ADA Ramp Surveys in Novato, CA

Novato has adopted an ADA self-evaluation and transition plan, and the city’s pedestrian core is the place where the measurements get interesting. Grant Avenue was rebuilt as a streetscape with widened sidewalks, trees set into the parking zone, and flexible space now used for outdoor dining, which means the walk in front of a Grant Avenue business has to carry a clear accessible route past furniture, planters, and heaters that were never on a plan. Widened walk also means more area over which a 2 percent cross slope has to hold while the pavement still drains to the gutter. Elsewhere, Novato is the largest Marin city by area and the accessible-route work spreads with it: shopping-center parking fields where stall and aisle slopes must stay within 1:48 in every direction, civic and school sites, and the low, level ground at Hamilton and Bel Marin Keys where fill settles slowly and quietly changes slopes over years.

None of that is measurable with a two-foot level and a clipboard. The limits are 8.33 percent maximum on a ramp run, 2.083 percent cross slope under the 2010 ADA Standards and 2 percent under California Building Code Chapter 11B, 60-inch minimum landings, and 1:10 flares on curb ramps in the right-of-way. We scan or total-station the ramp, landing, gutter, stall, aisle, and connecting walk so slope comes out of a surface, computed across the full width and at whatever spacing the reviewer wants. Because the point cloud stays on file, a question raised months later about a different part of the same site usually gets answered without a second mobilization.

Deliverables: slope and cross-slope exhibits with spot elevations, ramp and stall tables, detectable-warning and flare notes against Caltrans Standard Plans A88A and A88B, and a DWG base map. We document conditions; certification is the CASp or architect’s call. See ADA compliance surveys and 3D scanning in Novato.