‘They didn't give us any heads up . . . so we're just running into poles'

Yahoo

12-04-2025

The city of Wichita is spending $4.9 million on making the downtown more 'walkable' — unless you're vision-impaired, and then you're on your own.
New traffic signals being installed on corners throughout the downtown area, as part of the conversion of one-way streets to two-way streets, are not being equipped with audible signals to tell blind people when it's safe to cross.
The stated purpose of the overall project is to slow car traffic via a lane-reducing 'road diet' and enhance safety for bicyclists and pedestrians.
But the people who need better walkability the most aren't getting it.
'As I understand it, when they are updating the traffic lights, they're supposed to work on accessibility as well, and they're not doing that,' said downtown resident Alison Roets, who is legally blind and can see only about one foot in front of her. 'They didn't give us any heads up that they were going to be doing this. So we're just running into poles.'
If this was an oversight by City Hall, that would be bad. It's worse. It's a deliberate decision.
And Sedgwick County government has been running interference for the city on it.
The matter was discussed in the February meeting of the Wichita/Sedgwick County Access Advisory Board, a panel that advises the City Council and the County Commission on disability issues.
The meeting was done as a hybrid, with some participants in the room and others video-conferenced in over the Internet. I asked the county intern who staffed the meeting to allow me to listen to the recording, which I've done many times over the years. She passed that request up the chain of command and access was denied.
I was told I could have the minutes from the meeting, but I'd have to wait nearly a month until the board approved them.
So I did.
And now I can see why they didn't want to let me listen to the recording. While public works officials cite costs and recollections of access board policy from years ago, the clear message from the city attorney's office can be summed up as follows: We ain't gotta do it. So we ain't gonna do it.
The meeting minutes show that Assistant City Attorney Nate Johnson leaned into legalese when explaining why, in a project being sold to the public as a safety improvement, the safety of vision-impaired residents and guests doesn't count for much.
This is from Johnson's explanation, as quoted in the meeting minutes:
'The City of Wichita has taken into account the opinions of residents, advisory boards, and other stakeholders on projects. However there are technical limitation when pursuing them . . . A lot of the focus is moving away from community involvement. There are limitations on resources, funds, and scope of how much can be accomplished at a time.'
'In terms of accessible pedestrian signals, the (U.S. Access Board) Guidelines do not list specific actions that trigger the requirement to install accessible pedestrian signals. Instead, the Guidelines say that they are subject to the same alteration requirements as other pedestrian facilities. An important consideration there is what constitutes the 'scope' of the alteration project since accessibility updates are generally tied to that scope.'
'Scope' is the keyword here, because the city attorney's office is basically arguing that an almost $5 million street reconfiguration project isn't large enough to trigger federal requirements for disability access improvements in new construction and substantial reconstruction of public facilities.
For a second opinion, I contacted a nationally recognized authority, Robert Dinerstein, professor emeritus of law at American University in Washington, who founded the school's Disability Rights Law Clinic in 2005 and directed it until his retirement in 2023.
He didn't think much of the argument that Wichita's project is too small to trigger federal accessibility requirements.
'You could, I suppose, say that certain changes are really, you know, de minimis and so minimal that it would be unreasonable to treat them as a triggering event (but) this seems like a significant one,' he said. 'No one's challenging the ability of the city to make the judgment that they want to change the way the traffic pattern is. But you know, in doing so, you are . . . doing something that's changing in a significant way the environment as it existed.'
Legal arguments aside, putting in audible signals with the new traffic lights would have been the most common-sense thing to do, Dinerstein said.
Audible crossing signals are increasingly important because without them, blind individuals have to judge when it's safe to cross a street by listening to passing traffic. And the rising number of nearly silent electric cars on the road makes that all the more dangerous.
'You know, I sort of sort of start from the premise that first, before you get into what the legal requirements might be, why wouldn't you want to make it possible for people who (are) blind or have low vision — and the walk, don't walk sign doesn't help them — to have some kind of audio signaling to make it possible for them to be able to navigate on your streets?' Dinerstein said. 'And it's both the people who live there and the people who might be visiting or shopping or whatever.'
He said he understands there's a cost factor involved with audible signals.
'In the overall scheme of things, for a city budget and all that, it's not a big thing,' he said. 'If you're going to do renovations, that's the opportunity to do it. And it also is often a time where it's more cost effective because you're already making changes that you decided you wanted to make.'
For the record, here's what the U.S. Access Board guidelines, finalized and published in 2023, say about accessible pedestrian signals:
'All new and altered pedestrian signal heads installed at crosswalks must include 'accessible pedestrian signals' (APS), which have audible and vibrotactile features indicating the walk interval so that a pedestrian who is blind or has low vision will know when to cross the street. Pedestrian push buttons must be located within a reach range such that a person seated in a wheelchair can reach them. The walk speed used to calculate the crossing time allows pedestrians with disabilities sufficient time to cross.'
But to become a legally enforceable standard, the guidelines have to be approved by the Department of Transportation and the Department of Justice.
The Transportation Department approved the guidelines in January, but the Justice Department has yet to act.
Amid the upheaval and mass layoffs of federal workers ordered by President Donald Trump via Elon Musk's Department of Governmental Efficiency, it's impossible to know when, or even if, that approval will come.
Trump has clearly indicated that he considers accommodating people with disabilities to be part of DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — which he has expended extraordinary efforts to try to eradicate from government and the private sector.
He showed his disdain for disability inclusiveness when he blamed Federal Aviation Administration policies after a Wichita-to-Washington jetliner collided with a military helicopter on approach to Reagan National Airport on Jan. 29, killing all 64 airline passengers and crew and all three soldiers in the helicopter.
'The FAA's website states they include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism; all qualify for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country,' Trump said the day after the crash.
That's not actually true — what the policy really stated was that persons with disabilities could and should be accommodated in jobs somewhere in the agency, not necessarily in the control tower. But whatever.
There are two kinds of accessible pedestrian signals.
Both kinds are actuated when a pedestrian presses a button on a panel attached to or near the pole holding the traffic signal. One type uses coded beeps to signal it's safe to cross. The more modern ones give spoken commands.
A number of downtown intersections are equipped with the beeping type. Some are in working order, many aren't, said Tom Page, a member of the local access board and the Kansas state president of the National Federation for the Blind.
The city-county board was formed as part of a settlement of a 2004 lawsuit, when the Independent Living Resource Center sued the city, claiming that its public facilities were not sufficiently accessible to disabled people.
Page, who is blind, said he joined the board about three years ago with high hopes that it could make a difference.
'But so far, we're finding out it's basically a place for access encouragement to die,' he said. 'You know, this is a corner that they put us in to talk about it, and then they say: OK, thank you. Duly noted. And so that's frustrating on its own.'
It's hard to argue with that when the city attorney's office says up front that 'A lot of the focus is moving away from community involvement.'
Page said he and other board members are getting fed up with being ignored by top decision-makers.
'I have been figuring out over the last couple months that whatever's happening at the advisory board does not percolate to any other city, county entities on its own,' he said. 'I do think where it's at with the advisory board is in this coming month, a letter will be written to the city manager encouraging them to do the right thing.'
Brian Powers, the current board chairman, said sending a letter will require a resolution of the board. He said he understands some members are frustrated, but overall, he's been satisfied with communication with the city government.
The board is advisory only, so it makes its recommendations and it's up to the city and county to decide what to do with them, he said.
City officials say they're working to improve conditions for vision-impaired residents going forward.
'I don't want anybody to ever think that we're just hanging our hat on saying, well, the feds didn't say it was required,' said Gary Jansen, the city's public works director. 'We work very closely with the the accessible community and the board here in Wichita, amongst many others. The APS (audible pedestrian signals) has been really challenging over the years. In fact, the Wichita Sedgwick County Access Advisory Board, some years ago, they developed basically a policy of their own, that said, don't utilize APS downtown for a variety of reasons, and we had generally honored that.'
It's uncertain when or how that policy came into being, or who made it. Board records are sketchy and it's mainly been passed down by word of mouth.
'I don't know how that came to be,' Powers said. It's not a current policy and hasn't been at any time during his 13 years on the board, including two terms as chairman, he said.
No one who was on the board then is still in office, Jansen said.
He said he's been told the previous board believed that with all the ambient noise downtown, audible signals would be hard to hear, which could potentially create confusion.
Another factor was noise complaints from residents of downtown apartment buildings.
'This wouldn't necessarily be the deciding factor, but as you get more people living downtown, we had complaints about the volume, the necessary volume, and keeping them awake at night, so we were trying to balance that,' Jansen said. 'We want pedestrian safety first and foremost, without a doubt. But more than anything, we've worked closely over the years . . . with Envision in particular, and others, about being real strategic with the placement of these. They're not cheap.'
City traffic engineer Mike Armour estimated it could cost about $15,000 to $20,000 per intersection to install audible signals, maybe twice that in a difficult location.
'We weren't trying to avoid anything by any means, but trying to add something as simple as, like, a push button might sound simple on paper,' he said. 'But especially in the downtown area, it can become extremely challenging . . . You have to do a lot of design work, a lot of utility coordination. It gets to be not simply, 'Hey, just add this to the project.' There's a lot of lead time as far as design and coordination that would be involved.'
The city is spending roughly $200,000 per intersection for new poles and traffic signals in the street reconfiguration project, Jansen said. So adding audible signals would have increased the overall cost by about 10%.
The current project was bid and engineered without audible signals, but the city plans to include them whenever new signals are installed in the future, he said.
Roets and her boyfriend, Charlie Wilks, who is completely blind, live in The Lux apartment building at the northwest corner of First and Main downtown.
She's a freelance social media producer and he's a musician who walks to his gigs downtown when the weather cooperates.
'If it's not terribly nice out, I do take Uber,' he said. 'But for instance, when I'm playing at the Dockum Speakeasy, in the Ambassador Hotel, it's right around the corner and I'll walk there if it's really nice out.'
But lately, those downtown walks have been more like a minefield. Numerous construction projects cause pop-up street and sidewalk closures on an almost daily basis, and the rental scooters that the city encourages as a downtown transportation option add to the impromptu obstacle course.
'I actually tried to walk somewhere yesterday, and I want to say it was the intersection of Topeka and First,' Roets said. ' And three of the four corners were blocked off by either cones or those like sidewalk closed and signs, and there were three of those diamond-shaped roads closed ahead signs like on one block, and there's been cones everywhere. It's been really difficult to get around lately.'
Added Wilks: 'They use a sharp-edged material on those diamond signs, and I've cut myself on it, you know, obviously running into the corner of those. That corner is is suspended in the air and doesn't have anything connecting it to the ground, so your cane goes underneath it, so you've got no warning about it.'
Also, 'The scooters downtown are very, very dangerous, because a lot of times they're like, laid across the sidewalks, or just blocking entire sidewalks in big clusters. The scooters are really, really frustrating.'
The frustration is shared by Erica Johnson-Wootson, who lives out near Harry and Webb Road. She said she is often downtown, because that's where Envision, the local training and employment center for people who are blind is based.
'I go to the Envision Arts Gallery, I go to Envision, the main headquarters,' she said. 'I have the NFB meetings. I go to the library downtown. I walk around town downtown, I go to Naftzger Park. And they're redoing the streets, but they're not adding the (audible) signals, and they're not fixing the signals on the streets where they have them. They're useless.'
Johnson-Wootson worked for the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office for 20 years and at Boeing for 12 years before that. She lost her vision when she contracted multiple myeloma, a form of cancer, and a blood pressure spike ruptured the blood vessels in her eyes.
She said city leaders would be more sympathetic if they could experience blindness, even for a short time.
'Just try sun shades for 15 minutes and try to walk from your office down to your car,' she said. 'And you do that every day and see if you can do it, or just close your eyes and see if you can make it to your car without running into something or running into somebody.'
At the end of the day, what this situation shows is, for want of a better term, a lack of vision on the part of City Hall.
I'm on record as not being a fan of the overall reconfiguration project, which I expect will cause traffic jams where none existed before, and make it tougher for people who work downtown to get to and from their jobs.
But if you're going to make walkability the calling card for downtown Wichita, it really ought to be walkable for everybody, not just those who can see the sign that says 'walk.'