Bike lanes violate disability access laws, new lawsuit says

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

How will that solve the problem?

It would solve the problem of cars parking and driving in bike lanes very much. It would also provide parked / stopped vehicles with direct access to the curb. Set the bike lane back a few feet from the curb and add a sidewalk across the lane and it's as good as gold. Some other ideas here: https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/ada_compliant_protected_bike_lanes. I'm not here to be an apologist for DDOT, who mess many things up, but the notion that bike lanes are generally incompatible with the ADA is just silly.

Are disabled people suing because cars are parked in “protected bike lanes”? It’s honestly pretty disturbing that you can be so self centered as to think that the “solution” is to improve your experience using bike lanes. Do you bother to listen to yourself?

Furthermore, the Plaintiffs are clear and say repeatedly that they DO NOT believe that bike lanes are incompatible with the needs of the disabled.

Maybe I'm being a little Panglossian, but I'd like to think that disability advocates would be interested in making the lanes as safe as possible for users - which include those confined to wheelchairs - so as to minimize the probability of those who use them being injured or worse.

No one is confined to a wheelchair. The fact that you use such an ableist term shows that you don't know anything about what people who use wheelchairs need.

People who are using wheelchairs are pedestrians. They don't belong in bike lanes. They are not safe there. They belong on the sidewalk. A solution that prevents motor vehicles from being in bike lanes might be needed to protect cyclists, but this is a suit that addresses the need to protect people with disabilities that impact mobility.

Yes, it's possible to design a raised bike lane that also protects people in wheelchairs, but raising the bike lane doesn't make wheelchair users safe. In fact, it makes them less safe, because as I posted above, sometimes a vehicle has to move into a poorly designed bike lane to allow someone with a disability to access the sidewalk, and raising the bike lane prevents that. It basically transfers the danger from the person who needs their wheelchair to the person whose hobby is biking.

And no, it's not "Panglossian" to say that we should care about your issue instead of ours.

Why persistently paint this as a zero sum game when it isn't? Bike lane users regularly advocate for designs that are mindful of those with disabilities, such as those posted above. Likewise disability advocates can and do advocate for bike lanes that provide greater safety for cyclists. The fact that you and some of those who filed those lawsuit are dead set on trying to depict cyclists as dead set on seeking to disadvantage disabled people (and spread nonsense that people only bike as a "hobby") is a clear tell that you ulterior motives are at play. You can perhaps fool a few members of the general public when lazy journalists simply reprint your press releases. Fooling the justice system is going to be quite a bit harder.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure how many people here have even seen the lanes in question. The main obstacle to curb access on 17th Street is the streateries. The bike lanes have all the appearances of being full compliant with the ADA, although DDOT could improve curb access for disabled people by restricting more of the parking spaces adjacent to sidewalks for drivers with disabilities and drivers carrying persons with disabilities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

If you bothered to respect disabled people enough to read the complaint or even an article about the lawsuit, you would learn that they contend that exiting into a bike lane is unsafe and that this the core ADA violation. Secondary to that I’d navigating the curb. Elevating the bike lanes would not cure the ADA violation. What would cure the violation is providing curb access to sidewalks for disabled people to disembark safely.

So we can reserve a space on each block for disabled pickup/drop off. Right?

Why don’t you ask disabled people. Better yet, DDOT should have asked disabled people before instituting these designs. The article in DCist was quite clear that disability groups have been trying to communicate their needs to the Mayors office and DDOT and were ignored, which is why they had to sue. It’s unfortunate that it has had to come to this for the district to take the rights of the disabled seriously.

^^this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure how many people here have even seen the lanes in question. The main obstacle to curb access on 17th Street is the streateries. The bike lanes have all the appearances of being full compliant with the ADA, although DDOT could improve curb access for disabled people by restricting more of the parking spaces adjacent to sidewalks for drivers with disabilities and drivers carrying persons with disabilities.

You don’t even know what “full compliance with the ADA” means. Nice try though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure how many people here have even seen the lanes in question. The main obstacle to curb access on 17th Street is the streateries. The bike lanes have all the appearances of being full compliant with the ADA, although DDOT could improve curb access for disabled people by restricting more of the parking spaces adjacent to sidewalks for drivers with disabilities and drivers carrying persons with disabilities.

You don’t even know what “full compliance with the ADA” means. Nice try though.

Well, thankfully we are going to find out. I suspect, though, that if those bringing the lawsuit actually thought they had a case with actual merit they wouldn’t have spent so much space race-baiting. It’s a shame that our journalists are now so lazy that they didn’t bother to look into the history of those who signed off on this dilatory gambit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

How will that solve the problem?

It would solve the problem of cars parking and driving in bike lanes very much. It would also provide parked / stopped vehicles with direct access to the curb. Set the bike lane back a few feet from the curb and add a sidewalk across the lane and it's as good as gold. Some other ideas here: https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/ada_compliant_protected_bike_lanes. I'm not here to be an apologist for DDOT, who mess many things up, but the notion that bike lanes are generally incompatible with the ADA is just silly.

Are disabled people suing because cars are parked in “protected bike lanes”? It’s honestly pretty disturbing that you can be so self centered as to think that the “solution” is to improve your experience using bike lanes. Do you bother to listen to yourself?

Furthermore, the Plaintiffs are clear and say repeatedly that they DO NOT believe that bike lanes are incompatible with the needs of the disabled.

Maybe I'm being a little Panglossian, but I'd like to think that disability advocates would be interested in making the lanes as safe as possible for users - which include those confined to wheelchairs - so as to minimize the probability of those who use them being injured or worse.

No one is confined to a wheelchair. The fact that you use such an ableist term shows that you don't know anything about what people who use wheelchairs need.

People who are using wheelchairs are pedestrians. They don't belong in bike lanes. They are not safe there. They belong on the sidewalk. A solution that prevents motor vehicles from being in bike lanes might be needed to protect cyclists, but this is a suit that addresses the need to protect people with disabilities that impact mobility.

Yes, it's possible to design a raised bike lane that also protects people in wheelchairs, but raising the bike lane doesn't make wheelchair users safe. In fact, it makes them less safe, because as I posted above, sometimes a vehicle has to move into a poorly designed bike lane to allow someone with a disability to access the sidewalk, and raising the bike lane prevents that. It basically transfers the danger from the person who needs their wheelchair to the person whose hobby is biking.

And no, it's not "Panglossian" to say that we should care about your issue instead of ours.

Please feel free to go and tell them that they “belong on the sidewalk”. I doubt they care much for your advocacy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

How will that solve the problem?

It would solve the problem of cars parking and driving in bike lanes very much. It would also provide parked / stopped vehicles with direct access to the curb. Set the bike lane back a few feet from the curb and add a sidewalk across the lane and it's as good as gold. Some other ideas here: https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/ada_compliant_protected_bike_lanes. I'm not here to be an apologist for DDOT, who mess many things up, but the notion that bike lanes are generally incompatible with the ADA is just silly.

Are disabled people suing because cars are parked in “protected bike lanes”? It’s honestly pretty disturbing that you can be so self centered as to think that the “solution” is to improve your experience using bike lanes. Do you bother to listen to yourself?

Furthermore, the Plaintiffs are clear and say repeatedly that they DO NOT believe that bike lanes are incompatible with the needs of the disabled.

Maybe I'm being a little Panglossian, but I'd like to think that disability advocates would be interested in making the lanes as safe as possible for users - which include those confined to wheelchairs - so as to minimize the probability of those who use them being injured or worse.

No one is confined to a wheelchair. The fact that you use such an ableist term shows that you don't know anything about what people who use wheelchairs need.

People who are using wheelchairs are pedestrians. They don't belong in bike lanes. They are not safe there. They belong on the sidewalk. A solution that prevents motor vehicles from being in bike lanes might be needed to protect cyclists, but this is a suit that addresses the need to protect people with disabilities that impact mobility.

Yes, it's possible to design a raised bike lane that also protects people in wheelchairs, but raising the bike lane doesn't make wheelchair users safe. In fact, it makes them less safe, because as I posted above, sometimes a vehicle has to move into a poorly designed bike lane to allow someone with a disability to access the sidewalk, and raising the bike lane prevents that. It basically transfers the danger from the person who needs their wheelchair to the person whose hobby is biking.

And no, it's not "Panglossian" to say that we should care about your issue instead of ours.

Please feel free to go and tell them that they “belong on the sidewalk”. I doubt they care much for your advocacy.

Two of those are scooters and one is a walker. None of them are wheelchairs.

I can find pictures of cyclist on the street does that mean they don’t deserve access to a bike lane?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point is, the same people opposing the bike lanes and complaining about the racial lens the ANC is about to consider, want to use the same racial lens to potentially fight the bike lanes.

What is the "racial lens that the ANC is about to consider"?

Cycling is the whitest thing ever. Seriously, name something whiter.

Lacrosse.

[Anonymous]

I have been physically disabled from birth. The ableism in every aspect of every day life is rampant and most people don’t even acknowledge it or care. Just remember, we are a group any person can suddenly find themselves a member of at any time. Don’t wait until then to re-evaluate.

I guarantee you there was not a single person with a physical disability that affected mobility in any part of the planning proceeds. There never is. It just doesn’t occur to people to actually ask people who are disabled what they might need or what might be an obstacle. Not before or after the fact. Ever. It just doesn’t cross anyone’s mind, to think maybe we should add some disability advocates or engineers on this project to make sure we are doing it right. Nope. Never. Seriously never.

This is how we end up with this crap. With lack of accessible curb cuts, with restaurant outdoor seating pods taking up all the disability parking, with bike lanes prevent access to the sidewalk, with idiots parking in the crosshatch next to a disabled space that prevents van access so the van ramp cannot be used, etc. We struggle and fight everyday. I’m so tired.

As for the Alexandria bike lane for blind people someone posted a few pages back, I am very familiar with that situation. The man who rules BPAC, a very successful BIL lobbyist group, volunteers with a blind cyclist organization that has blind people paired with non kind people to ride those double bikes together so the blind people can experience what it’s like to ride a bike. He had a bunch of blind people he knew through this organization contact the city stating that they thought it was too dangerous to cross seminary near Ft Williams, and that their lives depended on the city doing the road diet, adding the bike lanes, and putting a crosswalk in that was conveniently located directly in front of the BPAC’s head house. NONE of those blind people lived in that neighborhood. It was all orchestrated and calculated by BPAC and then his daughter told everyone about how clever he was. So basically he used his friends with disabilities for personal gain.

Same old same old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure how many people here have even seen the lanes in question. The main obstacle to curb access on 17th Street is the streateries. The bike lanes have all the appearances of being full compliant with the ADA, although DDOT could improve curb access for disabled people by restricting more of the parking spaces adjacent to sidewalks for drivers with disabilities and drivers carrying persons with disabilities.

You don’t even know what “full compliance with the ADA” means. Nice try though.

Well, thankfully we are going to find out. I suspect, though, that if those bringing the lawsuit actually thought they had a case with actual merit they wouldn’t have spent so much space race-baiting. It’s a shame that our journalists are now so lazy that they didn’t bother to look into the history of those who signed off on this dilatory gambit.

You’re an admitted conspiracy theorist about bike lanes. Do you realize how insane you sound? I guess not because you seem to believe it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure how many people here have even seen the lanes in question. The main obstacle to curb access on 17th Street is the streateries. The bike lanes have all the appearances of being full compliant with the ADA, although DDOT could improve curb access for disabled people by restricting more of the parking spaces adjacent to sidewalks for drivers with disabilities and drivers carrying persons with disabilities.

You don’t even know what “full compliance with the ADA” means. Nice try though.

Well, thankfully we are going to find out. I suspect, though, that if those bringing the lawsuit actually thought they had a case with actual merit they wouldn’t have spent so much space race-baiting. It’s a shame that our journalists are now so lazy that they didn’t bother to look into the history of those who signed off on this dilatory gambit.

You’re an admitted conspiracy theorist about bike lanes. Do you realize how insane you sound? I guess not because you seem to believe it.

Huh? Where's the conspiracy theory?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With any luck, the lawsuit will be upheld and the city will be forced to remedy the situation by raising the bike lanes to the same level as the sidewalk (as on Virginia Ave SE and The Wharf). This will have the added benefit of preventing cars and other motorized vehicles from parking or driving in them.

How will that solve the problem?

It would solve the problem of cars parking and driving in bike lanes very much. It would also provide parked / stopped vehicles with direct access to the curb. Set the bike lane back a few feet from the curb and add a sidewalk across the lane and it's as good as gold. Some other ideas here: https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/ada_compliant_protected_bike_lanes. I'm not here to be an apologist for DDOT, who mess many things up, but the notion that bike lanes are generally incompatible with the ADA is just silly.

Are disabled people suing because cars are parked in “protected bike lanes”? It’s honestly pretty disturbing that you can be so self centered as to think that the “solution” is to improve your experience using bike lanes. Do you bother to listen to yourself?

Furthermore, the Plaintiffs are clear and say repeatedly that they DO NOT believe that bike lanes are incompatible with the needs of the disabled.

Maybe I'm being a little Panglossian, but I'd like to think that disability advocates would be interested in making the lanes as safe as possible for users - which include those confined to wheelchairs - so as to minimize the probability of those who use them being injured or worse.

No one is confined to a wheelchair. The fact that you use such an ableist term shows that you don't know anything about what people who use wheelchairs need.

People who are using wheelchairs are pedestrians. They don't belong in bike lanes. They are not safe there. They belong on the sidewalk. A solution that prevents motor vehicles from being in bike lanes might be needed to protect cyclists, but this is a suit that addresses the need to protect people with disabilities that impact mobility.

Yes, it's possible to design a raised bike lane that also protects people in wheelchairs, but raising the bike lane doesn't make wheelchair users safe. In fact, it makes them less safe, because as I posted above, sometimes a vehicle has to move into a poorly designed bike lane to allow someone with a disability to access the sidewalk, and raising the bike lane prevents that. It basically transfers the danger from the person who needs their wheelchair to the person whose hobby is biking.

And no, it's not "Panglossian" to say that we should care about your issue instead of ours.

Please feel free to go and tell them that they “belong on the sidewalk”. I doubt they care much for your advocacy.

Two of those are scooters and one is a walker. None of them are wheelchairs.

I can find pictures of cyclist on the street does that mean they don’t deserve access to a bike lane?

Do you think splitting hairs makes you sound smart? Two of the three are electric mobility aids that can travel at more comfortable speeds in a bike lane than on the sidewalk. Which is why the users are operating them in the bike lane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have been physically disabled from birth. The ableism in every aspect of every day life is rampant and most people don’t even acknowledge it or care. Just remember, we are a group any person can suddenly find themselves a member of at any time. Don’t wait until then to re-evaluate.

I guarantee you there was not a single person with a physical disability that affected mobility in any part of the planning proceeds. There never is. It just doesn’t occur to people to actually ask people who are disabled what they might need or what might be an obstacle. Not before or after the fact. Ever. It just doesn’t cross anyone’s mind, to think maybe we should add some disability advocates or engineers on this project to make sure we are doing it right. Nope. Never. Seriously never.

This is how we end up with this crap. With lack of accessible curb cuts, with restaurant outdoor seating pods taking up all the disability parking, with bike lanes prevent access to the sidewalk, with idiots parking in the crosshatch next to a disabled space that prevents van access so the van ramp cannot be used, etc. We struggle and fight everyday. I’m so tired.

As for the Alexandria bike lane for blind people someone posted a few pages back, I am very familiar with that situation. The man who rules BPAC, a very successful BIL lobbyist group, volunteers with a blind cyclist organization that has blind people paired with non kind people to ride those double bikes together so the blind people can experience what it’s like to ride a bike. He had a bunch of blind people he knew through this organization contact the city stating that they thought it was too dangerous to cross seminary near Ft Williams, and that their lives depended on the city doing the road diet, adding the bike lanes, and putting a crosswalk in that was conveniently located directly in front of the BPAC’s head house. NONE of those blind people lived in that neighborhood. It was all orchestrated and calculated by BPAC and then his daughter told everyone about how clever he was. So basically he used his friends with disabilities for personal gain.

Same old same old.

Your problem isn’t bike lanes. It’s people who think they deserve free off-street parking. We could reserve 4 spaces (one at each end of the block) for disables pick up/drop off. That would never happen. Don’t blame accessibility issues on transit advocates. Place blame where it belongs: the selfish car drivers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have been physically disabled from birth. The ableism in every aspect of every day life is rampant and most people don’t even acknowledge it or care. Just remember, we are a group any person can suddenly find themselves a member of at any time. Don’t wait until then to re-evaluate.

I guarantee you there was not a single person with a physical disability that affected mobility in any part of the planning proceeds. There never is. It just doesn’t occur to people to actually ask people who are disabled what they might need or what might be an obstacle. Not before or after the fact. Ever. It just doesn’t cross anyone’s mind, to think maybe we should add some disability advocates or engineers on this project to make sure we are doing it right. Nope. Never. Seriously never.

This is how we end up with this crap. With lack of accessible curb cuts, with restaurant outdoor seating pods taking up all the disability parking, with bike lanes prevent access to the sidewalk, with idiots parking in the crosshatch next to a disabled space that prevents van access so the van ramp cannot be used, etc. We struggle and fight everyday. I’m so tired.

As for the Alexandria bike lane for blind people someone posted a few pages back, I am very familiar with that situation. The man who rules BPAC, a very successful BIL lobbyist group, volunteers with a blind cyclist organization that has blind people paired with non kind people to ride those double bikes together so the blind people can experience what it’s like to ride a bike. He had a bunch of blind people he knew through this organization contact the city stating that they thought it was too dangerous to cross seminary near Ft Williams, and that their lives depended on the city doing the road diet, adding the bike lanes, and putting a crosswalk in that was conveniently located directly in front of the BPAC’s head house. NONE of those blind people lived in that neighborhood. It was all orchestrated and calculated by BPAC and then his daughter told everyone about how clever he was. So basically he used his friends with disabilities for personal gain.

Same old same old.

Your problem isn’t bike lanes. It’s people who think they deserve free off-street parking. We could reserve 4 spaces (one at each end of the block) for disables pick up/drop off. That would never happen. Don’t blame accessibility issues on transit advocates. Place blame where it belongs: the selfish car drivers.

And btw - the DDOT process includes extensive opportunities for public comment including by disability groups. It just is not true that disability groups could not participate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have been physically disabled from birth. The ableism in every aspect of every day life is rampant and most people don’t even acknowledge it or care. Just remember, we are a group any person can suddenly find themselves a member of at any time. Don’t wait until then to re-evaluate.

I guarantee you there was not a single person with a physical disability that affected mobility in any part of the planning proceeds. There never is. It just doesn’t occur to people to actually ask people who are disabled what they might need or what might be an obstacle. Not before or after the fact. Ever. It just doesn’t cross anyone’s mind, to think maybe we should add some disability advocates or engineers on this project to make sure we are doing it right. Nope. Never. Seriously never.

This is how we end up with this crap. With lack of accessible curb cuts, with restaurant outdoor seating pods taking up all the disability parking, with bike lanes prevent access to the sidewalk, with idiots parking in the crosshatch next to a disabled space that prevents van access so the van ramp cannot be used, etc. We struggle and fight everyday. I’m so tired.

As for the Alexandria bike lane for blind people someone posted a few pages back, I am very familiar with that situation. The man who rules BPAC, a very successful BIL lobbyist group, volunteers with a blind cyclist organization that has blind people paired with non kind people to ride those double bikes together so the blind people can experience what it’s like to ride a bike. He had a bunch of blind people he knew through this organization contact the city stating that they thought it was too dangerous to cross seminary near Ft Williams, and that their lives depended on the city doing the road diet, adding the bike lanes, and putting a crosswalk in that was conveniently located directly in front of the BPAC’s head house. NONE of those blind people lived in that neighborhood. It was all orchestrated and calculated by BPAC and then his daughter told everyone about how clever he was. So basically he used his friends with disabilities for personal gain.

Same old same old.

Your problem isn’t bike lanes. It’s people who think they deserve free off-street parking. We could reserve 4 spaces (one at each end of the block) for disables pick up/drop off. That would never happen. Don’t blame accessibility issues on transit advocates. Place blame where it belongs: the selfish car drivers.

And this is exactly what happened with the 17th St lanes. There are parking spaces adjacent to the crosswalks that have loading zones marked off. These should be reserved for disabled pick and drop-off, but aren't. The problem is not with the bike lanes, but with how the parking spots were designated.