» Good Idea / Bad Idea

[Updated April 9th 2008]

We live next to a wonderful park, beside a branch of the Anacostia River as it wends its way down towards DC and environs.

Until recently, it’s been impossible for us to use that park to get to the main road leading into town though.

The reason? This bridge over one of the drainage ravines to the Anacostia itself. The bridge is old, too narrow for wheelchairs, and has a virtual step up at either end where it meets the ground.

It’s been this way for seven years, so imagine our surprise and delight when M-NCPPC recently started working on that entire area, adding a new, wider, wooden bridge, and tarmac paths!

The new bridge is great, and makes it possible for people in wheelchairs to cut over 6 blocks of travel (some of it on roads that have no sidewalks), including bypassing an extremely busy major intersection, to reach the nearest bus stop and shopping area.

Except …

At the same time they were building the bridge, they also put this fence up.

It cuts off the far end of the park (as far as wheelchair access is concerned) from being able to go directly through the park. In what can only be considered a planning idea of Escher-esque proportions, this new fence means that someone in a wheelchair (i.e. myself or my husband) wanting to use the bridge has to go out, up the street, along a side street one block, back down another street, to reach the park. When we get to the park, the horizontal distance from where we started is about 200 yards - but this new fence means having to travel 3 blocks worth of distance.

I have no idea what bright spark decided to put a fence from one side of the small park to the other, right next to a property line at one end and impassable undergrowth on the other, or the rationale for the fence.

All I know is - someone’s decision means that people in wheelchairs are unable to go across the park, and it is now even less accessible than when they started.

Which is kind of strange, given M-NCPPC claims in the “Accessibility Statement” on its website

The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission encourages the participation of all individuals in its programs and facilities.

This little stretch of park doesn’t qualify as a facility?

This isn’t the only “failure of common sense” M-NCPPC has come up with locally. Take this little incline nearby where the American Discovery, Northeast Branch, and Indian Creek Trails meet that main road, on the other side of the Anacostia.

This is, apparently, what M-NCPPC considers a “flat, barrier-free trail system“? Even they realize that the incline is severely steep, they have warning signs at the top and bottom for bicyclists warning them to dismount!

There’s a recreation center further down the trail, from this incline. In seven years living in the area, despite being able to see it from our front yard, we’ve never been to it - taking that incline is an invitation to get dumped, with no way to get back up it even if we survive the descent!

I’ll readily admit, we raised the issue about the bridge many years ago as well, and it’s finally managed to be resolved - the fence being erected, effectively making us have to either drive over someone’s daffodils or go play loop-de-loop to bypass the thing to get to the bridge, makes us think it’s safe to assume however that our raising this issue wasn’t the reason the bridge was replaced.

It’s that, or it was our bringing it up that caused the work to be done, but they then just totally ignored the fact that it was raised by people in wheelchairs, a much less salutary conclusion to draw.

The incline problem on the other side of the river could be easily resolved with a simple “switchback”-styled path right next to the gradient, but despite having raised this before with M-NCPPC, nothing has ever been done (although foot traffic has managed to cut something similar through the undergrowth beside the incline - unfortunately, it’s still impassable for wheelchairs).

But, what would I know, I’m just a wheelchair user, without some high-falutin’ civil engineering degree that explains how such an incline is “flat, barrier-free”, or how a fence across a park encourages participation of people with disabilities in the facility (unless you count bringing up such astounding failures of common sense to be “participating”).

Compare this to our town’s Council and Department of Public Works. They are fantastic. When they were resurfacing roads recently, the work managed to prevent us being able to leave our street - one phone call to the town office, and the Director of Public Works was out to see us inside of an hour, apologized respectfully (i.e. he meant it!), asked us how they could temporarily fix the problem while the work was in progress - and then got the workers to resolve it. All this on a Friday afternoon, whereas in most places you’d have gotten a shrug and a “We’ll get around to it”.

M-NCPPC is a state-funded agency, and we’re tax payers. If they’re going to claim accessibility, they have a responsibility to actually provide it. It doesn’t matter that this is two very small parts of the mammoth area M-NCPPC has under its control. Common sense explains why natural barriers restrict access, and most people with disabilities are resigned to understanding that there are some things are simply not easily resolvable - but these issues aren’t natural barriers, they’re man-made.

M-NCPPC, who made these barriers to begin with, has a duty to resolve them, both under the ADA but perhaps more importantly a moral duty.

We want to enjoy the park, trails and community center too. It’s their job to make such things as accessible as possible, using common sense to provide reasonable accommodations - and in both of these cases, they’ve done the exact opposite.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan …

M-NCPPC, tear down this fence!

[Update April 9th 2008]

Pat sent an email to M-NCPCC, and received this reply:

Hello and Thank you for using our electronic website to contact us. We have received your comments regarding the new bridge in Riverdale located north of Riverdale Road. Thank you for the positive feedback. I am also in receipt of your other two comments regarding the new railing adjacent to your property and the steep slope along the trail on the west side of the NE Branch at Riverdale Road. I visited the both of these sites with my supervisor and we could see where we have cut your access short. This situation will be corrected and you will once again be able to access the pathway that leads under Riverdale Road.

Finally, with regards to the west side of the NE Branch near Riverdale Road. The slope is very steep in this location. We will need to assess this situation in more detail before we can determine a viable solution. Thank you for your comments. I hope this email response has been helpful to you.

Ummm. As mentioned before, I don’t have one of those pieces of paper that says “Civil Engineer”, but - how much “assessment” does it take to figure the switchback path is “viable”? Given the distance from the road to the bridge at the incline, it’d be a huge undertaking to try to redo the incline or the bridge themselves, a switchback would appear to us to be the most viable solution (assuming M-NCPCC controls or can get control of the land there).

But, you have to give them credit for coming out and seeing the fence across the park is a particularly dumb idea. We’ll see if they actually get anything resolved some time this year.

Tags: accessibility, Anacostia, barriers, Disability, engineering, M-NCPPC, maryland, Prince George's County