They might want to get some non-union labor.
At the price tag listed, its $7,500 a ramp. I do cost estimates on these all the time, and its around $900 per ramp. If they have to tear out the old on, its around $1,500. With design, put it at $2,000 a ramp. Who knew, stuff costs too much in Philadelphia.
Now if you read the fine print, you may notice that it uses up 65% of a $20 million budget, every year...but will ultimately cost $858 million...or a 66 year build out. The way it works is the city must have a ramp ‘program’ in place, and commit to replacing a certain number every year. In return they are eligible for federal matching funds (read their own money after its been filtered through Washington) on a variety of street projects. So they burn through their maintenance funds, and in return get more capital improvement funds...which is sadly a recipe for alot of poorly maintained streets.
Some cities get creative. Utility work, street widening, etc. takes out alot of ramps...and they require the new ones to go in with the domes. This costs less than just picking random ramps about town for replacement, but they still get ‘credit’ for the replacement.
Sadly, the ramp mandates were spawned from one act, signed into law by George Bush, in 1990. The mandates can’t be stopped or controlled now. The federal beast has been unleashed...something we should always think about when an ‘well intentioned’ legislation goes on the books.
Anyway, Philly has the pefect storm of corrucpt labor, federal regulation, and an inability to plan/think creatively to reduce costs. I’m not surprised.
You are correct about the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 being the original source of this issue. Spawned by the Democrat Congress but signed by GHW Bush in 1990.
Every ramped walk to an intersection built in the last 22 years should have had the feature built in when built.
However, so many machine run cities have failed to do so and now Obama is mandating compliance programs. You are right on the cost as well — a single ramp can have these added for less than a grand in most cases. A whole intersection with 8 ramps (two on each corner) it might get down to 500 bucks a ramp. Now keep in mind that when you are building a block of sidewalks, you need this for any curb to be cut by a ramp but you have a much larger area of cost to apportion it against.
It is actually one of the cheaper ADA construction adds to public and private work mandated by the Federal law for the last 22 years. Look at some of the ramps, added handicap parking spaces, handicap signs, long winding wheel chair ramps and other improvements and more cost is in these.
This article is simply a run down city is now finally trying to show what the cost would be to avoid doing what they should have had already half accomplished if they had started 22 years ago.