Introduction | Method | Hypotheses | Advocacy | Case Studies | Recommendations

Recommendations

The intent of this project, as envisioned in the original RFP, was as follows:

“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.”

It became clear early in the project that the challenge to ensuring accessible pedestrian environments was less a problem of insufficient information than of a continuing gap between reliable guidance and practice. Addressing that gap is a priority of these recommendations.

Issue #1: Transform the Roadway Design Culture

Attention to pedestrian facilities and a commitment to accessible environments must occur at the planning, design, construction and maintenance stages. Anything less than sustained attention across all stages of development compromises the likelihood of a reliable result. To succeed, it will be necessary to develop a strategy for shifting the current political thinking and culture about roadway design.  This is a big job that is addressed in more detail in the later recommendations. 

Recommendations:

1. Link accessibility to other innovative values coming into transportation agencies, such as Context-Sensitive Solutions (CSS) and complete streets. Many states are now working to “mainstream” CSS principles into everyday practice, and this mainstreaming could be an avenue for changing procedures and practice for disability access.
2. Since innovation research shows that innovations that are re-invented have the most success in implementation, look for ways to help agencies embrace change as their own. See Issue #4.
3. Proponents of inclusive pedestrian environments should join forces with other groups looking to change the design culture, including Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinators and Advisory Committees, and external groups advocating for multi-modalism, smart growth/livability, and health. This is outlined in more detail in Issue #3.

Issue #2: Work to elevate accessible pedestrian rights-of-way to the same status, responsibility and funding as automobile rights-of-way.

With good guidance materials in place both for accessibility and for the general pedestrian environment, the barriers that remain are often in responsibility and funding.

Recommendations:

1. Advocate for unifying responsibility so that the entity building and improving the road takes that responsibility all the way to the edge of the right-of-way. The state of Indiana; Arlington, VA; Colorado Springs, Colorado, and a number of other jurisdictions have instituted such policies, and the New Jersey sidewalks report recommends this step. This issue is just now being explored by a volunteer subcommittee of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Planners, and is of strong interest to the National Complete Streets Coalition. Proponents of inclusive pedestrian environments could play a critical role by supporting a national study to explore the situation, develop of best practices guidance, and create model regulations. Conducting such research from a perspective of disability access is wholly new ground and resulting reports would be tremendously valuable.
2. Create educational materials and workshops that highlight the funding available for creating accessible sidewalks. A guidebook identifying funding possibilities would be very useful, particularly in smaller jurisdictions where officials are not well versed in the types of funding available.  Before embarking on such a project, be sure to review a Surface Transportation Policy Project guide to the federal transportation law, due out in November of 2006.
3. Support the national movement for complete streets policies, which are being adopted in jurisdictions across the country. Become involved in the three-step campaign now being pursued by the National Complete Streets Coalition.
4. Support initiatives to improve communication between transit and road agencies and to create systems for coordinating road projects that affect transit corridors. Consider creating training workshops that bring together road designers and transit planners who work in the same locality.

Issue #3: Make Pedestrian Advocates Committed Allies

As the chapter on Pedestrian Advocacy Movements shows, the national groundswell of pedestrian advocacy offers countless vehicles for promoting and incorporating accessible pedestrian design. It is a readily available opportunity at both the national and local levels and creates ideal opportunities for personal and organizational advocacy and collaboration.  Advocates are accustomed to focusing on outcomes and already trying to break through the roadway design culture.  It would be relatively easy to dramatically expand the number of advocates looking out for the needs of disabled pedestrians by educating the ready-to-listen cadre of advocates identified in the “Pedestrian Advocacy Movements” section of this report.

Recommendations:

1. Create an outreach campaign to some of the groups listed in the Pedestrian Advocacy Movement section. Such a campaign should not be limited narrowly to ‘pedestrian advocates’ but should reach into smart growth and public health circles. Activities could include:
• Attend, raise questions, and present at their conferences
• Create a full or half-day training program on accessibility aimed at these advocates that can be presented in conjunction with their conferences. Existing training materials developed by APBP, FHWA and ITE can be the starting point for this training. But training materials will need to be extensively adapted to this more general audience that does not have a professional background as planners or engineers. The training should emphasize not the micro-details of design, but the general principles and the ways that these advocates can influence the design process.
• Set up meetings with these organizations to find ways to incorporate disability into their existing advocacy projects Ask them to create a new project that aims to educate their constituency about accessible design, use their current strengths to directly influence the project development and construction process to ensure accessible outcomes.
2. Create short easy-to-digest educational materials that organizations can plug in to their existing work to explain the basics of accessibility to as broad a range of advocates as possible. These materials should seek to decrease the complexity of reaching these standards while emphasizing their compatibility with the values of these organizations. Write and widely distribute a single page that describes the current failure to meet accessibility standards and the positive outcomes of an accessible pedestrian environment, while providing a link to more detailed accessibility resources.
3. Enlist the bicycle/pedestrian coordinators at the state Departments of Transportation to strategize on changing the culture within their agency. Provide material for them to use inside their departments that helps frame the issue to emphasize that designing to the needs of disabled people is an inclusive standard that helps everyone.
4. Educate and enlist Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committees that function at the state, regional and local level. Offer them a modified version of the training listed above, and a toolkit that includes the funding guidebook.

Issue #4: Integrate good design information into standard materials and construction practice

This involves three steps – spreading awareness of the excellent existing materials, encouraging full integration, and encouraging agencies to make the recommendations their own.  In all cases, cultivation of influential champions within agencies will make this process more successful.

Recommendations:

1. a. Create a general communications campaign that includes materials that aim to simplify what looks like a daunting, legalistic process, and frame it in terms appealing to the target audience of planners and engineers.  These materials should:
   • Downplay the apparent complexity of accessibility guidelines by boiling it down to the basic steps needed to meet accessibility requirements
   • Highlight the compatibility with existing authority (such as the Green Book)
   • Frame the issue in terms of the needs of planners and engineers such as increased safety, lower costs.
   • Include compelling success stories that illustrate best practices
   A communications consulting firm and focus group work would help get this right.
2. Encourage agencies to adopt high-level policies that make an explicit commitment to creating accessible streets. While this may seem unnecessary since this is required by law, such policies can spark discussion and re-evaluation of procedures. See recommendation 2-c above.
3. Launch an initiative to encourage transportation agencies to embrace and make accessibility their own. This could mean creating hands-on workshops to help agencies systematically integrate accessibility guidelines into their home-grown existing manuals, or even individual consultation. The field needs to integrate into guidance material the concept of accessibility so that a sidewalk that is not accessible is not a sidewalk; a street crossing that is not accessible is not a street crossing; etc. “Accessible” should not be seen as separate realm. Proponents of inclusive pedestrian environments could also encourage the creation of localized accessibility guidance materials and trainings designed to cover everyone involved in the road construction process, including contractors.
4. While the literature review found that specific construction guidance is lacking, creating these products should be part of the internal re-invention of the standards mentioned above.
5. Research and advocate for systems that create incentives for accessible project outcomes.

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