By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- Residents and a city councilman are complaining about the installation earlier this month of nine new sidewalk curb ramps for the handicapped along Hermitage Court in the Forest Hills neighborhood.

The complaints, relayed to administrators by Councilman Eugene Brown, basically accuse the city of wasting money by installing the ramps in an area that has little foot traffic.

"We do not know where handicapped people are or will walk," said David Pisetsky, a homeowner who lives across from two of the new ramps. "Thus, it is reasonable to place them in locations which are likely to have pedestrian traffic. Hermitage Court is a quiet street and is not near any public buildings. There is no compelling need to place ramps there, especially given other considerations such as the hills."

Critics also say the ramps, which in most cases are as wide as a driveway, are spoiling the looks of a historic neighborhood.

Brown has asked City Manager Tom Bonfield to look into the matter.

Administrators, however, say they're trying to comply with a 2005 settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that requires the city to make sure its sidewalks comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Contractors are in the midst of installing 380 new ramps all around Durham, under a $1.2 million contract paid for with city bonds, said Public Works Director Katie Kalb. She added that officials are preparing a memo for Bonfield and the council to explain the situation.

The city also is operating under state law and design guidelines that are even more stringent than the 1990-vintage ADA.

A 1973 state law, General Statute 136-44.14, requires two curb ramps along every block of sidewalk-equipped street, with the ramps placed at intersections. It makes no exception for lightly trafficked areas or historic neighborhoods.

The law includes a retrofit provision that requires cities to install ramps when they repair curbing.

The two-ramps-per-block standard translates into a requirement along Hermitage Court for 10 ramps. The street makes an oval through the neighborhood, with sidewalks on both sides and intersections along the outer perimeter at all four major compass points.

Legislators specified that ramps must be at least 40 inches wide -- four more inches than federal guidelines suggest -- and can't have any slope that drops more than an inch for every foot of run.

The slope specification, repeated in state and city design standards, means the so-called "flare" or apron providing a transition between sidewalk and ramp usually has to be about 6 feet across on either side, given that most curbs rise about 6 inches above the street.

City design standards vary from the state's only in calling for a wider ramp, a full 4 feet across, not counting the flares.

Forest Hills residents don't dispute that contractors followed the proper specifications -- but are quick to point out that they add up to a large amount of concrete.

And in Hermitage Court's case, there's even more than normal because the ramps had to cross an unusually wide swale to reach from street to sidewalk.

One critic in a message to Kalb called the Hermitage ramps "unsightly monstrosities" and said they should be removed.

Pisetsky, meanwhile, notes that other ramps in Durham clearly don't meet standards, and said the city would get more bang for its buck elsewhere.

The Hermitage ramps vary in price from $1,936 to $2,370 each, and all told consumed about $21,000 of the $1.2 million contract.

The neighborhood's allotment of ramps, though large, wasn't the largest associated with the project. The sidewalks in and around the McDougald Terrace public housing complex, for example, were due to receive nearly three dozen ramps.

The 2005 settlement with the Justice Department came about after city officials, responding to a citizen's complaint, denied that Durham had any major ADA-compliance problems. But a federal inspection team found more than 500 violations.

The team's leader, Charles Harvey, said at the time it looked like officials had dragged their feet about bringing facilities into line. "Our feeling is that after 13 years, you should have had all this done," he told a city panel in 2003.