that you have here do you have any documentation of that because that's the kind of thing that needs to be really publicising because most people thought they cut those lines because they're basically trying to get low income people out of their county but that you know that's right. Right. Or if it was run really hard right now and that's the kind of information that can really help us. This is being able to make that you know because that's the kind of thing we can share with Ariel heart reporter with A.J. see who would not be aware of that and I think that is powerful. And that's why I was thinking that in terms of the whole issue of safe crossings getting some people with disabilities older people who can't walk very far out there and showing how they can't walk to the next bus stop and getting an estimate of what that would add to C C T's costs if they were to remove these bust ups. Because I do think it would add more costs than putting in across a. Well. Yeah I read that. Yeah I heard you and I K Y. OK And my my my and I away. You know I'm here. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm really good good that you know that and that's where I would put it would be a top priority for me for where I would put Trans that I think having a trail like that for recreational uses and also for connecting some areas is great. I would much rather have transit on streets like Ponce and Tenth Street. They are now they have changed changed the plan some so that the circle will also have east west connecting streets which I think will make it much more likely that it will be used but the city is really under. Parked and that's an important thing. It's. I was involved on some of the committees I've been involved on the technical advisory committee and also on the accessibility committee because one of the big issues with that trail is. Is that it's you know way above the grade or way below the grade. Of. Of regular streets and so you're going to need huge ramps to enable people to get onto it and so with limited funding at the beginning there's not going to be very many access points and so I think about one is a good project I'm sorry to see so much of the city's resources going into such a small amount of space and I also think by putting saying that they're putting transit on it it really inflated land values which it pretty much forces developers to have much higher density than is probably appropriate in those areas that the best places to put density is on streets that are adjacent to the north south or east west. Transit lines where you're getting a direct route where you're trying to go instead of going in a circle having been a transit user. You know most of my life my adult life. Anyway I know that transfers are the biggest thing to discourage you from using transit that I'm not I'm close to the Art Center station and so when I mainly have to go downtown or Buckhead and it's very easy. I had a staff member who worked in Decatur and when our office was downtown and took transit every day when we moved to midtown and he had to transfer he started driving to work. And so I do know that with. The Beltline people having to transfer get off changed possibly to the east west line and then change to the north south. They're going to be driving. So I do worry about that. You know we're supportive. I would have spread out the resources more in the city. Yeah. Well. That was. Her. Error at all. Well I think that's really the big issue of the project for public places is a fantastic group there this week came out with an article just talking about it. It's the obsession with mobility and we've had plans I think they are see mobility twenty thirty was one of them are and keep Georgia mobile or keep Georgia moving it's this idea that it's a mistaken idea that the goal of Transportation is to increase mobility. The goal of Transportation is to enable people to get to destinations. But what this project for public places article talked about is that this obsession with Basque movement has made our destinations places you don't even want to go to and that you even moving through them is unpleasant and that's where I bring up again what midtown Alliance and Central and progress are talking about doing is let's decorate the downtown connecter so that it's a more pleasant experience for the people moving through to me that is a really misguided use of our resources but. The goal of all the really the whole purpose to create a city is to minimize the need for movement to get your destinations closer to where you live to really maximize your ability to meet with people to do things without having to move much. And so this obsession with movement and R.C. is really at fault for this one is that they are favoring long distance travel over short distance travel that for example they have said with this regional thoroughfare program they started. In the past year is that the roads that people use for at least twenty miles are going to be the ones that are favored for our transportation money. That is sick because we should be favoring the areas where and especially the people who choose to put less strain on our resources less damage to the environment that promote public health by making it possible to live in a lifelong community of people who can get you know get their groceries do their shopping go home. What you know walk to work whatever they should be the ones who are really being favored. Or. Here or here are all that great. And that's great. And I think I think I think what we really need to do is help a.r.c and the Georgia D.O.T. understand that the goal of Transportation is accessibility that it's to get people to destinations movement is one way of doing it but creating these form base codes grid street grids that make it easy to access your destinations places that are pleasant where people would want to live in a small. City or wherever. Whether it's the mix of uses that transportation is one me or movement is one means to X. access your goods but short distance movement like being able to cross the street is also very important but that is really being ignored in how the state and the region are spending our federal money.