Q: As long as I can remember, probably since Village West shopping center was built at Cedar Crest and Tilghman streets, there was a curb-cut and wheelchair ramp in front of what is now the Dollar Tree store. Handicapped people, either walking or in wheelchairs, had wonderful access to the sidewalk from the parking lot. Recently when I dropped off my wife at the entrance to Dollar Tree, I noticed that the ramp is gone, having been replaced by a regular high curb and no ramp. There is no other curb-cut all the way to the north end of the row of stores. Removing sidewalk features for the handicapped seems like a return to the Dark Ages. Wheelchair riders beware!
— Wally Ely, Allentown
A: This would appear to be a very unusual situation, Wally. Since the federal Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990, we've been adding curb-cuts and wheelchair ramps all across the land. Eliminating an existing ramp would seem to qualify as heavily conflicting traffic — going the wrong way on a one-way street.
There is an explanation though, according to officials at Giant Markets, which renovated their store just to the south of where the ramp had been.
As part of the extensive store renovation completed in early October, the shopping-center parking lot was reconfigured, and spaces reserved for handicapped patrons were added, including four that are now positioned directly in front of the C. Leslie Smith jewelry shop to the north, according to Giant spokesman Christopher Brand. To better match the location of the reserved spaces, the ramp that had been in front of Dollar Tree was relocated to a point directly in front of Leslie Smith, Brand said. He sent me a copy of the plans to illustrate.
Only one problem: The planned new wheelchair ramp does not exist. At least, not yet, as it turns out.
"They're not quite finished out there," said South Whitehall Township Planner Gregg Adams, adding that the relocated ramp has yet to be installed.
Brand, who'd been looking into the situation at the same time, confirmed that scenario the next time he got back to me. The new curb-cut and ramp should be installed in front of C. Leslie Smith by the end of the year, Brand said. As specified in the renovation plans, it will be conveniently close to the reserved parking spaces.
This was a perplexing situation in first gear, in part because, as I said, we're familiar with ADA accommodations being added, so the creation of a physical impediment to access, which this basically amounted to, is a very rare model. But at the end of the road, the solution was included in the plans; it's only a matter of timing.
Before he found out that the previous ramp would be restored at a different place, Brand said its loss, whether allowed by law or not, was inconvenient for customers, and agreed to try to do something about it. He said he'd talk to other company officials "to see what we can do to make some accommodation. Obviously we're looking to solve this [problem]," but they'd have to work with the owners of the shopping center to do so, Brand said at the time. It turns out that no further administrative action is needed; only the physical work is yet to come. But Brand's comments before we knew that revealed a clear intention to fix the problem. That's not necessarily a common model on Corporate Street.
So things worked out pretty well here. By my count, there were 13 handicap spaces previously, and 16 now, with several of them closer to the ramp-to-be. (That's the lot between the Giant and adjacent row of stores only, not including the separate lots around the steak house, drug store, and the smaller strip to the south, which were not changed). And the handicap access to the grocery store itself was enlarged and improved, including the addition of the familiar "detectable warning surfaces" with raised nubs or "truncated cones" to provide a tactile sensation underfoot for the visually impaired. That's all to the good.
I still had to wonder why the "old" ramp at Dollar Tree wasn't simply restored, in addition to the other improvements. The concrete was being replaced anyway; why not simply restore the ramp, providing more access than required? Brand couldn't answer that one.
But Amy Beck could. "We think the removal of the [former] ramp actually makes sense," said the executive director of the Lehigh Valley Center for Independent Living, an advocacy group for handicapped residents. That's because the old ramp basically directed pedestrians or wheelchairs into the parking lot, Beck said, and though chevron markings guard the sidewalk, no crosswalk markings lead to any parking spaces, handicap or otherwise. "We thought it would be pretty dangerous to put a ramp there," she said.
I hadn't thought of it that way, but she's right. A bright-yellow crosswalk marking paints a pedestrian path from the new reserved spaces to the new ramp — or actually, to where the new ramp will be — and vice-versa.
In their entirety, the new traffic and pedestrian plans satisfy ADA requirements, Beck said.
At the end of the road, handicap access at Village West is better than it was before — or it will be when the new ramp is installed.
Road Warrior appears Mondays and Fridays, and the Warrior blogs at mcall.com. Mail questions about roadways, traffic and transportation, with your name and the municipality where you live, to hartzell@mcall.com, or write to Road Warrior, Box 1260, Allentown, PA 18105-1260.
