A quick wiki search comes up with some guidelines established by a board but I didn’t see any actual laws.
Do the requirement vary by type of store?
Can a store appeal if it can show that say 50% go unused?
Have the guidelines themselves changed over the years based on experience?
All “new construction” since 1992 has to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. These minimum requirements might be made more strict by local laws, though, and local laws may also apply to older construction as well. The numbers above seem to apply for all “places of public accommodation” — the number only varies based on the number of total spaces in the parking lot.
Not sure about the other two questions.
Thanks for responding.
The link you provided are also “guidelines” although maybe the Act is nothing more than guidelines… I don’t know how government regulations work.
Looks like disabled parking is 2% regardless of who is likely to use the parking lot.
It’s dated 2002 so maybe the powers that be reviewed/revised the whole thing after it started.
The guidelines contains components that do not currently have the force of law, but are recommended. However I believe the guidelines listed above are due to be implemented as full standards in 2012. The current standards are here, and they do have full force of law. In any case the parking standards do not look to be any different between the 1991 standards and the current guidelines, except that the guidelines have an optional recommendation in the appendix that van-accessible spots be made larger than the requirements.
Not quite. Its 2% for the first 1000 spaces in general use lots, and 1% after the first 1000 spaces. But lots for medical facilities require 10%, and 20% if they specialize in the treatment of “mobility impairments.” But you are right there is no way to get below the minimum 1%-2% general requirement.
I’m not an expert on this (hopefully one will stop by shortly), but according to Wikipedia those guidelines have the force of law for new construction: “Under Title III of the ADA, all ‘new construction’ (construction, modification or alterations) after the effective date of the ADA (approximately July 1992) must be fully compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines”. Here’s the 2010 standards for parking spaces, which look to be pretty much the same as the original page I linked.
ETA: I will humbly defer to Bartman on which version of the regulations currently have the force of law.
When I first started going to the gym I was amused by the handicapped parking spaces they had right next to it. Until the first time I saw someone with crutches park in one of those spaces and go into the gym.
It turns out that the equipment found in a gym, which tends to let you sit/stand in such a way that you’re exercising a specific set of muscles in a stable, safe manner, is ideal for the physical therapy needed by the handicapped. In fact, one gym I went to actually had a physical therapist’s office in it!