You're Invited:
Golden Shoe Awards Celebration
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Join PEDS for the 10th annual
Golden Shoe Awards Celebration.
The Golden Shoe Awards honor pedestrian-friendly
projects, programs, and people. 
Tues, Nov 10
6:00 - 8:00 pm
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
435 Peachtree Street (map)
Meet the people who are making metro Atlanta walkable.
Enjoy delicious appetizers, beer, wine and great walking music.
Tickets: $15 in advance; $20 at door.
Get your tickets online through Nov 15.
Become a new member of PEDS for just $30 and get one free ticket.
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Wake up, Atlanta:
Ticket Vehicles Driving or Parking on Sidewalks!!
| Driving on sidewalks endangers pedestrians and damages curbs, pavers and concrete. It also violates Georgia law. In 2005 the City of Atlanta increased the fines for parking on sidewalks.  For vehicles with six or more wheels, the fine is $1,000. For others, it's $100.
Free Parking? At Whose Expense?
In downtown Atlanta, government employees, licensed vendors, and MARTA contractors often treat curb ramps or sidewalks like driveways. Contractors shown here get "free" downtown parking, but it's the pedestrians who pay.  In August PEDS asked Public Works Commissioner Joe Basista to consider installing bollards to prevent trucks from using curb ramps near the Fulton-Atlanta Central Library and the Peachtree Center MARTA station as driveways. The City's transportation division denied our request, explaining it's easy for trucks to jump curbs.
Enforcement Officers Look the Other Way
Transportation engineer Nursef Kedir said Public Works had instead "alerted our enforcement officers to monitor the two sites." Really? Parking enforcement officers we spoke with yesterday think parking o n sidewalks is legal, as long as a pedestrian can get by. The law prohibiting driving over sidewalks in areas other than authorized driveways isn't something they enforce. Other officers we observed showed a blatant lack of concern for this issue.
Are officers' "see no evil" attitudes--especially concerning behavior by government employees or contractors--allowing our sidewalks to become parking lots? See for yourself.
The City's failure to enforce laws prohibiting parking on sidewalks makes its sidewalk maintenance policy especially unfair. Who wants to repair sidewalks abutting their property if new sidewalks are at high risk of being destroyed by the next truck looking for a free and convenient place to park?
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Funding for Sidewalk Maintenance:
Mayoral Candidates Kick It Down the Road
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PEDS co-sponsored two forums for Atlanta mayoral candidates last month. At each, candidates were asked whether they supported using taxpayer dollars to fund sidewalk maintenance. In theory, most do. Yet the most candidates were willing to offer anytime soon was a "revolving fund," a euphemistic name for low interest loans.
PEDS has zero confidence this would work. In a
city with a high poverty rate and a large number of absentee landlords, we doubt many property owners would borrow money to repair sidewalks abutting their property. Relying on a "revolving fund" also prevents the City from taking advantage of economies of scale that occur when sidewalks along entire streets are repaired at the same time. Without support from tax dollars, the prospect of repairing the city's sidewalks is dim.
 "Candidates agree there's little money," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Instead, our tax dollars pay for settlement after settlement to people who injure themselves on damaged sidewalks.
Meanwhile, the City's parking enforcement division is leaving a lot of money on the table. Why have no meters been installed for the scores of new parking spaces on Peachtree Street in Midtown? And why do enforcement officers fail to cite the dozens of trucks that routinely park on the City's sidewalks?
Atlanta's leaders can and must do a better job marshaling the City's resources to protect and repair our infrastructure. |
Enabled or Disabled?
Empowering Transportation Professionals to Get It Right |  A surprising number of newly installed pedestrian facilities are difficult, if not impossible, for people with physical or visual impairments to navigate. The reason: they're poorly designed or built with little understanding of what people with disabilities need or what the Americans with Disabilities Act requires.
To remedy that, PEDS partnered with the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, U.S. Access Board, and Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety last month to provide two workshops called Designing Pedestrian Facilities for Accessibility. Fifty-five traffic engineers, designers, inspectors, and public works managers from 13 cities and counties in metro Atlanta participated.
Attendees learned best practices on accessible sidewalks, curb ramps,intersection design, and pedestrian signals. They also participated in a wheelchair tour, during which transportation professionals struggled to get up recently installed ramps. See photos here.
PEDS is optimistic that the workshop, together with the City of Atlanta's recent settlement with the U.S. Justice Department for ADA violations, will cause facilities built in the future to work better for all users. "This course has made me sensitive to people with disabilities," one participant commented.
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