jabberwockypie:
mrskayathefrog:
jabberwockypie:
prokopetz:
I mean, it’s great that the “what about emergency vehicle access?” hack is so effective when pointing out the deficiencies of proposals for walkable communities, but it kind of burns my ass that you need to take that approach in the first place. I don’t know how many conversations about communities planning I’ve seen that go like this:
Walkable communities advocate: Here’s a plan for a walkable community in which only public transit will be permitted – no personal vehicles of any kind will be allowed.
Disability advocate: What about access for physically disabled people? If your options are public transit or the sidewalk and literally nothing else, any disabled person whose needs aren’t fully served 100% of the time by your favoured public transit framework is fucked, and there’s no such thing as a perfect public transit framework.
Walkable communities advocate, whose brain shut down the moment they heard the word “disabled” and didn’t process anything past that point: Oh, you silly cripple, the term “walkable community” doesn’t mean you’re only allowed to walk! How quaint.
I guess pointing out “well, if only public transit is accommodated, how are firefighters and paramedics supposed to access emergencies?” works because now they can imagine themselves being affected!
It’s SO frustrating.
I feel like a lot of these people are also assuming that all or most physically disabled people are disabled in ways that wheelchairs and scooters are a thing they need to use (and have access to) and that’s ALSO not the case. Because when disabled people are acknowledged I usually see it as like “Well with more sidewalks and no cars, wheelchair-users will be safer!” and like. Sure, for wheelchair-users who are able to go that far and don’t have other health conditions, that would be great. But there are a lot of other types of disabilities.
Extreme weather has been more of a problem as climate change has progressed, and hot and cold temperatures can negatively impact a lot of disabled people’s health in a lot of ways. (Or even if you DO have an electric wheelchair or scooter, cold weather can make the battery crap out, which can leave you stranded.) It was 90 degrees where I live for most of last month! Disabled people are also more likely to be on medications that increase your risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.
Or if you live somewhere that gets really icy in winter, where it can be unsafe for people whose disabilities affect balance (or people with low bone density - and especially a lot of elderly people) to walk very far outdoors. Falls can and do kill people, or leave them even more seriously disabled.
Or the air quality is garbage due to wildfires, and you, an asthmatic person, need to minimize your time outdoors as much as possible so that you can continue breathing.
If you have a condition that causes fatigue, there’s a timer with a hard limit on your excursions out of the house (and even out of bed for a lot of people). Ask @lynati how many times I’ve damaged myself because I took a trolley to get groceries, overestimated my energy levels, and hurt myself carrying them back to the house, and then been unable to walk for the next two days. And I live in a city with halfway decent public transit!
And that’s BEFORE you get into how public transit and things like taxis can be actively hostile to people who use mobility devices.
More public transit and better sidewalks and everything are great, and people should be able to function in society without driving, but there’s just not going to be a society where public transit works for 100% of people 100% of the time. It’s unreasonable to expect that disabled people should be okay with just being trapped inside their homes indefinitely, and you can’t just go “Well it’ll be figured out later”.
I just watched a Tom Scott video about a city where they have banned private vehicles, and (as Tom Scott himself said) it’s not perfect. It wouldn’t necessarily be practical for every city, and indeed this city is in a unique location so they were able to build to that requirement, but it works for them.
There are busses and taxis, emergency response vehicles, and delivery and work vehicles. That’s it.
Again, not perfect, but our current system (for most cities around the world) is worse. Requiring taxi companies to change their fleets to accommodate disabled people and their devices (including mobility and other devices) would be a possible solution, as well as having government supplements for taxis. In Aotearoa New Zealand, a disabled people can apply for a taxi discount card and that will supplement most of your trip. That is a possible solution also.
I feel like a lot of people going “Well the government could step in and provide alternatives for disabled people” have never had to try to wring transportation accommodations out of the government as a disabled person.
I’m not currently able to get Non-Emergency Medical Transportation to get to my doctor’s appointments - a thing that theoretically my insurance does cover and that is part of the ACA! - because:
- I had my doctor fill out the form
- The form also says in bold that if your disability is caused by alcohol, drugs, or “obesity”, they won’t provide transportation. So, you know, fuck those people if they need medical care, I guess.
- (To be clear, in any of these cases, it can be denied because “You had a disability and had a substance abuse problem at the same time.” or “You had a disability while also being fat.” It doesn’t actually need to be a causal relationship in practice.)
- I didn’t hear anything from the office with the Department of Transporation that covers this, and I called to ask they said “Oh, it was denied.”
- I asked why it was denied. They said “Your doctor filled out the form wrong.”
- I asked “Could you tell me what she needs to do differently, so I can tell her?”
- “No, we don’t give out that information.”
- “Well how can she fill it out correctly if I can’t tell her it was done wrong?”
- “We don’t give out that information”
- “Okay I get what you’re saying, but do you have guidelines on how the form needs to be filled out?”
- “No. But we can send you another copy.”
- “But. If I don’t know what was done incorrectly-”
- I asked “Well could my orthopedist fill it out, since she has a better understanding of the injury?” and they said no it HAS to be your primary care doctor and we’ll check it against your insurance..
- My primary care doctor I actually see is not the same as my primary care doctor on paper, because the low-income clinic I go to for my primary care needs is chronically short-staffed and tends to shuffle people around. I’ve met the woman who’s “officially” my PCP once in 2 ½ years. She wasn’t very helpful.
- Also a lot of doctors just don’t want to be fucking bothered with doing disability paperwork and will refuse to do it no matter how obviously you need accommodations.
And, even if you get it, you have to provide notice three days in advance of each trip, and it can take hours to be picked up on either end of your trip. And sometimes they just plain do not show up.
So, from my perspective, as a person with chronic pain, who just had surgery and has spent the last six weeks having to have a friend wrestle one of these down two flights of stairs and into the car any time I needed to go anywhere:
The current system - while flawed - IS a lot better than banning cars.
“Ban personal vehicles” should be the FINAL stage in a walkable community.
First - add public transit; make sure it goes everywhere so that nobody has to walk more than a quarter-mile to get to a transit stop. Make it run frequently enough and have enough cross-connections that the difference between driving & transit is negligible, or at least, there’s not more than 20% extra time for taking transit. Often, public transit should take less time - trains are faster than cars.
(My 15-mile trip to work is 30 minutes on public transit… including walking a few blocks at either end. It’s about that in a car - in mid-afternoon. During rush hour, it’s about double that, plus gas & a bridge toll that add up to more than a round-trip ticket.) (And that’s before we get to parking costs in downtown SF.)
Put the bus stops at the doors of major shopping centers, not on the other side of the parking lot or around the block, half a mile away, so that anyone who needs to carry packages can’t use the bus. Make sure the bus stops have shade and seats.
(“But homeless people might sleep in them!” …honey, if homeless people are sleeping in bus stops, the problem is not that they have found shelter there; it’s that they haven’t found shelter elsewhere. Work on that too.)
Next - Make the place more walk-friendly. Sidewalks everywhere. Ramps where they connect to streets. Bike lanes. Trees. Benches. Benches with shade. Zoning reform to allow multi-family housing, small businesses, parks, schools, and “third spaces” like libraries or rec centers - all nearby each other.
Add some fucking public restrooms, dammit. And water fountains. And some kid-friendly artwork.
Next, as the effects from those cause ripples, look at redesigning the streets. Are they wider than they need to be for the traffic you want, rather than the traffic that currently uses them? Ripping out streets to replace them is expensive - but eventually, they need repairs, or changes to the street plan to allow for new homes or businesses, in which case… make actual changes instead of prioritizing 4 lanes of car traffic.
Eventually, you may wind up with “ban all personal vehicles and only leave spaces for emergency access.” But first: You make the place walk-friendly and slower for personal vehicles; those who need them can still use them; those who don’t, will use the other options, because they will be both convenient and pleasant for most people.
No banning cars until
- There is a robust public transit service in place - and by “robust,” I mean “can easily be navigated by a 9-year-old traveling alone, an 80-year-old using a walker, and a mom with two preschool kids doing shopping,” from any neighborhood in the city. (Psst “easily navigated” includes “easily afforded.”) (Need funding for that? Stop subsidizing cars.)
- Throw in “easy parking at transit center hubs” and make sure disability access is not “four parking spaces, half a block away from the transit entrance.”
- Public “walkable” areas don’t just have walkways but rest places - benches, shade, water, restrooms, access to food & commerce in easy distance. (No “must walk five blocks to get out of the business district to find a food place that’s not a coffee shop.”)
AFTER those are in place and functional… THEN you start talking about restricting personal auto use in the area. And that doesn’t mean “then you ban cars” but “then–and not before then–you research how cars are actually being used in the area.”
Because odds are, you don’t have to ban cars at all.
