Study will ID barriers to the disabled in Mankato area

Oct. 13--MANKATO -- A year from now, Mankato-area cities and counties will have a much clearer picture of how easy -- or how difficult -- they're making it for people with disabilities to get around.

Consultants are already in Eagle Lake, measuring sidewalk widths, checking the slope of walkways, looking to see if curb cuts are in place, inspecting bus stops to see if someone using a wheelchair can reach them.

"It will further accessibility. It will give us a good inventory of what's out there," said Paul Vogel, executive director of the Mankato-North Mankato Area Planning Organization. "... It's a good thing."

Officially, MAPO is doing an inventory of transportation-related compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and developing a plan to address problems.

"The first part of that is always information," Vogel said.

Engineering firm Bolton and Menk has been hired to gather the information, identify barriers to safe travel by people with disabilities and provide cost estimates for the fixes.

MAPO includes, along with Mankato and North Mankato, the towns of Skyline and Eagle Lake, so every street and intersection in those cities will be examined. Nicollet and Blue Earth counties also have joined the project, meaning that county roads running through all of the remaining rural towns will be included in the study.

The task is not a small one.

"There are approximately 165 miles of sidewalk, 65 miles of trails, and 5,500 pedestrian ramps within the MAPO boundary," said Matt Lassonde, a transportation planner at Bolton and Menk.

The evaluation of Eagle Lake and Nicollet County is expected to be completed by the end of November. The other communities will get their turn next spring and summer, followed by the writing of a draft report and a final public open house late next year.

After the various cities and counties have the list of deficiencies, each will individually need to develop a plan for addressing them. Not every problem will be immediately fixed, and the project doesn't aim to broadly expand the coverage of ADA-compliant sidewalks, Vogel said.

But each local government will need to have a plan for eventually addressing, within the road and street right-of-ways, the problem areas that don't comply with the 27-year-old landmark civil rights law for disabled Americans.

"That will basically be up to the individual jurisdiction," Vogel said. "... Some jurisdictions may choose to prioritize certain things -- critical connections, transit stops, those sorts of things."

Other fixes will be delayed until a street or road reconstruction is scheduled.

The list of deficiencies is likely to be dominated by sidewalks, trails and curb cuts that are too narrow, too steep, or poorly designed. But other barriers could include crosswalk buttons that people with certain disabilities can't press, construction zones that make sidewalks unusable, even policies such as the placement of "road closed" signs partially on sidewalks.

The Federal Highway Administration's Civil Rights Division is overseeing the process, and there's a strong incentive to complete the plan on time.

"It's a pretty straightforward process," said Seth Greenwood, public works director for Nicollet County. "You have to have your plan in place or be substantially complete by 2019 or they can withhold federal highway funds."

That was part of the reason the counties chose to piggyback on the Mankato-area project, using the expertise being developed by Bolton and Menk rather than attempting to duplicate that effort in each county, Greenwood said. Because the ADA doesn't apply to rural roads, Nicollet County's compliance will be focused on the relatively small percentage of county roads that run through places such as St. Peter, Lafayette, Courtland and Nicollet.

And the good news is likely to be that streets and roads reconstructed in recent years will have few or no deficiencies that need to be fixed.

"We've been doing ADA compliance as we've done projects in the past," Greenwood said.

That's also evident in other jurisdictions. When streets are scheduled for new pavement in Mankato and North Mankato, curb cuts are rebuilt to meet the federal standards and many of the newer crossing signals are designed with disabilities in mind, including large plates rather than tiny buttons to activate the signal and audible instructions on when it is and isn't safe to cross.

Blue Earth County also strove to meet ADA requirements in place at the time urbanized county roads were reconstructed in towns such as Lake Crystal and Madison Lake, said Public Works Director Ryan Thilges.

"But the new standards are pretty strict, so I don't know," Thilges said of the number of deficiencies that will be discovered. "... Until we see the data, I'm not certain. I know we have a lot of sidewalks in those towns."

The bike trail along Blue Earth County Road 90 south of Mankato and the trail along Nicollet County Road 41 west of North Mankato have lengthy segments that are much steeper than ADA rules would typically allow. Thilges doesn't think that should be a problem because recreational trails aren't treated the same as sidewalks serving public buildings, businesses and residential areas.

"I think that's identified more as a recreational facility," he said of rural bike trails. "That's a key differentiation."

Area residents will be able to learn more about the project -- and talk about barriers they've noticed in the community -- at an open house expected to be held in January or February. The $176,000 study is being financed by MAPO, a federally funded organization that came into existence when Mankato-North Mankato became an official metropolitan area following the 2010 census.

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