She can get out of the house at least!

[Gob]

Never satisfied some people....

The mother of a disabled girl have criticised housing officials after they installed a £40,000 eyesore 'slalom-style' ramp over ten levels outside her home.

Clare Lally, 33, spent two years campaigning for improved access for her wheelchair-bound daughter Katie, 7, after the council gave them a home at the top of three flights of stairs.







http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... arden.html

[oldr_n_wsr]

Probably had to be built that way due to some regulation stating that the pitch of the ramp can only be x degrees or less.

[rubato]

You could use it to hang christmas lights.

yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

the council gave them a home

Well, she certainly can't be worried about the property values...

Laying the ingrate mother aside, I think it's proper to have concern for the child, and I wonder if there might not have been a better solution...

Actually I don't wonder if there might not have been a better solution; there was obviously a better solution, putting them in a dwelling closer to street level that could better accomadate a wheelchair bound child...that would have been a solution that wouldn't have involved spending an additional 40 thousand nicker...

(makes spending 10k for sending "eat fruit" texts to 500 lardasses for 10 weeks sound almost frugal by comparison... )

I really must start to reach out and network with these UK Councils...

Apparently they have all kinds of money to throw away, and I can help them figure out numerous ways to do it...

Somebody looking for a grotesque monstrosity masquerading as art to put in the middle of their public square, and they want to spend 75K for it?

Not a problem, I'll get it for them...I'll find a guy to create the monstrosity for 10K and put the other 65 in my pocket and I guarantee it will be a monstrosity they can be embarassed about for years to come...

Or how about a council that wants to have all their curbs painted a bright safety yellow so their police officers don't trip over them?

I'm your man....I'll get it done for just 100K over cost...

Yeah, the more I think about it, Britain really sounds like The Land Of Opportunity....

I could spend a few months over there shmoozing with the local Councils and have both of my kid's college educations paid up in full...courtesy of Her Majesty's taxpayers...

[Crackpot]

I do find it funny that the ramp is at less of a slope than the street. I don't doubt that suitable housing availability would be an issue in the given the area would be a problem. I just wonder what kind of a solution she was expecting.

[Joe Guy]

That's proof that government is a constant experiment. It might take many years before authorities will know whether or not the ramp works correctly but I can assure you that right now they have their Research & Development people working on even more innovative ways to get a disabled child from a street to the front door of a house.

[Gob]

£40,000? They could have employed someone, on minimum wage, to carry her down to the street for four years!

[MajGenl.Meade]

but could a hamster find its way thru?

[rubato]

Is this a hungry hamster or a well-fed hamster?

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

That's proof that government is a constant experiment. It might take many years before authorities will know whether or not the ramp works correctly but I can assure you that right now they have their Research & Development people working on even more innovative ways to get a disabled child from a street to the front door of a house.

The nice thing about very public trials like this is that you can get feedback from so many sources and the effects can be put to use by other civic governments as well. I'm willing to bet that others are looking at this right now, hearing all the public comments, and saying "well that's not an experiment I would do" which is, in the end, of great value. £40,000 to teach a valuable lesson to a country of 70,000,000 people is not that bad a deal at all.

If you can grasp this one little thing you will be well on your way to being a life-long learner.

"All men learn from experience, yes.
The wise man learns from other's experience
the unwise from his own."

Arabic Proverb


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

It's stuff like this that really causes me to break out in the tee hees every time I see this guy trying to claim to be some sort of "scientist"...(and to make it doubly hilarious he also claims to be some sort of "inventor"...an inventor without even the most basic conception of the nature of experimentation...that must be quite a handicap for an "inventor"... )

There are some things, that intuitively and through the application of common sense that anyone with an IQ above room temperature can rule out without the need for "experimentation". (this maze-ramp is clearly one of them.)

A real scientist would know this. (In fact any reasonably competent high school science class student would know this).

Experimentation proceeds from the formulation of logical assumptions, (emphasis on "logical") that are used to develop a hypothesis, which is then tested with "experimentation"...

They may have "experimented" with different types of materials for highway surfaces, but they didn't try guacamole dip as a possibility, (though apparently rube believes that without having done so, they have no idea whether or not guacamole dip would have made a good highway surface.)

The bridge examples cited weren't tossed up willy nilly to see whether or not they would fall down; they were based on principles of physics that were already tested out to a certain extent through modeling and geological tests, etc.

Sound experimentation is based upon prior experience, knowledge and some degree of intuition; not just decided upon randomly...

One would never, ever ever have to explain scientific principles so basic and fundamental to a real live actual scientist....in fact they wouldn't even have to explained to a halfway bright layman...

It's utterly laughable...

ETA:

Thomas Edison may have tried over a hundred different variations before he developed the first working electric light bulb, but I guarantee that among the many things he did not try to develop one with were french fries, sno cones and tree bark; because he already knew enough about the properties of those things to realize that such experimentation would be a waste of time...

Are these very simple and easy to grasp concepts finally starting to sink in for you rube?

(He asked, fully expecting the answer to be no....)

If you actually could grasp them, you might in fact be on your way to becoming a lifelong learner...

Better late than never...

[Econoline]

There are some things, that intuitively and through the application of common sense that anyone with an IQ above room temperature can rule out without the need for "experimentation". (this maze-ramp is clearly one of them.)

Obviously not: that ramp got built...QED.

BTW, it's not a maze, it's a simple zig-zag-zig-zag-zig-zag-zig-zag...with about three too many zigs and four too many zags to make any economic, architectural, aesthetic--or even common--sense.

I've got to wonder whether the reason they didn't install a simple platform lift*--which probably could have been done for ~10-20% of the cost, even with the additional landscaping required--might have had something to do with some official somewhere being on the take from the contractor? (But maybe that's just my native Chicagoan political cynicism coming through...) If that's the case, the "experiment" *COULD* be "How much can I get away with?"

*
....

[Lord Jim]

There are some things, that intuitively and through the application of common sense that anyone with an IQ above room temperature can rule out without the need for "experimentation". (this maze-ramp is clearly one of them.)


Obviously not: that ramp got built...QED.

Ah, but you're being charitable and assuming that IQs above room temperature were involved...

That's not an assumption I'm prepared to make...

We also don't know if there was even a contractor involved; my guess would be that (especially this being the UK) that this was probably some sort of Dept. of Public Works project... (That would explain the complete lack of interest in the cost.)

Here's my theory of how this went down:

The starting point for this fiasco is probably what oldr was talking about; that there must be some local code requirement regarding exactly what the incline level of an access ramp must be. (In fact it appears that this incline may be built into pre-made ramp sections; as I look at the contraption, all the sections appear identical.)

I don't believe there was ever any thought process involved where somebody sat down and actually designed this thing. What probably happened is this:

The work crew is sent out with the address and the assignment to build an access ramp, something which they have done before. Maybe in some situations to build the ramp they had to zig zag it a couple of times, so they are familiar with that procedure.

When they get there nobody stops to think, "Hey wait a minute, given how high up off the street this house is, this really isn't the best way to do this. I should get one the supervisors out here to take a look at this before we even get started."

No, that never happens, and why should it? These guys aren't paid to think and make judgements; they're paid to build ramps. How much it costs, how it looks, and the consideration of alternatives are not in their job description.

So they just do what they were told and go ahead and take a week and use all the materials they need and build the ramp using the techniques they were trained to use.

The lesson that should be learned from this is a lot more than "this isn't a cost effective or even minimally intelligent way to provide handicapped access in a situation like this."; as I said, that should have been recognized at the outset, without any need to even begin the project.

The really important lesson to be learned and applied here, is that whoever is in charge on-site for a public works project needs to be trained to spot situations that might not be appropriate for the work order they were given, and encouraged when they encounter such situations to raise a red flag with higher ups before proceeding.

I believe that if that had happened in this case, this expensive embarrassment could have been avoided.

I don't think that the problem here was that somebody thought up a stupid and needlessly expensive way to do this; I think the real problem was that a stupid and needlessly expensive result was achieved due to the lack of any thought at all.

[Crackpot]

I was thinking about a platform lift myself though there could be a wide range of quality/upkeep/environmental/heath and safety factors involved that could have eliminated that as an option.

[rubato]

Mechanical lifts in the U.S., and I suspect elsewhere, are required to have periodic inspections and maintenance which would be an ongoing expense. I wonder if the cost over 10 years would be greater or less? In the US it would effect liability insurance rates too.

I have not said that this is an experiment I would do or recommend. Viewing it as an experiment allows us to extract value from it just the same.

yrs,
rubato

[oldr_n_wsr]

Exlcuding the limitations of a lift previously posted about, there would also need to be some kind of excavation and/or "bridge built as the lowest point is at the street and the highest point is at the door. Either the lift is put in at the door, in which case some excavation needs to be done to get to the street. or the lift is put in at the street, in which case a bridge is needed to go from front door to lift at the street.
It's not just the cost of the lift.

I do like LJ's explanation. Those ramps do look "pre-fab" so they sem to have done this before. There is probably a book of tables to go by also. X feet of prefab ramp length can be elevated (lowered) by Y feet, no ifs ands or buts. Switchback as needed.
Ramp done.