Dateline: May 24, 2007

TxDot installing new ramps in Clarendon

Clarendon residents are having mixed reactions to new handicap ramps being installed along Koogle Street as part of an ADA project by the Texas Department of Transportation.

“So far this week the contractors have completed 9th, 8th and 7th streets on Koogle,” said Fu Benavidez, TxDOT Donley County Maintenance Supervisor. 

Jayne Starnes, who lives at Eighth and Koogle, says her family is satisfied with the work being done on the sidewalk in front of her home.

“It’s gone fine,” Starnes said. “We had one little problem (a leaking sprinkler line), but they corrected it immediately.”

But up the block at Seventh and Koogle, Frankie Henson is not happy at all about the work.

“I have never been so mad in all my life,” Henson said. “They’ve torn up my yard and everything.”

TxDOT Childress District Public Information Officer Barbara Seal says the project is being required by the federal government’s Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which is mandating that the state remove barriers to the handicapped.

The project will cost $15 million statewide, and an estimated $211,000 is the cost of the local work, Seal said.

 “If there is any walking path – whether it’s just a trail but especially if it’s a sidewalk, we have to have access from the highway; and for us, that means removing the curb,” Seal said.

But Henson says she has lived in her home for 39 years and the state has never taken care of the sidewalks or the grass, and she also sees the project as a waste.

“There’s no way any one who is handicapped could get across the alley (on Seventh) to even get down that sidewalk,” she said.

The improvements are being made in the state right of way, but Henson sees the work as an intrusion.

“We don’t have any rights any more,” she said. “They just do what they want and tell you it’s the law.”

The project will continue on FM 2162 (Koogle Street), FM 2362 (Fifth Street), and US 287. Knish Corporation of Lonsdale, Minnesota, is the contractor for this project, and 280 working days have been scheduled to complete the project throughout the district.

To meet this goal, TxDOT is currently working to install or improve curb ramps at many corners in various locations in the Childress District as part of TxDOT’s Statewide Curb Ramp Program. Curb ramps will be installed or upgraded at corners on the state highway system, and existing pedestrian signal buttons and marked crosswalks will be made accessible from the curb ramps. 

Seal said TxDOT officials looked at every intersection and eliminated some corners from the project to prevent building “ramps to nowhere.”

For more information, contact Dan Baisa, Childress District Engineering Assistant (940) 937-7205 or Seal at (940) 937-7145.