This year my town spent an awful lot of time and money jackhammering corners and installing these ramp things with the yellow plastic dotty mats that make it more challenging for wheelchairs and baby strollers but signal to the visually impaired that they are at a corner ramp.
Like most of its brethren, this one is covered in twigs, leaves, and dirt. When we had a bit of rain a while ago, most of these new installations also showed that drainage was not part of the specification. They literally showed new lows in civic design by holding water at the base of the dotty pads. Mud. Leaf mould. Well, city authorities are committed to composting.
The terrain in this neighborhood is hilly. It's pretty easy to go for a walk of a mile and a half and rack up three or four hundred feet of elevation gain. Serious hills and grades. This may seem insensitive, but I have to ask: wheelchair ramps? Really? Here?
It is not about access for the differently abled. It is not about safe sidewalks or mosquito abatement.
It's paybacks to union cronies and kickbacks to the ruling enablers. It's money moving out and back. Out of our pockets and into theirs. That's sure what it looks like, anyway.
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