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.

Living in Aurora, Town of Aurora, Ontario » Customer Service

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