A Sidewalk Will Be Installed In The Future, Safety Concern Almost Resolved

Anna Lozyk Romeo — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:47:45 +0000

The results are in for the requested sidewalk I blogged about before in the following published posts: A Practical Mother’s Day Gift To Come, Hopefully and National Access Awareness Week In Aurora, A Sidewalk.

I expressed my concern to the Superstore in Aurora and to the Town of Aurora about the safety of the pedestrians who access the store property, mainly pedestrians such mothers with strollers.

For three years I walked from St. John’s Sideroad and Pinnacle Trail at least once or twice a week along with my son to the the Superstore and accessed the store from the North-West corner. To access the Superstore property I had to either push the stroller against oncoming traffic along the East side of Earl Stewart Drive, or push the stroller on the grass on the same side of the street. In both cases accessing and leaving the Superstore property was difficult and unsafe.

Last Friday I was able to photograph one more case to many others I have seen, a mother with double stroller leaving the Superstore property. In this example, she is actually using side of the road with cars driving beside her in the same direction to get to the lights.

Pedestrian, North-West Side of the Superstore

I was very pleased with the result, the time it took to resolve this matter and how it was handled by the Accessibility Advisor. The Town of Aurora Infrastructure and Environmental Services division has reviewed the concern and recommendations, and determined that a sidewalk can eventually be placed within the Town’s property line. At this point the Works Department is in charge.

Pedestrian, North-West Side of the Superstore

As more residents of Aurora are commuting by public transportation and walking, the safety and ease of pedestrian access to properties must be considered. My general recommendations to the Accessibility Advisory Committee in the letter were as follows to emphasize the importance accessing the property and not just the building itself:

1. Access to retail properties must be designed for pedestrians as well as drivers.
2. Pedestrian access must include people with physical challenges.
3. People with physical challenges must include parents with strollers.

Pedestrian, North-West Side of the Superstore

Unfortunately, the Superstore has a very poor accessibility all around. Both North-West and North-East side especially do not have properly constructed access. The ease and safety on the North-West side will be resolved by the town in the near future. The North-East side of the store already has sidewalk, so technically speaking it is safe. However, the ease to access the store property is not. This may not go well in the future residents on the other side of Bayview Avenue.

Pedestrian, North-West Side of the Superstore

It is sad to say that ‘the customer is always right‘ saying not always works. The customer is only right when there is monetary spending on the customer side, but when the vendor is paying to make the customer happy, often there is a communication break up.

To conclude let me share with you this story. I always wanted to share it, and this time fits perfectly in the whole accessibility scenario. Few years ago we had a family of skunks (three of them) on our backyard. The animal services told us that by law they cannot remove them. They recommended to make the access to the property difficult, and they will leave on their own. We did, and they left our property, probably to other property that had an easy access.

Something to think about. I guess.

National Access Awareness Week In Aurora, A Sidewalk Request

Anna Lozyk Romeo — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 05:59:22 +0000

This is a follow up to my previous post A Practical Mother’s Day Gift To Come, Hopefully. Last week on Friday June 3rd I hand delivered my proposal letter to the Superstore located on the corner of St. John’s Sideroad and Bayview Avenue to add the sidewalk. As everyone knows the mail service is on some kind of dispute at this moment so I wasn’t going to let it sit in their storage.

That day I walked the same path. At the store I gave it to one of the ladies at the Customer Service desk. I addressed to the store manager. After all the receipts have the store manager’s name listed for concerns and issues. The accessibility to the property for the pedestrians is my concern. Its been a few days and I hope it was read by now. However, I will give couple of weeks as I am sure I am not the only issue on their list. I shall then follow up if I don’t hear anything in couple of weeks.

Secondly, as I already revealed it is the North-West corner of the Real Canadian Superstore that has a very poor and unsafe accessibility to the property for those who commute by foot, especially parents pushing children in strollers.

Intersection of Earl Stewart Drive and St. John's Sideroad, Aurora

I also took Barry’s recommendations to write to the Town of Aurora Accessibility Advisor to hopefully amend their guidelines. The following is a clip from my cover letter.

‘While I am awaiting their response, I would like to give you an opportunity to review my proposal to Superstore. I believe the Superstore example should justify my recommendation to amend your Accessibility Guidelines to include property access points in addition to building access points and all pedestrians with or without challenges. The three main points that I would like you to consider are:

1. Access to retail properties must be designed for pedestrians as well as drivers.

2. Pedestrian access must include people with physical challenges.

3. People with physical challenges must include parents with strollers.‘

As per Weekly Notice Board from The Banner Tuesday May 31, 2011, page 4, May 29 to June 4 was a National Access Awareness Week that read:

‘The Town of Aurora is proud to acknowledge May 29 to June 4 as National Access Awareness Week in an effort to raise awareness of the importance of equal access and full participation of persons with disabilities in our community.’

Perfect timing for the National Access Awareness Week. We are now ‘driving’ society. We use cars every where. Superstore is a perfect property with a driver access only. There are stairs on the East side of the building, but how good that entrance is for the parents with strollers.

Hopefully the Town’s Accessibility Advisor will take this matter seriously. The letter was deposited to the Large Item Deposit Box. However, I yet to find out that I should have deposited into the Treasury Deposit slot. Well there was a nice man on the parking lot probably someone who is working for the Town of Aurora and he said that he will inform Bill of my large item in the deposit box. It is are really good feeling to know that people care and help you out.

As I am always trying to include photo from the Town of Aurora in my posts. Here is a photo of the street where I am hoping for the sidewalk. Now if you look closely on the far back right side of the photo, behind the big tree with no leaves, you can see some green trees. Well all the trees at the South-East corner of St. John’s Sideroad and Bayview Avenue were cut down last week. I am very disappointed. This corner looked unrecognizable when we drove by, in fact I asked my husband, ‘Where are we?‘.

Darn I also missed the photo opportunity. I had it on my list, but someone was faster than me. Well, my source of the below photo, probably the only photo, is Google Maps, Street View – a very handy tool.

South-East corner of St. John's Sideroad and Bayview Avenue

Living in Aurora, Town of Aurora, Ontario » Accessibility Advisor

A Sidewalk Will Be Installed In The Future, Safety Concern Almost Resolved

National Access Awareness Week In Aurora, A Sidewalk Request