» Good Idea/Bad Idea Revisited

Back in April 2008, I wrote about the work that was done on our nearby park by M-NCPCC.

Shortly after that entry, they got back to us via email, saying

This situation will be corrected and you will once again be able to access the pathway that leads under Riverdale Road.

Unfortunately, there’s apparently still been no movement on this, the railing still cuts right across the park from one side to the other - and, in fact, it’s even worse now once you get past this huge metal barrier, because subsidence has caused a great big crack to appear in an older section of sidewalk.

So, despite their acknowledging that they’ve put a huge barrier to accessibility up across the park, four months have gone by with nothing visible happening.

This begs the question - do we have to begin legal action before they will actually rectify their own accessibility failure?

I can understand their reticence not to do something that is based on common sense with regards to the slope on the other side of the bridge - though I seriously doubt they’re even remotely ADA compliant with that slope.

They’re more likely to pay exhorbitant amounts of money to professionals with degrees in every kind of engineering imaginable, do surveys, put it out to tender, bid it, rebid it, then muck around for several months before they just bow to the inevitable and put in a “hard” version of the switchback path people have already carved out in the dirt there.

But …

What’s the delay in figuring out they’ve gone and put a great big metal railing across the park on this side, and it needs a gap made in it?  I don’t know, not having all those important sounding engineering degrees, maybe it’s a case of waiting for the tides, or the planets to be in alignment, or something.

But I do have to wonder … Four months and no activity on their part to allow wheelchair access through the park once more, access they removed, access they’re denying us - If they’re going to say they’re still “looking into it”, then perhaps the State should start investigating why it costs them so much money to figure things out, especially things that I managed to figure out in, oh, 30 seconds?

After all - it’s my money too that they’re getting.

Perhaps indeed it is time to start demanding a refund via an ADA lawsuit.

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