These boots are made for walkin' - redux

Dear Mayor and Council,

We love Victoria!

Within months of moving to Victoria in 2006, we traded in our car for a shopping cart and became dedicated pedestrians. Though we do, on occasion, use public transit or taxicabs, we find the city best explored on foot.   Victoria is a very walkable city.

Nine years later, our circumstances have changed somewhat.  My husband, while still very mobile, now uses a walker.  Those minor inconveniences on sidewalks that we previously encountered when he was able-bodied have now become serious impediments to getting around.

There are three specific problems I would like to draw to your attention:

1.    Sidewalks
Many of our sidewalks are too narrow.   A person with a walker takes up more than half the width of a standard sidewalk.  Motorized wheelchairs, scooters and baby carriages take up even more. 

The sidewalks are cluttered with all manner of obstructions – telephone poles, parking meters, sign posts, sandwich boards, café seating.  Some homeowners further add to this obstacle course by letting their plantings overgrow the sidewalk.

We’re turning into a population that walks single file on the sidewalks.

2.    Sidewalk ramps
Sidewalk ramps often don’t line up with crosswalks or intersections, requiring persons with assistive devices to cross streets partially in the roadway in order to access the ramp. 

Many of the sidewalk ramps have small lips on them such that they are not flush with the road.  For an able-bodied person, a half-inch lip is insignificant.  For a person using a walker, such a lip requires lifting the front of the device – no small feat when one has a balance problem.

The newer sidewalk ramps have solved both these problems, having been constructed both wider and lower, but there are many more old style ramps in the city. 

3.    Pedestrian crossing signals
Pedestrian crossing signals are just not long enough for someone using a walker (and, I would suspect, many able-bodied seniors) to cross the street safely.  The timing needs to be changed to accommodate our aging population. 

I am aware that the city has a Pedestrian Master Plan from 2008.  It is my hope that the City of Victoria will revisit this plan and make correcting these pedestrian deficiencies a priority. 

Respectfully submitted,

Gwyn Thompson