Infrastructure Failings Around METRO Rail
With new construction taking place for the extended METRO Rail lines, one would think the City of Houston would follow their own Ordinance against pouring sidewalks with utilities blocking handicap accessibility. However, the City continues to allow new development to ignore these rules (as evidenced by the infrastructure around the Heights’ Walmart and the Light Rail). In the photos below, utilities have been left within new sidewalks poured along the new Southeast line using federal dollars – when it is against federal ADA laws to do so!
Click any photo below to open the slideshow.
These photos were taken along Martin Luther King Jr Blvd., between Griggs Rd. and Old Spanish Trail, by Tracy M. Stephens, Super Neighborhood Sunnyside South Park Chairman for Infrastructure Rehab and Community Redevelopment. Pedestrian Pete thanks him for bringing this and other pertinent City issues to our attention. Please contact us with your own suggestions.
Click here for a map of this rail line, highlighted in purple.
Wow. Nice pictures, Pete! Great sidewalk for snakes and millipedes. “Yay” for those taxpaying snakes and millepedes then! Hope they never need a wheelchair (motorized or not), help getting around – either as hatchlings or oldsters, never want to hold hands(?) on a date, get any taller, etc. At least these barriers will give the human race another chance to grow blubber on their lower legs – for impacting posts and benches in the sidewalk, extra body armor and double joints for those higher obstructions, thicker heads, and handy things like that. Too bad it will take 1,000,000 years for us bipeds to evolve ’em… But, corporations and cities live forever, right? So, what’s the long term problem? Just being able to get around? Call a cab… Wait… And, get fatter… Which, by the way, helps the Medical Center, in a way… And “we” do have buses and trains to there – if you can get to the bus or train. On second thought, call a snake or a millepede – or, here’s a thought, City Council. They vote the contracts and the contracts can’t be this people unfriendly can they? I mean they read the contracts before voting ’em, right? A few million here, a few million there – and tomorrow is another busy day… Particularly if you’re walking around out there trying to walk and playing, “Dodge post!” “Jump break!” and, “Stub toe!” Perhaps, by the way, these are “Ribbon Parks”? Must be some reason to build stuff and/or keep stuff that way… Modern life: “Early to bed, early to rise, rationalize, rationalize, rationalize…”