Blind pedestrians sue D.C. over unsafe crosswalks

Washington Post

2 days ago

Claire Stanley often has to stand on the curb near Union Station and wait to feel the flow of other pedestrians around her, unable to read the traffic pattern of Columbus Circle.
Qudsiya Naqui had to figure out how to navigate the city by avoiding roundabouts and using only perpendicular streets, doubling her walking time.
And Gerald Barnes said he avoids the crowds on K Street, where he never knows how much time he has left to walk through its busy intersections.
The pedestrians, all of whom are blind, are among five people suing the District, alleging that it doesn't provide enough working signals that make it safe for them to cross the street. The group is seeking a class action certification that would allow thousands of others to join. About 14,000 people who are blind or have severe vision impairment live in D.C., according to Census Bureau estimates.
In the lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of the District of Columbia Council of the Blind and the individual plaintiffs, civil rights advocates and attorneys claim that the city lacks accessible pedestrian signals, or APS — devices that provide cues using sound and other nonvisual aids, at about 75 percent of its intersections that have traffic signals. They say the failure makes roads unsafe for blind pedestrians and violates federal and local laws.
'You kind of are just playing chicken, because if you make the wrong choice, if there's no working APS, you could collide with a car, have your cane run over, or something worse,' said Naqui, 41, a lawyer living in Northwest Washington. 'It's always kind of a risky business when there isn't a good way of knowing when it's safe to cross which street.'
The D.C. Office of the Attorney General and a spokesperson for the mayor's office declined to comment. The District Department of Transportation declined to comment because of pending litigation.
Even among the current accessible pedestrian signals in the city, many are 'plagued by installation and maintenance issues,' according to a press release about the lawsuit.
While she was recently walking up Connecticut Avenue and crossing DeSales Street, without a working accessible pedestrian signal to stop her, Naqui said, a car backing into the intersection rolled over her cane and cracked it in half.
'It just startles you if you hear one actually functioning,' Barnes, 63, of Northeast Washington, said of the signals.
Some streets have accessible pedestrian signals, but then they disappear on the following streets, said Stanley, director of advocacy and governmental affairs for the American Council of the Blind. The surrounding street noise drowns out the signal volume, and if there's too big of a crowd, Stanley said, she can't reach through to touch the signals that vibrate.
Michael Allen, a partner at law firm Relman Colfax PLLC, said the District has a 'program of pedestrian safety that completely excludes blind people,' which makes it a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the D.C. Human Rights Act.
The city has struggled with making intersections safe for walkers: Pedestrian deaths have doubled in D.C. in the decade since the city first pledged to eliminate them.
Some blind pedestrians have resorted to paying for an Uber or a Lyft at times rather than putting themselves at risk by walking, Allen said.
And in other cases, because of the lack of accessible pedestrian signals, blind pedestrians have experienced being pulled back by strangers 'not necessarily appropriately,' Allen added.
'What our clients are asking for is simply an equal opportunity to safely navigate the pedestrian grid,' Allen said. 'It's time that the District of Columbia did what the law has required now, for, depending on how you measure it, decades.'
Advocates have successfully brought lawsuits in New York and Chicago, resulting in orders that require the cities' intersections that have traffic signals to be equipped with working accessible pedestrian devices, said Rachel Weisberg, supervising attorney at Disability Rights Advocates.
According to the lawsuit, the District programs some of its pedestrian signals to give less time than is required under national standards. Weisberg said this has a 'ripple effect' for blind pedestrians, who already need additional time to cross. They plan to seek answers from the city during litigation, she said.
Attorneys are asking the U.S. District Court to issue an order requiring the city to equip intersections with accessible pedestrian signals that are 'properly installed, programmed, and maintained,' the lawsuit states.
Naqui said that making the pedestrian grid safer would disrupt some of the isolation experienced by people who are visually impaired or blind.
'We're not looking for anything perfect, but just something that will really help us,' Barnes added. 'It's tough out here, but with a little bit of support … and not a bunch of lip, I think we can really come together and do some things together.'