The University of Arizona is certainly one of the most adapted campuses I have ever seen. Every building has clear wheelchair access, there are little golf carts that come pick up people with even temporary disabilities, and there is a great Disabilities Resource Center.
The City of Tucson, however, leaves a lot to be desired. The Sun Tran offers "kneeling" buses, which allow wheelchairs to enter and exit, but once you get off the bus, you're on your own. I watched a man fight with his motorized chair for 5 minutes today while trying to get off the bus. The driver had accidentally passed the concrete, so he was trying to get over an incline and skidding on the gravel. Once he figured that out, he rode over dust and even more gravel and then right into the street, against traffic, because there are no sidewalks, no sidewalks at all. The dirt strip that sometimes functions as a sidewalk is almost always littered with broken glass and other trash, or is so narrow that it is impassible for a wheelchair. I can only imagine what it's like to have to go through that process at night, without streetlights. It's not just people who use wheelchairs who have to worry about these things. Moms with strollers often choose to walk in the street because the sidewalks are too uneven, don't have access ramps, or are just not there. Are sidewalks too much to ask? Are they not a basic part of city life that you should expect to find in any urban area that has as large a population as Tucson's?
2 comments:
I have often wondered why, in any city, there are places/blocks/neighborhoods with sidewalks, and then suddenly they all seem to disappear. One is immediately left with the choice, like you say Lucy, between uneven, broken glass filled dirt strips versus streets. Is there a logical explanation for why this happens?
Andrea raises an important point. I think that bad city planning is a widespread problem in Tucson. It seems to me that the sidewalks are left up to the individual property owners, and the city feels no responsibility for constructing or maintaining them. Notably, a neighborhood in Tucson recently purchased better sidewalks and crossings for their area because traffic posed a high risk to playing children. That project was funded through grants and donations and cost them $600,000. Ultimately, that may be the real reason at the heart of why there are no sidewalks in Tucson: they cost money and they don't make money.
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