Engineering professionals from Grand Junction, Fruita, and Mesa County gained a firsthand understanding of local infrastructure accessibility during a "Walk and Roll" workshop held in downtown Grand Junction on October 8. Participants navigated city streets and sidewalks using wheelchairs, noise-canceling headphones, and vision-impairing glasses to simulate daily challenges faced by residents with disabilities. The event aimed to provide engineers, planners, and inspectors a direct perspective on the city's accessibility.
The workshop involved a loop that started and ended at Grand Junction City Hall, with participants traversing Grand and Rood avenues, as well as Fifth, Seventh, and Main streets. Along the route, participants swapped between various devices. They used wheelchairs to understand mobility issues and wore glasses that rendered them legally blind, navigating with white canes. Noise-canceling headphones also simulated hearing impairments, forcing greater reliance on other senses to detect oncoming foot and vehicle traffic.
Grand Junction Engineering and Transportation Director Trent Prall described the workshop as "a very immersive experience," highlighting the opportunity to use both older access ramps that may not meet current standards and newer ones. Prall noted that one of his primary takeaways was the difficulty participants experienced transitioning from street level to the sidewalk. Even at relatively modern crossing ramps, getting past the curb proved challenging for amateur wheelchair users.
Participants also found significant challenges with impairments that did not directly affect their mobility, such as vision and hearing loss. Prall emphasized the debilitating nature of losing these senses, explaining how it impacts the ability to perceive car proximity or navigate intersections. He noted that without sight, individuals must rely heavily on hearing, and without hearing, they become more dependent on vision, making basic navigation significantly harder. Downtown Grand Junction was chosen for the workshop because its streets and sidewalks offer a mix of infrastructure, from recent developments within the last 15 years to structures 30 to 40 years old, providing a clear contrast in accessibility from one block to the next, according to Prall.
The "Walk and Roll" workshop came about after Prall met a transportation consultant from Olsson & Associates, a firm specializing in infrastructure accessibility services, at the Colorado Traffic Safety Summit earlier this year. Prall expressed his belief in the value of such experiences, stating that it helps professionals truly understand challenges by "actually hav[ing] the opportunity to sit in the chair." Grand Junction may consider hosting similar events in the future to continue fostering this perspective among city engineers, planners, and inspectors.
