Off To A Really Great Start With The DOJ Sidewalk Repair Project!

To comply with the U.S. Department of Justice's 2019 order to repair sidewalks in certain areas of the city, work began last week on curb ramps along Warren Street to make them ADA compliant and safe for all.  The city's newly formed Public Works Board (not DPW) hired a company by the name of Precision Safe Sidewalks (PSS)* to shave curb ramps to certain slope specifications and to remove tripping hazards where sidewalks approach and meet street surfaces. (We also had to hire the local engineering consultant firm Crawford & Associates to oversee this project!)  

On Thursday, I saw the PSS worker (there appears to be only one) using his concrete grinder/shaver at 6th Street, spewing plenty of dust into the air that did not find its way into the dust collector at his side.  The dust cloud you see in the picture is full of silica, which are tiny bits of concrete considered a human carcinogen that you do not want in your lungs.  There was plenty of dust to go around for anyone walking, driving or biking by, though the worker wore a respirator to protect himself from being a victim of silicosis. 

HUDseen hopes to report on this project more extensively sometime soon, but today's focus will be on the "improvements" that were made on the northwest curb ramp at 7th & Warren.  The results of the work there are not encouraging at all. 

Curb ramp recently shaved to ADA specifications

Enough of the ramp was shaved off to expose metal that is likely part of the support structure for the ramp that was installed 30 or more years ago.  Strangely, even though it hasn't rained in over a week, the newly formed cracks and exposed metal seem to be wet all the time.  Then, the icing on the cake is the large chunk of loose concrete I was able to easily pick up this morning where the ramp meets the curbstone.  Some precision!   There's no way the PSS worker shaving the curb ramp didn't notice that the concrete he had shaved was now loose.  The company was hired to make our curb ramps MORE SAFE, not LESS SAFE!

It appears that the entire curb ramp will now need to be redone.  One wonders if the Public Works Board has budgeted any funds to replace curb ramps that are worked on by PSS which suddenly start to fall apart and become less safe and more prone to tripping pedestrians than before the work was performed. 

A new, supposedly ADA-compliant curb ramp we paid for and
that the DOJ ADA people would not find satisfactory

New (wet) cracks on an "improved" curb ramp

Quality, professional, precision work
we paid for!

Welcome to Hudson, where getting things right the first time seems to be a foreign concept and impossibility.

*According to the company's website, Precision Safe Sidewalks is a "full-service sidewalk asset management company."  There is no mention anywhere on the site as to where the company is located.