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Public Works Director Peter Rieck said that his office has received no official request for new crosswalks near council chambers, but that if one should arrive, the department would proceed with a feasibility study of the issue.
On June 3, Councilmember Daryl Slusher initiated a discussion of the jaywalking situation with a memo to Police Chief Stan Knee, stating that ticketing is an inappropriate solution to the problem. In the case of the day laborers, Slusher said, he would support an ordinance requiring employers to pick up employees only at the designated work corner. “If pedestrian safety is the goal,” Slusher wrote, “then I would like to see the department step up enforcement on automobile drivers that do not stop at crosswalks when pedestrians are clearly trying to cross the street.”
APD Commander Duane McNeill said he would support Slusher’s suggestion to create a city ordinance that would clearly designate and regulate the day-labor pickup area. McNeill said the campaign to ticket jaywalkers is in part a response to the council’s mandate to reduce by 10% the number of injuries and deaths of pedestrians and bicyclists in Austin. McNeill said that pedestrians crossing illegally both at the day labor site and outside council chambers are endangering both themselves and motorists. “We want to ensure people are safely crossing the streets. All we are trying to do is say, `People, cross at the cross walk.'”
Austin by Wheelchair
Reaching council chambers safely is an even greater logistical challenge for disabled residents. Mary Kay Sanders informed the council as much last week as the lone citizen to testify on a proposed $700,000 deal to upgrade the Driskill Hotel at Sixth and Brazos with state-of-the-art wheelchair accessibility and other improvements. That money, said Sanders, could go farther, and is needed more urgently, in other parts of downtown.
While a ramp at Sixth and Brazos would be nice, she said, the intersection has “three other perfectly good corners.” While the “monument to accessibility” that would allow quicker entry to the Driskill would be convenient, she said, “it’s also a humongous waste of money. I don’t believe it’s as high a priority as coming to see you every week.” Sanders cited the difficulty she had had in reaching the council chambers that day: the nearest bus stop was at a corner that was difficult to navigate in her wheelchair, and she was forced to wait 20 minutes for assistance in crossing the street. Sanders asked the council to take some of the money earmarked for the Driskill project “and make a fully accessible route to this place.”
While councilmembers had planned to vote on the plan last week, Sanders’ comments gave them pause and they delayed action until this week. On the face of it, though, the project seems a harmonious blend of the old and the new: updating the Driskill Hotel, an old Austin landmark, with modern wheelchair accessibility – a collaboration which would be jointly funded by the city of Austin and the Driskill, with some federal money thrown in. The city’s contribution would cover about half of the $700,000 contract with Jay-Reese Contractors.
The project would provide ramps and steps leading to crosswalks, and improved alley access for wheelchairs, and bring the curb cuts on the corner up to ADA standards. Public Works’ Rieck called the project the “missing link” in the Sixth Street Streetscape Project, the renovation of Sixth Street for improved wheelchair access the city began in 1992. When the project is completed, he said, Sixth Street would be fully accessible from Congress to I-35.
Why spend such a large chunk of the ramp budget on this “work of art” when it could fund several other more modest, but perhaps more useful, projects? Sanders says it’s all politics. She blamed a prominent Austin group that advocates for the disabled, ADAPT, for selling out more practical priorities by endorsing the Driskill project contingent upon additional curb-ramp funding from the city. “ADAPT as an organization has become a political threat,” she said. “They have bargained at the table for future funds for accessibility; I’m not willing to spend $600,000 for future accessibility funding.”
Jennifer McPhail of ADAPT said that the group didn’t strike a deal so much as it demanded, and received, more of a voice for the disabled community in prioritizing public works projects. McPhail said that ADAPT got involved in order to avoid a repeat of the Driskill project, which she felt was too expensive and did not address the greatest points of need in the city. The Driskill “wouldn’t have been my first choice,” she said. “That’s why they need to involve the disability community in the prioritization process. The $600,000 would be better spent in other places.”
She said that though “we’re not thrilled with it still, it’s so close to being done.” The money for the project was allocated in the 1996 fiscal year, she noted, “and we’re getting ready to go into the 1999 fiscal year. So we’re using money from three years ago, when Bruce Todd was mayor. We’re talking about dotting the `i’s and crossing the `t’s here.” McPhail is hopeful about the future of accessibility improvements in Austin: “We have strong commitments from the city to improve North Lamar Boulevard, as well as a project for W. 38th Street and another project in East Austin. They’ve started to listen to the disability community.” The council will weigh the various deserving priorities at its next meeting, when the Driskill contract again comes up for a vote.
Trip to China
Airport watchers voiced some justifiable concern when, with a 6-2 vote, the Airport Advisory board recommended selecting FMC Jetway Systems, the second lowest bidder, to build the new Bergstrom airport’s passenger-loading bridges. With a $1.4 million discrepancy between the bids of Jetway and the low bidder, the Chinese company TianDa, and with TianDa loudly protesting Jetway’s selection, the scrutiny given the selection process was well deserved. The good news here is that Jetway’s status as the lowest responsible bidder on the project withstood the scrutiny well. At last Wednesday’s council work session, John Almond and Arnold Rosenberg of the New Airport Project Team made a good case for selecting Jetway over TianDa – perhaps a little too good.
Jetway had more experience, they said. They have been in business much longer. TianDa had built only one bridge of the type Austin needed, and that was outside the United States. According to a New Airport Project Team report, the airline industry has a “split opinion” of TianDa’s ability to manufacture the three-tunnel bridges. Furthermore, the city has a long-term working relationship with Jetway, they’ve proven reliable, and the familiarity with them and their staff would shorten the learning curve and perhaps save the city money.
In making such an ironclad case, however, the two talked themselves into something of a corner. With so many indicators pointing towards Jetway, Councilmember Willie Lewis wondered, why did Almond and Rosenberg hie all the way to China to visit TianDa? Among the reasons given in Rosenberg’s report of the visit were TianDa’s failure to answer detailed questions about the design specifications of the bridges, and their failure to have completed a working prototype of the kind of bridges Austin needs.
They also wanted to see how TianDa was coming on the 13 three-tunnel bridges ordered by the city of Houston – imagine their surprise when they discovered that the design process for the Houston order wasn’t completed, and the bridges weren’t yet in construction! With progress this slow, they concluded, TianDa was a bad risk to meet the contract’s 298-day deadline. But could these things have possibly been ascertained by phone? Almond said the visit was part of the city’s due diligence effort, which is required for contracts on which the lowest bidder is not chosen. “TienDa doesn’t have any track record in the U.S. at all,” Almond said. “We’ve got to look at everything ourselves, and that means we visit the plant – unfortunately the plant was halfway around the world.” He said other cities, including Houston and San Francisco, have made the trip to China after receiving low bids from TienDa for similar projects. Houston chose to hire the company, San Francisco did not. Almond said that TienDa’s experience building bridges similar to the ones Austin needs made it a valid competitor for the contract, one that could not be rejected without following proper procedures. “If we had rejected their bid outright, we’d be in court,” he said.
This Week in Council: With the mayor and city manager returned from Austin’s sister city, Koblenz, Germany, council will consider more funding for curb ramps, as well as a resolution to select one of four plans for Barton Springs Road, plus the first reading of a resolution authorizing limited-purpose annexation of Del Valle.
This article appears in June 12 • 1998 and June 12 • 1998 (Cover).