As the city busies itself with controversial studies temporarily removing traffic signals at local intersections, a local blind advocate is appalled by what she says is a lack of action on clearly identified risks affecting some of our most vulnerable citizens.
Carol Magnan has only two per cent vision in her right eye.
She can't see a thing out of her left eye.
Last year, she was asked to prepare a report for the city's accessibility advisory committee on the state of accessible pedestrian signals (APS) in Sault Ste. Marie.
APS are the chirping, beeping devices that enable blind and low-vision individuals to know whether the light is red, yellow or green, whether it's safe for them to cross the street.
33 intersections and pedestrian crossovers
Magnan walked or rode Sault Transit to every one of the 33 intersections and pedestrian crossovers where APS are installed.
She searched for and found the push-button devices on each street corner.
She found almost 75 per cent of Sault Ste. Marie's APS weren't working as they should.
In many cases, the arrow buttons were jammed and unusable.
In other cases, the buttons were barely working, but Magnan had to push like a sumo wrestler to operate them.
At some intersections, the audible beeps and chirps weren't loud enough to be heard.
And the time allowed for crossing the street was often not nearly enough for any disabled person, fully sighted or otherwise.
Magnan compiled her findings into a lengthy report, which she presented to the city last fall.
She didn't feel it got the attention it needed.
Magnan gives it to them
Magnan is a key member of the Sault's accessibility advisory committee (AAC), chairing its site plan subcommittee that reviews local building projects.
When the AAC most recently met two weeks ago, she was clearly infuriated.
"I want everybody to pay attention," she said, tossing the last remaining paper copy of her report onto a table.
"This is the last time. I'm going to leave it here and if anybody wants to take it home, or if you want a digital copy, you can take it.
"These are barriers that I face, and people with vision loss face every single time we cross the street.
"I did this audit back in April last year. It's been over a year now, a year and a month. They're still not fixed. and I find it very discouraging," Magnan said.
"I didn't leave that meeting with it, because I gave it to them," she told SooToday.
Magnan definitely gave it to them.
"I'm not mentioning these APS ever again. I'm done with this, OK? I'm 100 per cent done. Fix them. They're broken. Make them accessible. That's it. You guys figure it out. I'm not doing your job anymore," she told the committee, pounding the table for emphasis.
One of the intersections that Magnan audited was Queen and Bruce, the high-profile corner directly outside SooToday's Village Media headquarters at 298 Queen St. E.
Here's what she found there:
- the Queenstown IDA corner isn't working
- the GFL Memorial Gardens corner has one signal that doesn't work, the one that brings you across Bruce Street to the Bell building
- the corner from Village Media, to cross Bruce Street to the drug store, does not work
- all corners need to have the locator adjusted because you cannot hear them
Magnan did her study in April of last year. Are her findings still valid?
She returned to Queen and Bruce on Friday and found nothing had changed.
SooToday confirmed that during an inspection on Tuesday.
Later tonight, SooToday will publish the full text of Magnan's report.
We encourage our readers to visit any APS-enabled intersections near you and report what you find in the comment section below. (Please note that comments are disabled overnight when moderators aren't on duty.)
A short history of APS in the Sault
Sault Ste. Marie's first accessible pedestrian crossing was activated in the fall of 2008 on Northern Avenue at Zellers Plaza.
It featured audible signals for the sight-impaired and reduced-height controls for persons in wheelchairs.
Of the 33 installations we have today, Magnan blew the whistle on 27 of them.
Diane Morrell, the city's accessibility coordinator, concedes there are problems.
"Our winters are very, very hard on the accessible pedestrian signals," Morrell tells SooToday.
"I think it's salt that gets in there and it's hard on it. The other thing that seems to break down frequently is the speakers, for the chirps and the beeps. Those seem to need frequent replacement. There's no such thing as a repair. It's a replacement.
"The technology has evolved. And from what I understand, there is no one-size-fits-all just yet.
"There is not one name brand or one style, that is the one that must be installed. There's some flexibility in it, which can be good on one hand and can be a negative on the other.
"You've got some flexibility if your intersection doesn't quite fit with some of the usual typical crossings. And it can be negative in that it's not easy.
The wild west
"The province isn't saying this is the one that will work for all applications, and this is what you have to do. That would be easy, if we were just told exactly what to be, then we'd go forward with that."
"We're still a little bit in the wild west, as far as which technology is the best and what application works best in certain scenarios," Morrell said.
At this month's AAC meeting, activist Magnan got few answers as to what the city did with her APS audit report, except to say it had been forwarded to the public works department.
In a written statement to SooToday, Dan Perri, the city's director of public works said: "The City of Sault Ste. Marie is committed to ensuring safe and equitable transportation for all road users, including pedestrians with accessibility needs. As part of this commitment, the city operates and maintains accessible pedestrian signals (APS) across the community.
"While routine maintenance ensures these systems remain functional, community feedback plays an important role in identifying areas for improvement. The APS systems are complex, and many elements must work together to ensure they are truly accessible to all users," Perri said.
'They have not been maintained for years'
Magnan, however, sees things differently.
She was visibly exasperated when told there was $10,000 in this year's budget for APS, and the committee chair asked her which intersection she considered priority.
They're all priority, she insisted.
If the city installed the equipment, it should be properly maintaining it, Magnan said.
"You cannot sit there and tell me they maintain them yearly, or every six months. They have not been maintained for years. So from the years they did not maintain them, they can fork out the funds to pay for them. If they're installed, they should be working, and there's no excuse for it," Magnan said.
"I worked my butt off. For what?" she said. "The committee members are probably not even aware of it. They don't even know how much work I've put into this. And nothing's been done. It's been postponed, postponed, postponed and postponed. There's no reason for that.
"I don't feel safe walking the street anymore, and I'm probably the most confident blind person you'll see in Sault Ste. Marie," Magnan told the AAC.
Second Line and Korah Road
Magnan's biggest concern is with the Second Line intersection at Korah Road.
Here are her findings from that corner:
- signal on the southwest corner, to cross Korah Road, is not working
- there is no button to push in order to cross over to the island from Market Mall corner. Cars whip through here without slowing down
- there were two seniors stranded on the island because they felt there was not enough time to cross Korah Road
- on the southwest corner there was a woman standing there waiting until someone came along and she could cross with them. I brought her across, but not before I was cut off by a car turning onto Korah Road from Second Line. This is even after I paused and after two beeps, I started to cross
- there needs to be zebra stripes painted here and have traffic stopped farther back from the corner
- there is no colour to any curbs
"I would have to say, this was the most frightening and unsafe intersection I came across," Magnan said.
"It takes you a minute to get off that curb cut onto the road, to get across, and that's the same with vision loss."
"You're not going to stand on that curb cut because cars will flip around that corner and cut you off. So you've got to wait until it starts to beep.
"So the very first beep, you walk up to the curb. The second beep you get off the curb cut.
"The third beep, you start walking across. And if there's only four and a half beeps, you're not even halfway across the street, and it stops beeping."
Magnan said the minimum time needed to cross most intersections is six beeps, between five and six beeps for a small street.
What public works did with Magnan's report
SooToday contacted Dan Perri at public works to ask him to expand on his written statement to us.
He's a newcomer to his current position, having arrived last November.
"This report was provided to me when I started my position," he told us.
"As far as I know, our staff went out and performed the maintenance that they could, as per the recommendations in the report.
"One thing to keep in mind, though, we are coming out of a pretty tough winter. These APS units, they don't fare the greatest in the presence of things like road salt and cold temperatures.
"So we are just starting now to kind of get into that summer maintenance program. We're going to go through that same report again because we heard the same comments that you did.
"We want to ensure that any deficiencies that were noted had been addressed from any maintenance perspective.
"Moving forward, we're looking to take a more proactive approach. We're going to have a more standardized inspection sheet. We're going to create that with consultation with the accessibility advisory committee to ensure that these APS units are functioning as they as they were when we purchased them."
"Behind the scenes, we have been in consultation with Canadian National Institute for the Blind about standardization of how the APS should work. Are the push buttons functioning? Are the audible sounds actually being heard? Things like that."
'Somewhere in the near future, there'll be a plan'
Perri pointed out that a representative of public works (himself) now sits as a resource member on the AAC.
He said he expects to have more information next month about what's been done so far.
"We've had ongoing discussions about how to make some of these systems work better," added Diane Morrell, the accessibility co-ordinator.
"I think somewhere in the near future, there'll be a plan in place on how we move the bar on APS." Morrell said.