Commonsense and bridges

An article in today's Independent Online strikes a chord in my ex-architect soul:

Venice is to get a new bridge, its first in more than 70 years. This week the first piles were sunk on the bank of the Grand Canal by the railway station for Il ponte di Calatrava, which should be ready to bear its first cargo of tourists across to the buses and car parks of Piazzale Roma by the summer. The prefabricated sections were towed up the canal over the past two summers and are now ready to be bolted in place...

But the most persistent complaints focus on Calatrava's failure to make his bridge accessible to the disabled. The span is approached by glass steps: Calatrava has achieved his beautiful sweep at the expense of those who must wheel or hobble, and in contravention, it is claimed, of Italian law.

Clearly neither the Italian law-makers, nor the IO's journalist (Peter Popham) nor the people trying to manufacture a controversy about the bridge have ever been in Venice. The whole city is inaccessible to wheelchairs! There are roughly four hundred bridges in Venice, and only one of them is wheelchair-accessible. Yes, one. Every other bridge in the whole of Venice is either composed entirely of steps, or has a flight of steps leading to it on both sides. Whether there are 400 non-accessible bridges in Venice or 401 non-accessible bridges, will not change the (freely: miserable) situation of the disabled in the slightest, because they must use a non-accessible bridge—or a Vaporetto, which are wheelchair-accessible—to get to the new bridge in the first place!

(In any case, the bridge is for tourists: it connects the train station to the bus station and carpark. These are presently connected by Vaporetto and will remain so connected.)

A random bridge in Venice
Originally uploaded by udge.

Consider the photo on the right, a typical situation. There are seven steps leading from the street to the peak of the bridge, since each step is (from memory) about 16cm, the total rise is roughly a metre. Wheelchair ramps are fairly flat, up to a maximum of 10°; the length of ramp needed is therefore 5.7 metres or 18'8" (this is in fact quite steep, the normal angle is 6° for a length of 9.5 metres or 31'2"). Look at the photo, note that the front doors of the houses opposite the bridge open directly onto the pavement, and then tell me where you would put an eighteen-foot-long ramp? Can't be done. And now consider this: I was standing on another bridge when I took the photo. Where would you put its eighteen-foot-long ramp?

I'm not against provisions for the disabled, but I am for commonsense and the use of the eyes and brain that the Deity gave us. Laws exist to improve our condition, not simply in order to be obeyed.