Paulette Vasey of New Suburb Beautiful would like to see more area sidewalks fitting the ADA standards for handicapped-accessible design.

She wrote in last week to tell me about a trip to Bella’s restaurant on South Howard Avenue with her daughter Rebecca, a 37-year-old woman with cerebral palsy who operates an electric wheelchair.

Rebecca has difficulty navigating the crooked, narrow and sometimes nonexistent South Tampa sidewalks. One of my closest friends has muscular dystrophy and uses the same type of chair, so I’m all too familiar with this problem.

Some of the walks are tilted at crazy angles by subterranean tree roots. Others abruptly come to an end. More still are blocked by parked cars, forcing any wheelchair-bound person out into traffic – an impossibly dangerous experience on Howard Avenue.

“The barriers to handicapped travelers in South Tampa are enormous,” Paulette said. “A block north of Mississippi (on Howard), the sidewalks are like ramps, and your wheelchair is really tipped and unstable. It just gets very frustrating.”

She pointed to other impassable locations around MacDill Avenue and Estrella Street, and said portions of Mississippi Avenue have no sidewalks at all.

During our phone conversation, city transportation manager Roy LaMotte assured me of the city’s desire to adhere to ADA standards, and I have no doubt that is the case. But when it comes to construction, things are not always simple, especially in South Tampa.

New sidewalk projects, like those put in along Wallcraft Avenue or Bayshore Boulevard, are crafted to ADA codes, but older streets are more difficult to work with. Even when private easements can be secured, the ability to build is often constrained by grand oak trees, drainage ditches or rights of way built up throughout the years.

Budgets are limited as well, but annual funds are allocated for both new sidewalks and retrofitting. So there’s hope.

“If this is a situation where we can rectify or make a small modification to help out people with special needs, we’ll be glad to do that,” LaMotte said.

LaMotte said future sidewalk work is planned for Palma Ceia, Swann Estates and Ballast Point, but I have no specifics as of yet. In the meantime, we both want to do more research seeking possible solutions to Rebecca’s issue, one that Paulette pointed out affects many of our residents.

“We have all these elderly people who should not be kept from going for a walk,” she said. “They want to go to restaurants too, just like anybody else.”

If you have a story to tell about accessibility problems in South Tampa, please drop me a line. When I get more updates, you’ll read it here first.