A 2019 report identified several APS crosswalks with ADA compliance issues. Five years later, several haven't seen improvements.

In 2019, a city of Albuquerque report identified Americans with Disabilities Act shortcomings with traffic safety improvements at 10 middle and elementary schools in the city.

Five years later, several of those schools are still out of compliance, or awaiting recommended ADA improvements.

Bringing the crosswalks at Truman Middle School, Madison Middle School, John Adams Middle School and Janet Kahn School of Integrated Art into ADA compliance has been put on hold until a funding source is found, city officials say.

Albuquerque Public Schools has 27 middle schools and 89 elementary schools on its roster, according to the district’s website.

The needed work could be costly, ranging from $50,000 to $350,000 depending on the school and the project, said Dan Mayfield, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Municipal Development. Buying sidewalk right of way can be particularly expensive, he said.

“Safety is really super-important. … We’ve done a lot to make sure the crossing zones are as safe as they can be,” Mayfield said. “(But) for a lot of them, there’s no funding identified.”

Cordell Bock, a planner with APS’ capital master plan department, said the district “doesn’t have the right of way” to upgrade sidewalks, crosswalks or traffic signals unless they’re within a school’s real estate boundary.

As such, he said the initial study finding compliance issues was “more of an inventory rather than a full-blown commitment.”

“We didn’t necessarily pursue the city to act on the plan,” Bock said. “But we do work really closely with the city and the other agencies to support each other with data and any other type of support that we can so that the agencies are working together closely to move traffic safety forward in the region.”

Gary Housepian, CEO of Disability Rights New Mexico, said it was “disheartening” that several of the schools remained out of compliance after being identified in the report.

“This is important to kids with disabilities to have full access to their schools,” Housepian said.

Mayfield said the city typically looks for state or federal funding to complete ADA improvements. Sometimes, specific city councilors fund crosswalk improvements in their district. There’s a city fund for ADA improvements, Mayfield added, but that money goes toward more than crosswalks.

And Mayfield said, “There’s not a ton of (money) in that fund.”

New signs, markings and ramps at Hoover Middle School cost $33,000, funded by a set-aside from former City Councilor Trudy Jones. Each city councilor in Albuquerque can set aside some funds for projects in their districts.

Hoover was one of the schools made into a “pilot school” for APS’ “Vision Zero” plan. Being a pilot school, Bock said, means that site is a top priority for traffic safety interventions.

Only four schools identified in the crosswalk report were made pilot schools.

Tim Brown, traffic engineering division manager for DMD, said although the ADA was signed into law in 1990, it took several years for the civil engineering field to learn how to follow the standards.

“The industry didn’t really have a solid grip on how to build something ADA compliant until 2004, 2005,” Brown said. “Everything that was built prior to that isn’t ADA-compliant … so there’s a lot of stuff out there.”

Brown said the city’s ADA transition plan has identified thousands of sites in the city that are not ADA compliant. Fixing all of them could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, he said, and the cost has only been increasing, Brown said. When the report was written in 2019, Brown said, a rectangular rapid flashing beacon cost $30,000. Now, it’s $50,000.

That, coupled with labor, can stall projects. Brown said just one person handles ADA compliance and 311 complaints in the division.

Housepian said it’s about time that some changes are made.

“The ADA’s been around here for a bit now,” Housepian said. “It’s time for us to really give it some meaning.”

Cibola High School parent Tyler Ashton said ADA issues can be “frustrating.” Ashton’s 18-year-old son is nonverbal and uses a wheelchair. Accessibility issues can appear anywhere from a school parking lot to a shopping mall, he said.

But Ashton said he doesn’t typically raise ADA compliance problems.

“They just never go anywhere,” Ashton said. “You can go call the (U.S.) Access Board, they’ll go and look at it, and they’ll fine the school — but it rarely turns into anything productive for the people that it affects the most.”

Ashton, a civil engineer, said ADA requirements are front of mind when new buildings are designed. But for some of the older schools in APS, Ashton said, they may have been designed with less thought to accessibility — and bringing a building into compliance can be more difficult than building new.

“To retrofit something is way, way harder than to just tear it all the way down to the ground and rebuild it from scratch,” Ashton said. “Both ways are super-expensive, but it’s definitely harder to get retrofits in and make them work.”

But as the parent of a child with a disability, he said, “it sucks.”