Hypotheses

From inception, this project focused on the fit between knowledge and application of that knowledge. Regardless of the breadth and quality of good materials about accessible pedestrian environments, there remain significant gaps in the use of the guidance. The original language of the RFP expresses it clearly:

Objective: "Identify, collect, organize, describe and analyze available materials from various sources regarding the pedestrian right-of-way including those that increase awareness of the need for an accessible pedestrian environment for people with disabilities and seniors, provide guidance on building and sustaining such environments and establish policies, procedures and practices that incorporate such a focus as an integral component of short and long-term planning."

Intent: "To produce a comprehensive, organized, annotated description and analysis of current materials addressing the training of practitioners and the creation of, design and maintenance of accessible pedestrian environments using as a starting point the elements prescribed in the US Access Board guidelines to reveal gaps in the current body of knowledge that will enable ESPA and others to focus future activities."

The following hypotheses about pedestrian accessibility were generated initially from immersion in the literature and subjecting the material to analysis. Draft hypotheses were reviewed with the National Advisory Board and extensively modified by a consultant with expertise in non-motorized transportation issues. The brief evaluation of accessibility requirements using innovation diffusion theory was conducted to further enhance the framing of the final recommendations.

Hypotheses

This project began with an intent to identify literature, and it did identify good literature on the planning for and design of the pedestrian realm. In general, though there are some gaps related to guidance on construction and choice of materials, there is sufficient quality guidance to produce a good pedestrian environment that works for disabled people. The real issue is in implementation.
Planning for pedestrians in general is not well integrated into the overall transportation planning and design field, which emphasizes design for automobile travel. The transportation profession in the United States is traditionally oriented toward improving “throughput” for automobiles, and has been dominated by engineers trained for the Interstate era. This orientation has resulted in a research paradigm dominated by engineering solutions for machines (automobiles).
As a result, pedestrian design, practice, and research have until recently focused on minimum provisions that allow pedestrian activity but keep motorized traffic moving. Guidelines continue to stress the problem in terms of people in relation to cars; issues are framed from the point of view of the person in the vehicle; pedestrians are those things that delay your progress. The goal of creating an ideal or even inviting pedestrian environment is fairly new to the field.
The bias toward providing for a single mode is pervasive, and shows up not just in attitudes, but in the structure of responsibilities and funding systems:
1. In many communities, responsibility for the sidewalk portion of the right-of-way is split off from the portion reserved for cars. On state highways State DOTs often leave this responsibility to local governments, which have fewer resources and less expertise. And local governments often make sidewalks the responsibility of the adjacent landowner, which only compounds the problem. Landowners may resist sidewalks even if a government pays for them, because they usually must maintain them. The New Jersey DOT and the Alan M. Vorhees Center recently issued a report on sidewalk construction and maintenance in New Jersey, which includes a national assessment and overview. (Chapters 1 and 2 are recommended reading.) It states, “As a result of the complicated and multi-layered responsibility for sidewalk siting, construction and maintenance, varied municipal ordinances, and varied perceptions among decision makers about the need for sidewalks, the current sidewalk network in New Jersey is fragmentary and incomplete. This network has less utility than a complete network because potential pedestrians may forgo walking trips if they cannot rely on the presence of a safe facility all the way to their destinations.”
2. Funding for facilities serving pedestrians and transit users is often excluded from the traditional transportation funding stream. In some states this is attributed to constitutional and statutory measures dating from the early part of the last century that restrict gas tax funds to “highway uses.” For sidewalk and bikeway construction this may be red herring, as a number of states with these restrictions fund sidewalks anyway. But most states interpret these restrictions to exclude transit funding. These limitations mean planners must be highly motivated to find and use funding for non-motorized improvements. Yet many transportation agencies are unaware of the variety of funding sources available from both federal and local sources. For example, sidewalk, traffic calming, and accessibility projects are eligible for Surface Transportation Program funds, but in many states STP funds are almost uniformly allocated to traditional highway projects. Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) funding will pay 100% for some signalization projects, but is rarely used for this purpose.
3. The transit systems on which so many disabled people rely are funded and usually operated separately from the road network, and coordination between transit providers and road-builders is poor, resulting in inaccessible transit stops.
The failure to integrate general pedestrian planning is compounded in guidance for accessible pedestrian rights-of-way. The system prioritizes the needs of the majority users of the road network. Design “deviations” must be “warranted;” for example, safety improvements are prioritized based on the number of crashes at an intersection. Research has been based on linear analyses in which the design user is an able-bodied adult. Disability and aging are considered deviations from the means. Just as we design roads for the use of cars, trucks, buses and emergency vehicles, a fundamental shift is needed to broaden the scope of pedestrian design. A primary focus on meeting the needs of people with disabilities and older people is a means of ensuring that everyone’s needs are met.
There is a failure to fully integrate guidance on pedestrian rights of way into the most commonly used reference materials in the field among the various responsible disciplines. The AASHTO Green Book, the bible of transportation engineers, includes strong language endorsing design for pedestrians, such as the statement that “Sidewalks are integral parts of city streets.” Yet thorough pedestrian design standards are separate from Green Book, published in a Pedestrian design manual (see literature review). This is doubly true for accessible pedestrian design. When there is instruction, it is usually in the form of reference to a separate manual on accessible design that cannot be guaranteed to be on hand.
Transportation engineers look to design manuals to tell them exactly how to engineer a road. They tend to respond to federal regulations on accessibility in the same way, even though the minimums and maximums are set to serve a regulatory framework, not a design purpose. As a result, a focus on meeting the minimum standard often results in a barely acceptable right-of-way. A fundamental weakness of the current system is the inability of either engineering manuals or federal regulations to define desired outcomes or communicate best practices. Manuals and regulations fail to encourage the flexibility and innovation that are needed to meet the challenge of designing an inviting pedestrian environment that is also accessible. The other characteristic of regulations that may contribute to misunderstanding and poor interpretation is that regulations don’t include a rationale for specific requirements that is based upon actual user needs.
In part because of hypothesis six, there is often a breakdown in the coordination of sequential tasks from planning and design to construction and maintenance that jeopardize accessible pedestrian design. The lack of a clear vision of the desired outcome too often results in failed and inaccessible projects.
There is a missed opportunity to integrate as fully as possible the issue of accessible pedestrian rights of way into the principles and positions of groups that are working to change the fundamental paradigm expressed in hypothesis 2. While many grassroots pedestrian advocacy groups have begun to talk about accessibility issues, larger organizations with more clout that are working for walkable communities and transportation reform often give accessibility short shrift. Accessibility issues are absent from the discussion of many of these groups.

Supplement: Diffusion Innovation Analysis

A helpful way to look at the issue of improving accessible pedestrian design is innovation diffusion theory. Pioneered by Everett Rogers, this field seeks to analyze how innovations (such as building accessible streets) are spread, adopted and implemented. Under this theory, the adoption of innovations is a dynamic process that involves the receptivity of the adopter, the characteristics of the innovation, and much more. This is only a brief exploration intended to spark further discussion.

Characteristics of Innovations

Innovation diffusion theory names five characteristics that influence whether something new is easily adopted: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. A quick look at three of the characteristics of accessibility standards reveals that this is not an easy sell.

The Relative Advantage is the degree to which the innovation is better than what it replaced. While the advantage of a well-designed ramp is clear to the disabled user, it may be much less clear to the agency installing it. In this case, relative advantage is considerably enhanced by the existence of a strong incentive – avoiding breaking federal law. But such mandates often lead to low-quality adoption, as we see with accessible streets.

Compatibility is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as consistent with existing values, past experiences, and needs of adopters. As outlined in the hypotheses, accessibility is incompatible with the way typical highway engineers and road departments operate in two ways: the emphasis on the pedestrian environment is foreign, and the emphasis on providing for a low number of users is counter to the orientation to design for the majority of users. Also, meeting accessibility standards may not appear to meet a known need of the adopting agency. However, engineers highly value safety, so the more that creating an accessible environment can be shown to be a safety issue, the more likely it will be accepted.

Complexity is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as relatively difficult to understand and use. Unfortunately, the complexity of correctly building accessible environments is high. Accessibility requires both precision (such as meeting specific slope requirements) and flexibility (such as non-standard designs on varying terrain). So educational materials emphasize that there is no such thing as a standard curb ramp, yet set clear minimum and maximum standards that may be a challenge to implement, particularly in already developed areas. Additionally, there is a difference in the requirements of the regulations for new construction, alteration, and existing facilities.

Adoption of Innovations by Organizations

The research shows that in organizations, the biggest issue for new ideas is not around adoption, but around implementation. This is certainly the case in accessibility requirements, which are mandated by the federal government and have been around for a long time – yet implementation is still a struggle. Why?

Of five stages identified for the organizational adoption of innovation, three surround implementation:

3. Redefining/restructuring
Both the innovation and the organization usually change during the innovation process. Innovations from outside often fail when adopters are provided with no opportunities to re-invent. Transportation agencies are highly formalized agencies that rely on carefully established standards, which tend to resist innovation. Yet these standards are restructured, as when state Departments of Transportation adopt their own versions of the AASHTO Green Book as their state design manual.

4. Clarifying
As it goes into more widespread use, the meaning of the new idea gradually becomes clearer to the organization. The framing of the innovation is important at this stage. Are accessibility standards framed as a social justice task, a legal requirement, a safety standard, an issue of quality transportation, or something else? It may be fruitful to examine this further.

5. Routinizing/Institutionalization
Institutionalization is the final stage, when the innovation is incorporated into regular activities. This is the challenge faced in accessibility standards and for pedestrian design in general. The Complete Streets movement is specifically aimed at breaking through this problem of institutionalization. Research shows that innovations that have been adopted through collective decision-making are more likely to reach this stage. The top-down nature of accessibility standards may preclude such collective decision-making. This may increase the importance of finding an innovation ‘champion’ who can push for adoption.

The innovation diffusion research suggests that future activities to encourage creation of accessible pedestrian environments should seek to increase compatibility and decrease complexity while helping agencies restructure, clarify, and institutionalize accessibility standards.

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