Posted on: Saturday, June 16, 2001

City taken to court over lag in wheelchair ramps

By Robbie Dingeman
Advertiser City Hall Writer

The city has fallen so far behind on a court-ordered plan to make sidewalks and streets more accessible to wheelchair users that the matter was back in federal court yesterday.

Under a consent agreement, the city was supposed to alter 3,068 curbs within the first two years of a six-year plan starting in 1999, but attorney Stanley Levin yesterday said only 99 curb ramps have been installed .

Levin filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge David Ezra to order the city to comply with the consent decree that settled a lawsuit alleging that the sidewalks of Honolulu remained inaccessible in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

City Managing Director Ben Lee acknowledged that the city has fallen behind schedule, but said the city is trying to comply with the agreement. He said the work has turned out to be more costly and complicated than analysts thought when they agreed to meet the deadlines.

Lee said the city's first analysis indicated the cost of completing thousands of curb ramps at $50 million, but the latest estimate pushed the cost to $122 million. "It's a massive job, much much more massive in scope than anyone ever imagined," he said.

But Levin said not enough has been done and compared it with the city's inaction in the federal Felix consent decree case, which involves the state's struggle to provide appropriate education to public school students with learning disabilities.

Lee said the task is complicated by a lack of federal standards and by having to move traffic lights, storm drains, fire hydrants and other fixtures to install the curb ramps.

"The city is committed to making our intersections handicapped- and ADA-accessible. We've already appropriated over $24 million to get the job done," Lee said.

Levin is asking the court to order the city to start alterations to 1,500 curbs this year and 1,500 next year.