STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY
Anna Zivarts' book -- When Driving is Not an Option -- offers a useful tool. The OpenSidewalks project at the University of Washington's Taskar Center for Accessible Technology uses open data sources, verified by on-the-ground community audits, to map sidewalk networks.
It goes beyond a typical Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA) assessment, empowering planners and others with information about
sidewalk slope, minimal effective width, and lighting.
Zivarts details how in 2020, disability advocates
convinced Wisconsin's Department of Transportation (WisDOT) to form a nondriver
advisory committee.
"When you overlay where the transit is, where the
routes are, and where the stops are with where people who are nondrivers
actually live, those two things don't overlap," committee co-chair Tamara
Jackson says in the book.
"This forces transportation planners to consider
whether people are unable to use transit because 'it doesn't go where they need
to go, or they can't get to it.'"
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