The plan to improve public accessibility of Bainbridge Island’s streets, buildings and parks will be either accepted or rejected at the Dec. 9 council meeting, city leaders decided, following a presentation by consultants Nov. 12.
Bainbridge Island is in the midst of a major audit of its amenities that will shape public spaces on the island for years to come: the city’s Americans with Disabilities Act Transition Plan.
The ADA is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in all public spaces by requiring accommodations within infrastructure and government services.
Based on a review by consultant engineering firm Transpo, which has extensive experience in accessibility planning for cities in the Puget Sound region, Bainbridge needs about $32 million in improvements to reach complete ADA compliance.
Transpo surveyed, catalogued and ranked all of the city’s amenities — 22.2 miles of sidewalks; 527 curb ramps (or curb cuts), the section of a sidewalk that dips to street level; 164 crosswalks; 38 pedestrian push-buttons; and 40 bus stops. The team found that 87% of city sidewalks were not ADA compliant; neither were 92% of curb cuts, 97% of pedestrian push-buttons, nor 65% of city bus stops.
Patrick Lynch, firm principal, noted that those improvements did not have to occur all at once — many could be incorporated into other city projects, or addressed in the future. The most important elements for the city to focus on would be those deemed “very high priority,” he said, which total about $3.6 million.
“It’s not practical to address all barriers at one time, so that’s where we developed the prioritization. What actually ends up happening is that barriers are already being removed with ongoing city activities through maintenance and your capital projects program,” said Lynch. “You are already doing work and removing barriers. What the plan allows us to do is track that barrier removal.”
In the city’s draft ADA Transition Plan, Transpo noted that if Bainbridge maintained its current funding for ADA planning — about $170,000 — it would take 186 years to remove accessibility barriers of all priority levels, or 53 years if the city only focused on amending “very high priority” barriers.
However, “with the city’s current available funding and an additional amount of $10,000 per year, all very-high priority barriers would be addressed within approximately 20 years,” Transpo planners wrote in the report.
The city is accepting feedback from the public on the plan until its consideration Dec. 9.
