ADA Ramp Surveys in San Rafael, CA

San Rafael publishes a curb ramp requirement that repeats the federal rule plainly: curb ramps must be installed before streets are resurfaced, and where a sidewalk repair happens at a corner without a ramp, one goes in. The city’s sidewalk repair program shares the cost of the concrete with property owners and picks up the full cost of an ADA curb ramp installation, which means a routine sidewalk complaint on Fourth Street can turn into a corner reconstruction. That matters most in two places. Downtown along Fourth Street, older storefronts meet a walk that has been cut, patched, and re-poured for a century, so entry thresholds and the cross slope in front of a door are frequently out of tolerance without anyone noticing. In the Canal district, flat ground, heavy pedestrian use, and transit stops put the accessible route under constant load, and settlement on low bay-margin fill quietly changes slopes over time.

The limits leave no room for approximation: 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, 1:48 in every direction across an accessible parking stall and its aisle, 60-inch minimum landings, and 1:10 flared sides on a public curb ramp. We do not chase those with a two-foot level. A Trimble scanner captures the ramp, its flares, the landing, gutter, and the run of walk on either side as millions of points in a single setup, and slope and cross slope are computed from that surface across full width. On San Rafael’s hillside streets, where the sidewalk itself is running downhill, the difference between a sampled reading and a measured surface is the whole answer.

Deliverables: slope and cross-slope exhibits with spot elevations, ramp tables checked against Caltrans Standard Plans A88A and A88B, and a DWG base map. We document; your CASp or architect certifies. See ADA compliance surveys and 3D scanning in San Rafael.