Taipei fails to clearly mark parking garages that lack elevators, creating dilemmas for disabled drivers, Taipei city councilors Juan Chao-hsiung (阮昭雄) and Hsieh Wei-chou (謝維洲) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
Juan said that Taipei City Parking Management and Development Office statistics show that almost 15 percent of city-owned parking garages lack elevators, harming the interests of disabled people, pregnant women and people with children.
“The situation is crazy: Some parking garages have parking spots for disabled drivers even though there is no elevator,” Juan said, adding that in some cases disabled people see signs saying there is no elevator only when they reach a stairwell.
In other cases, signs appear only at a garage’s toll gate, “trapping” disabled drivers if there are any cars behind them, he added.
Poor signage also afflicts garages with elevators, such as the city government’s own parking complex, Hsieh said.
The complex is divided into two sections joined by a basement, but only one has an elevator. Walking from one segment to another takes almost 20 minutes — without taking into account the effect of confusing signs, Hsieh said.
Parking management office deputy chief engineer Chang Chien-hua (張建華) said that all parking garages lacking elevators were constructed before 1996, when architectural rules mandating disabled access came into effect.
While the city government has added elevators to many older garages, safety concerns have prevented elevators being installed into the 18 remaining garages, the vast majority of which are under school sports fields or along Civic Boulevard, he said.
Because Civic Boulevard is sandwiched between an underground railway line and an elevated highway, adding elevators to parking garages that also lie below the road has been deemed structurally unsafe, he said.
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