Milt, I get your story and had to laugh at the way you told it because I felt I could literally hear you telling it aloud to all of us. :D

I would've never come up with that angle, Milt. I would've just berated their manager on the phone for having such a stupid system in the first place. How friggin cheap does a company have to be to not even have ONE person manning a booth at a toll. I've run into this situation before on an on-ramp to a toll road - there was no attendant present, I had no spare change and the booth had no provision for dollar bills ("exact change only or violators will be executed"). I decided I didn't want to be fined and backed out of the toll booth (thankfully no one was behind me) and all the way back down the side of the on ramp shoulder backwards for about 1/8 mile. I felt like an idiot and was steaming at the idiocy of the situation. :mad:

Your take on your ridiculous situation was funny, Milt. ;)

Why does it cost $450k to build a wheelchair ramp? Has any homeowner spent even 1/10 of that to put one on their house? I doubt it.

What ever happened to that ADA lawsuit against Clint Eastwood's restaurant in Carmel?

svandamme, the roundabouts hereabouts replaced mainly 4-way stops(ie, intersections with stop signs) in suburban areas. In the old configuration there would be cross walks at the stop points. Now there are no stop points, and you are right, the peds have the right of way. Now we have cars rolling in groups (which saves fuel by not stopping) and it is an unsafe condition for the peds. Stepping off into that traffic takes a leap of faith in those drivers stopping I wouldn't take.

Same with my cousin, he lost use of his right arm when it was crushed - but he drove an auto.

"i know a building in the city that built a 6ft wheelchair ramp at a cost of $450k."



well.. the "city" is slang around here for Manhattan. And the "building" is a high end office building.

No specific answer to your "why" under these circumstances.

all i can say is that $450k is true and formally recorded as such. :D

The contractor was probably Tony Soprano :)

A ramp can get quite expensive, depending on size, run, where it is, what has to be moved/relocated to accommodate it, etc. In one case I had to deal with, adding a ramp required re-working access to a truck dock ($$$), relocating the discharge of an existing roof drain ($$$) and providing an alternate placement for an existing gas meter (lots of $$$).

They're not nearly as simple as they sound (nothing in design/construction is). Ramps are particularly tricky because they consume a LOT of real estate - ADA requirement is 1:12 slope maximum so if you've got to go up four feet, you need 48'x5' of ramp - minimum. Available space tends to go "bye-bye" really quick when you're confronted with lots of these things or large changes in grade.

i think anybody blind is constantly taking leaps of faith
but if peds have right of way, then what's the difference with Europe?? other then the drivers?

perhaps the way cops enforce the right of way for peds?

by high way i thought you meant what we called "autobahn" which would never be interupted with roundabouts or stop lights..

Try being on a bike in one of those toll booths.

Stop-neutral-glove off-dig in pocket for exact change-get change into machine-(all the time ignoring the encroaching F-350 on stilts honking the horn)-get gloves back on-clutch-gear- zero to speed limit in second gear.....

All my bikes now have transponders on them now.

BTDT. I keep my EZ pass under my map cover and unobstructed. Still, sometimes it doesn't work. On the Dulles Greenway, I got in the EZ Pass-only lane and it had a gate arm. It wouldn't open. I had to fish the cash out of my pocket and pay the lady while cars stacked up behind me. Then, thinking the EZ Pass was no good, I left in my tank bag a few weeks later when I rode to OH. On the PA Turnpike, the machine wouldn't give me a ticket. I pushed the speaker button and the lady said I have an EZ Pass and to keep going. WTF? Last weekend, riding home from NJ, it worked a few times and a few times I got the buzzer and probably a photo taken. I wonder what's in the mail next.

In Chinatown they sell licence plates in New York colors that say: "Chinatown" or "100% Italian" or motorcycle size plates for bicycles that say "Bobby" or "Sally". If anyone needs a pair - let me know.

Do they have one that says "TOLLBOOTHS SUCK"?

Uh, by shifting carefully.

There is a disabled lawyer here in Sacramento who makes his living suing small businesses for non-compliance with the ADA. It is literally all he does, go around and pick out promising targets. He has put dozens out of business entirely, truly a paragon of American Legislative Virtue.