We received a update from Dayna Webb, Oregon City’s Public Works Director clarifying a few details in this article. Each sidewalk can cost up to $80,000 (not $60,000). The city is looking at installing 70 ramps this year and each must pass a 20 point inspection with 100% success, or they need to be removed and reinstalled. These facts and more have been updated below. The Chamber would like to thank Dayna Webb for these clarifications.
If you’ve driven down Molalla Avenue lately, you’ve probably noticed that a whole lot of street corners have been reduced to dirt and rebar. We’re all used to roadwork on Molalla, but this felt different, so we asked Betty Mumm who sits on OC’s Transportation Advisory Committee and The Chamber’s Government and Economic Advisory Committee, to give us the scoop.
Here’s what’s actually going on.
The short version
Molalla Avenue is getting repaved, great news for anyone who’s coffee turns into a milkshake by driving on it. A full, curb-to-curb fresh coat for over a mile of road. That part’s straightforward. The part that surprises people is what comes with a repaving job.
Under federal accessibility rules, the moment a city gives a street a facelift, the corners have to come along for the ride. Repaving legally counts as “altering” the road, and that triggers a requirement to bring every curb ramp at those intersections up to today’s accessibility standards. So a paving project becomes a curb-ramp project, too. Which is why it looks like the whole street is digging for treasure.
So what are they actually building on those corners?
Those freshly poured ramps come with the bumpy textured pads you’ve felt under your feet. They’re called truncated domes, and they’re there so people who are blind or have low vision can feel exactly where the sidewalk ends and the street begins. It’s a small thing but it makes a big difference.
But are these designs really any different from the last ones? ADA has been improving the design of its corners since 1990. The original truncated dome designs are the ones most people are familiar with. Over time they experimented with arranging the domes in a diamond shape, new directional ramps, and mirroring the designs on each side of the road.
Finally, in 2023, PROWAG was published (Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines) which adjusted the slope of the ramp. This slope would make it easier for wheelchair users to cross. The new designs also get rid of any lip between the curb and the road.
The new designs also mandate the truncated domes be directed towards the side of the road that the person is walking towards, instead of pointing them towards the center of the street. This feels like a big improvement, as well as a no-brainer.
So in other words, the old corner was “a ramp”; the new corner is a precisely-graded, twin-ramp, contrast-marked, bump-equipped piece of engineering designed to get a blind or wheelchair-using neighbor across the street safely.
How long will it take?
Curb ramps are weirdly fussy. The slopes have to land within very tight tolerances, and if a pour comes out even slightly off, it gets ripped out and done again. Each ramp faces a 20 point inspection that needs to pass by 100%. The realistic timeline is somewhere in the four-to-six-month neighborhood.
It’s also important that the city allow people to continue to use the sidewalk while construction is underway. This accounts for the checkered order in which they’re completing it.
And who’s footing the bill?
The repaving itself is covered by the city’s pavement maintenance fund (the pot Oregon City uses every year to keep our roads from slowly turning to gravel). The big underground water-main work that came through first (the original reason Molalla got dug up) got a federal funding boost to help make it happen.
Here’s the kicker: the federal rule that says “repave a road, bring the corners up to code” doesn’t come with a check to actually build them. It’s a classic unfunded mandate. Washington requires the accessibility upgrades, but the bill lands squarely on the local tab. So those 70-plus brand-new corners are, for the most part, paid for right here at home, out of the same Oregon City pavement fund and various grants.
Betty estimates the cost at around $80,000 for each 4 corners. That is $10K per ramp, with two ramps per corner. A hefty price tag for sure, this project is set to use up much of the city’s budget for transportation this year. But many will argue it’s worth it so everyone, especially those who cannot drive, can experience our community and go about their business.
Why this is our business
We got the rundown straight from Betty Mumm, who sits on the city’s Transportation Advisory Committee and serves on the Chamber’s Government and Economic Advisory Board (GEAC).
And that’s kind of the whole point of GEAC. It connects Chamber members with the people who actually sit on the boards and committees where this stuff gets decided, so our business community hears what’s coming and how to adjust.
Sidewalks today, candidate forums and policy previews tomorrow. If you’d like to be in the room where it happens, GEAC is worth a look.
In the meantime: mind the cones, wave to the concrete crews, and know that the corner you’re tiptoeing around today is going to be a whole lot easier for your neighbors to cross tomorrow.