Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market Has Good Acess Route

Regular readers know I am not a fan of Wal-Mart. Over the last few years they’ve completely changed the grocery market in my original hometown of Oklahoma City by opening numerous “neighborhood markets” These stores are grocery and pharmacy only and are small in size relative to a new Schnuck’s or Dierberg’s store. The stores, however, are bigger than Aldi’s although just as basic.

One thing I have noticed is they actually have done a decent job connecting these stores to local sidewalks, where they exist. That is about as close to a compliment of Wal-Mart as you are going to get out of me.

Above is the accessible route from the public sidewalk to the entrance of one such neighborhood market in South Oklahoma City. The store is located on a major corner but only one of the two streets has any public sidewalk at all.

Heading out the door to the one street that does have a sidewalk we can see a clear path for the pedestrian — they are not forced to simply walk through the parking lot. Those people leaving the pharmacy drive-thru can clearly see the pedestrian crossing although part is missing.

Out at the intersection on the main corner we see the real problem — an incomplete sidewalk network. You can take the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street and then manage to cross but if you are in a wheelchair, as I am now, you are stuck in the street and in the path of cars. In some cases OKC has added ramps on these corners but the streets still lack sidewalks. This corner has a fairly new Taco Bell on it — perhaps they should have been required to include the public sidewalks in their build-out? Ot should that fall 100% on the municipality? Or are sidewalks in such a highly suburban area optional? You know my answer — we need a good public sidewalk network everywhere and each business abutting the sidewalk needs to connect to it with an ADA-compliant access route. Wal-Mart did their part in the above example but OKC is way behind the curve.
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