Universal design on table for river valley trails
City to consider various universal design concepts to improve access to river valley
Crushed-gravel trails, maps with steep slopes marked out and wheelchair accessible picnic tables — these would make a huge difference for those accessing the river valley on four wheels, say advocates.
“Everything from mushrooms to poplar suckers come up through the asphalt,” said Ross Wein, who spends hours with his son Danny Wein and other friends in wheelchairs in the river valley.
City council will be reviewing how universal design standards should be applied in the river valley Monday, and Ross Wein says they have a long way to go.
The bumps and ridges created by roots in Edmonton’s poorly maintained asphalt trails are scary, he said. He’s seen them cause wheelchairs to tip before. Plus the bumps are painful for the many people in chairs who have problems with their back and buttocks. “You get jiggled to death.”
A crushed-gravel trail can be packed tight, it’s flat and the wheels ride on top. A small grader can slice off any roots and repack it every year or two, he said. With less capital expense up front, the ongoing maintenance is higher but the risk to users drops dramatically. “It packs like concrete.”
“That’s a great scenario — a really tight gravel with no ability to let the wheels sink in,” said Ian Young, another Edmonton resident whose mobility challenges keep him from the river valley. He uses a walker.
“Right now the river valley, except for the parks that are paved really well, is off-limits to me.”
The local chapter of the Sierra Club pushed council to take a new look at accessibility standards, arguing city officials should approach all trails as accessible by default, providing justification for the exceptions where natural conditions make that impossible.
In their report back, city officials say this is often not possible because of steep slopes, cost and erosion.
They say they already try to keep slopes to a maximum eight per cent grade, provide paved trails to shelters and picnic sites, widen trails to three metres where possible, install benches at regular intervals, and minimize the use of stairs.
The report released in advance of Monday’s discussion does not address the use of crushed gravel, picnic tables or wayfinding. The report says three city-maintained river valley trails are permanently closed and six temporarily closed due to erosion and slope instability.
Wein is part of the Alberta Abilities Lodges Society, which is opening a new wilderness lodge for people with mobility challenges at Coyote Lake.
It’s critical to get outdoors and experience nature to ward of depression and claustrophobia, he said. Small things can make a big difference.
At the new Coyote Lake Lodge, 65 km west of Leduc, he just finished pulling the tops off all the picnic tables, replacing them with longer boards to allow wheelchair access at the ends.
“It’s so easy to do. There should be no picnic table in the river valley that doesn’t have these extensions,” he said.