MIAMI REFUSES TO PROTECT PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

CARS DANGEROUSLY BLOCKING SIDEWALKS ARE NEVER TOWED

Welcome to Miami — where we despise pedestrians.

Dozens of times I have asked cops to tow cars blocking sidewalks — because it forces people with disabilities into dangerous streets.

The answer always is NO.

But Miami Police does tow vehicles (because we all know 5000 pound trucks and SUVs are more important than human lives.)

The city tows vehicles that: slightly block the roadway, park in areas temporarily roped off for festivals, break down in traffic, etc.

Basically, if it slows traffic by 1% -- it's towed.

If it endangers people with disabilities & all pedestrians by 100% -- it's ignored.

PLEASE STOP THE ABLEISM NOW!

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

Straightforward Planning Tools to Serve Nondrivers

Make nondrivers visible. 

Place nondrivers on mobility advisory boards, make sure surveys include them, hire nondrivers for transit and transportation planning positions.

Reduce traffic speeds. 

Planners know it's not just lowering speed limits. 

Road diets, bulb outs, traffic circles, and raised sidewalks can slow traffic and make it pedestrian-friendly.

Allow for longer crossing times at crosswalks. 

Know that 30 seconds to cross is not enough time for a person using an assistive mobility device or younger or older citizens.

Take public ownership of sidewalk repair and maintenance. 

If a nondriver must walk six blocks to a transit stop, clear it of barriers and make it accessible to all. 

Treat sidewalks as any other infrastructure — plan, fund, and maintain them.

Make transit at least as reliable as driving. 

Approach transit as an equal part of the mobility ecosystem, making it safer and more connective for citizens.

 

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

In Anna Zivarts' 176-page book, When Driving is Not an Option, she points out that many states have concurrency requirements that require developers to build more car capacity.

But she thinks multimodal capacity, with an emphasis on transit and pedestrian mobility, would be a better, more inclusive approach.

Strong pedestrian and transit networks can support denser, transit oriented development that can include housing that is attainable, she writes.

"Make no mistake, I want an outcome of slower traffic. I want it to become less desirable, less convenient to drive places," Zivarts says.

When that happens, she adds, two good things will occur: a critical mass will demand great transit and pedestrian mobility and there will be enough users to create demand for that premium transit.

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

Anna Zivarts, author of When Driving is Not an Option, challenged planners and elected officials to do just that during the Week Without Driving challenge in the greater Seattle area.

Many never had to depend on public transportation for every work, recreational, medical, shopping, or social trip. This showed them firsthand the gaps in the system.

Her work — and words — have clearly made an impact. Roger Millar, FAICP, the secretary of transportation for the Washington Department of Transportation, invited Zivarts to speak at the 2021 annual meeting of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

He told Zivarts that his counterparts in other states were texting him during her presentation, checking in with staff and asking them to investigate the number of nondrivers in their states.

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

This overlay information can help planners focus dollars on filling in the gaps or rerouting transit to better serve everyone in the community, including the 31 percent who don't drive, according to WisDOT's analysis.

Anna Zivarts, author of When Driving is Not an Option, says a simple way to value the experience of nondrivers is to put yourself in someone else's shoes, like a person trying to cross an eight-lane arterial, while negotiating mud puddles and overgrown bushes along the edge of a road with no sidewalks.

Or, try pledging to ditch your car and rely only on public transit for a few days.

 

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

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.'"

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

Tanisha Sepúlveda is a program coordinator at Empower Movement WA, a collective that advocates for disability justice, transportation equity, and community access.

A power wheelchair user who lives in Seattle, she often relies on bus and light rail.

The sidewalks near her apartment and the closest bus stop have sections heaved up by tree roots, filled with loose gravel, and lacking curb ramp.

So, she rolls in the street.

"I'll have people yell at me and tell me to get out of the road, sometimes with profanity," Sepúlveda says in the book When Driving is Not an Option.

"I understand it does not look safe to them, and it is not safe, but it is even less safe for me to be on the sidewalks."

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

There have been small successes in funding transit, sidewalks, pathways, and connectivity.

In 2022, the Washington State legislature passed a $17 billion transportation package that included $5.2 billion for transit, bike, and pedestrian projects.

It was the first time multimodal investments were larger than highway capacity expansion funding.

Improving transit can help nondrivers and everybody else, says Author Anna Zivarts.

In her book, When Driving is Not an Option, she recounts dozens of anecdotes of people enduring long, frustrating transit trips or not being able to access it at all.

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

In 2023, 7,318 people were killed by vehicles, a 14 percent increase over 2019, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA).

It also reported 1,149 bicyclists were killed on U.S. roadways in 2023, up four percent from 2022.

Safety is a major concern. Author Anna Zivarts — an avid cyclist — says she's seen a disproportionate number of deaths and injuries among those who bike, walk, and roll.

City, county, and state departments of transportation need to plan for safe multimodal mobility from the start, she says, not leave it as an afterthought.

That means funding mobility appropriately.

Transit, sidewalks, pathways, and connectivity should be weighted equally with multibillion-dollar bridge and highway projects, she argues.

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

People of color, those with low incomes, immigrants, and people with disabilities tend to have lower rates of car ownership.

They also have less housing, mobility, and job options. 

Fewer than 25 percent of working-age adults who are disabled work full- or part-time, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to 66 percent of non-disabled adults.

In many cases, it is not the underlying disability that stifles employment, but rather the lack of transportation access to fulfilling work opportunities and financial independence.

 

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

Author Anna Zivarts — who was born with nystagmus, a genetic condition that means her eyes are always shaking, affecting her vision and preventing her from driving — is the program director of the Disability Mobility Initiative at Disability Rights Washington.

A community organizer by profession, she redoubled her efforts to fight for better pedestrian mobility when she learned her son has the same low vision condition she has.

She says she gets a lot of pushback when talking about the number of nondrivers — adding that some studies, including from Washington and Wisconsin, place the number closer to 30 percent.

But she believes planners, policymakers, and others need to start seeing and engaging with nondrivers, understanding the needs of this significant chunk of the population, and including nondrivers in transportation planning decisions.

They also need to make roads safer for everybody, and she lays out changes planners can make in her book -- When Driving is Not an Option.

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

"The big theme of book is there are a lot of nondrivers — way more of us than people realize,"

When Driving is Not an Option Author Anna Zivarts said in an interview with Planning Magazine, noting that nondrivers are often ignored, stigmatized, or treated like second-class citizens.

"If we recognized that disability, income, age, and other factors mean that at least 25 percent of people in the U.S. are nondrivers, we could create much more inclusive communities."

 

 

WHEN DRIVING IS NOT AN OPTION

STEERING AWAY FROM CAR DEPENDENCY

More than a quarter of the people that planners in the U.S. design for do not drive cars.

Anna Letitia Zivarts is one of them.

Her Island Press book, When Driving is Not an Option, published earlier this year, aims to rethink the way we plan cities.

While many planners are working toward reducing car dependency and boosting multimodal mobility, Zivarts believes it will take a seismic and largely political shift to retrofit cities in a way that values those who walk, roll, bike, and use transit to get around.

YOUR CITY'S NUMBER ONE PRIORITY

IS ENSURING THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT IS ACCESSIBLE AND INCLUSIVE TO ALL

These are the saddest urban photos I’ve ever shared. 

When your city/county allows sidewalks to be obstructed, broken, too narrow — you get a wheelchair user rolling in dangerous traffic.

It’s risk death in the street or die in isolation at home. 

This shameful scene in on NW 17 St. in Miami.

People with disabilities NEVER are pathetic. 

The way we create a built environment that excludes them is pathetic, ableist and toxic.

Most municipalities never conduct a Universal Design audit of their sidewalks.

Sometimes I think city officials would rather have people with disabilities stay home & out of sight — rather than demand the access + inclusion that is their basic civil right. 

Cities don’t want to inventory inaccessible sidewalks because then they’d have to spend $ to fix them.

The active person in my photos, who uses a wheelchair for mobility, does not have a death wish.

He went back on the sidewalk as soon as it became accessible. 

ACCESSIBLE TRANSPORTATION

A CALL TO ACTION

Ask any person with a physical disability, which is the bigger hurdle: Your core disability? Or access barriers?

Accessing buildings, services and transportation will be the answer 99 out of 100 (there’s always one outlier) people will say it’s the way we continue to make mobility difficult for people with a wide range of disabilities.

That’s why we are sharing our National Transportation Week Call to Action. 

While there have been great gains in employers understanding the value of remote work – from entry to executive level, for people with and without disabilities – many jobs still require an in-person presence at least a few days per week.

For the past several decades, National Transportation Week has been observed in mid-May.

Public transit, inclusive transportation and safe sidewalks are huge elements in the quality of life for everyone and enable people with disabilities to navigate to and around their workplaces.

https://www.globaldisabilityinclusion.com/post/accessible-transportation-a-call-to-action

DANGEROUS SIDWALKS

CITY OF MIAMI ROUTINELY BLOCKS SAFE PEDESTRIAN AND WHEELCHAIR ACCESS

A sign for vehicles blocks the sidewalk to wheelchair users and others on SW 16 Avenue near Coral Way in Miami. A neighbor took pictures, sent a complaint and after waiting more than a month with no answer, the city moved the sign three inches -- and left it still in ADA violation.

My wife uses a wheelchair for mobility and she's been going out with me while I continue to walk to lose weight. 

We can barely make it a few blocks without running up against some kind of obstruction to the sidewalk – a sign in the middle of it, stop light equipment boxes blocking it, or cars illegally parked over it perpetually and not one police officer who cares to ticket that illegal behavior.

This isn't silly or annoying. It's a death sentence.

When my wife goes out in the street, she is risking her life.

I’m not always around to try to guard against bad drivers.

The way Miami drivers drive, the street could be empty one moment, then a person going 45 mph or faster can turn off another road and plow her over.

She cannot leap out of the way.

She has a top-of-the-line wheelchair, but it does not move quickly.

It disgusts me that every day, our city leaders are on national TV, recruiting tech firms and giving away public land to billionaire developers.

But they don't spend 10 minutes taking a common-sense approach to removing barriers and making sure future public works employees never repeat the same mistakes.

Half the time when there isn't a sign right in the center of the sidewalk, there are too many driveways at a sharp angle.

Imagine being in a wheelchair and riding at a nearly 45-degree angle and hoping gravity doesn't take over your 200-pound mobility device and flip you into oncoming traffic or topple over on you -- leading to series injury or your death. 

Progressive cities keep the sidewalks level while using more space for the driveway to go out into the right of way.

But in Miami, every yard and right of way has been taken for one more lane of breakneck traffic -- even on sleepy side streets -- so the sidewalks are ruined.

One day, they hire a consultant for hundreds of thousands to promote walkability and bike use.

But the other 364, they are lazily, stupidly creating danger and chaos.

I'm not genius, but at 10 years old -- without an engineering, architecture or town planning degree -- I could have figured out that a sign post (think metal or huge concrete) blocking the safe pedestrian sidewalk…is a damn dumb idea.

How can trained professionals paid incredible salaries, with top shelf benefits and an early retirement age unheard of outside city employment -- keep making the same idiot moves?

Whenever I need an image of how NOT to do things (close a city block of desperately needed sidewalk on Calle 8 for 2 years to allow a developer to profit more) -- I only have to walk within a mile of my house to get images that show idiotic city design.

I hate to state these facts and state them in anger – but when my adopted hometown favors profit over people 99% of the time, the truth must be shared.