I follow with interest the articles and letters about roads, etc. The barrier we hit is disinterest.
As I use a wheelchair, my focus is footpaths. The council doesn’t want to repair and maintain existing footpaths. They want to build nice new ones; somewhere else. Will we need to drive there to appreciate and enjoy them?
Some years ago, Meredith Akuhata-Brown came out in my spare wheelchair. She photographed and filmed the safety hazards and obstacles within a couple of blocks of my home.
Her report was delivered to the transport committee. To date none of those have been remedied yet.
A couple of years later I hit an obstacle which nearly threw me out of the chair. My safety belt saved me. I reported it. Some time later I received a letter, that my report had gone into the wait-18-months-file. Now it had moved into a let’s-think-about-it file.
I don’t know how long it takes to move from the let’s-think-about-it file, to shall-we-do-something file.
Ingrid Derbyshire
