Building a True Community, Final Report, Public Rights-of-Way Access AdvisoryCommittee

摘要

For centuries, public rights-of-way ensured the right to passage of all users,humble or grand, on foot or by any other mode. However, only within the latter half of the last century has serious thought been given to the right to access for those who, historically, had never been considered at all in the built environment. Within the public right-of-way, efforts to accommodate people with disabilities have been accomplished on a state-by-state basis with guidance from various code-writing organizations, but there has been no single national set of guidelines for accommodating people with disabilities in the public right-of-way. Public rights-of-way harbor many transportation activities, including walking and rolling, bicycling, transit, freight movement, and automobile travel. They house the hardware, such as traffic signals and streetlights, that supports those activities. In many cases they contain public and private utilities. With so many diverse functions to be supported, the streetscape within the public right-of-way is often created over a period of time by a variety of minds and hands. The following report is a recommendation for a new national set of guidelines that define the details necessary to make the streetscapes in public rights-of-way accessible to all users. This report has been prepared by the Public Rights-of-Way Access Advisory Committee (PROWAAC), convened by the U.S. Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (the Access Board) to address access to public rights-of way for people with disabilities.