­­According to the 2000 census, approximately 1 in every 5 households in Dayton, Ohio are without a car, yet few grocery stores, the stores we shop at the most, are designed with pedestrians and cyclists in mind, especially those with disabilities. When car-free shoppers ask for improvements, businesses listen. In response to a request for better pedestrian access to the Kroger on Dorothy Lane from the bus stop on Woodman Drive, Kroger added a pathway. So ask for the improvements you would like to see. You just might get them!

Would you like…

• Bicycle parking added or improved?
• ­Wheelchair- and cart-accessible paths between stores and bus stops?
• Sidewalks shoveled?
• A covered bus stop?
• Better lighting?
• Crosswalks in parking lots?

If so, please sign the online petition I’ve created:Improve Car-Free Access to Dayton, OH area Grocers and directly contact the grocery stores where you shop to ask for the improvements you would like. Don’t forget comment cards in stores too! The contact info for some popular stores are listed below.

When contacting stores, be sure to point out the risks to shoppers that current access presents, such as being hit by cars entering the parking lot. Businesses take notice of these as they may be liable for injuries to shoppers or charged with violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Consider saving your receipts from stores to show them what a valuable customer you are or could be if they only offered good car-free access.

Dorothy Lane Market (Oakwood)

2710 Far Hills Ave.

Dayton OH 45419

Phone: (937) 299-3561 (866) 278-3561

­Email: dlm@dorothylane.com

The Kroger Co.

1014 Vine Street

Cincinnati OH 45202-1100

1-866-221-4141

Comment online here.

Meijer Inc.

2929 Walker Ave. NW

Grand Rapids MI 49544-9424

1-877-363-4537

Comment online here.

Town & Country Shopping Center (includes Trader Joe’s and Olympia Health Food)

Email: claspe@castoinfo.com

Phone: (937)293-7516

Stay Tuned for More Developments

Improvements in car-free access to area grocery stores will be noted in this blog. Please join the Livable Dayton group as well. As a member, you will receive important announcement relating to car-free, car-lite and car-less living in Dayton and can participate in related discussions with other members, comment on blog posts, or write your own blog entry.

I don’t have pics yet, but wanted to share my excitement about the fancy, new, shiny, red bench and trash can at the bus stop on Shroyer south of Stroop. They are on a new sidewalk that extends all the way to the curb near the bus stop. These are among the many new benches, trash cans and shelters I’ve seen in Kettering. Very nice!

Here are some pictures that I took a while ago and am finally getting around to uploading. Please comment on them and leave your thoughts on how car-free access to this shopping center could and should be improved.

Notice the very short and crumbled curb. This could be a candidate for a new ramp, however…

There is a ramp a ways to the left.

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A continuation of this crosswalk as a pedestrian pathway with curbs on each side between the cars would be nice. I’ve seen this in other, larger parking lots.

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Here’s the bike rack outside Books & Co. It’s not the best rack and there’s not much room behind it, but it’s something.

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Please comment on car-free access problems you see in the pictures here. I’ve heard for some time now that the owners of this shopping center plan to remodel their store to take out the walkway inside and remove all of the spaces between it and the exterior of the shopping cente­r, putting all the stores inside the walkway up against a new exterior wall. Perhaps we could persuade the shopping center owners to incorporate some improvements to car-free access to the center if and when they remodel it.

I also took pictures of Olympia Health Foods behind the same shopping center. I have loaded them in to the image manager for the group and will include them in a separate post later. This is just a bit slow. It may be best to move the group or blog to a different website before I start promoting them more. I have been waiting on spreading the word until I had more pictures up or made some kind of progress.

This is the bus stop on Shroyer south of Stroop. There is no ramp between the sidewalk and the parking lot of the shopping center where Trader Joe’s is. Moreover, someone in a wheelchair would have to roll over mulch between shrubbery and, once they plunked into the parking lot, squeeze between parked cars to get to the shopping center.

This is the where the sidewalk outside the shopping center begins. There’s a wheelchair ramp from the parking lot, but notice how it narrows in the distance between the entrance and the post.

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This is where I park my bike when I shop at Trader Joe’s. There is now a bike rack there. It’s the kind that you stick your front wheel in, not my preference, but it’s something, and it shows that they’re making an effort.

When I bike, I come down Delaine and cross Stroop there. I have no complaints about that. In the median before the entrance there is a nice bit of sidewalk at the same height as the road. It makes crossing the road there easier and safer.

That’s all for now, please leave your comments

­­­­­­I took these several weeks ago and am just now getting them up. I keep forgetting to take the camera with me when I go to other stores to take pictures, but I have resolved to remember next time and should eventually have some of Trader Joe’s, the Meijer at Stroop and Wilmington and the Kroger at Dorothy Lane and Woodman, as well as some more of DLM. The battery on my camera died before I was done uploading pictures of DLM from it.

Leave your comments as to what problems you see with the store as a cyclist, pedestrian and/or user of mass transit, where bike parking could or should go, etc.

­This is the bike rack. It’s kind of small and there’s not much room behind it. What else do you think is wrong with it?­

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­­­Note how the walkway is obstructed here by s­tuff for sale (and my bike. I hadn’t found the bike rack yet. Also, I don’t see how a person in a wheelchair could get out of their car and into the building easily when parked in one of the parking spaces reserved for the handicapped shown. There is no additional space around those parking spaces.This isn’t a car-free access issue, but still worth pointing out to DLM.

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This is a nice bus stop a short distance from the store.

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­This is the wheelchair-accessible path from the bus stop crossing the access road, nice.

­This is an area at the north side of the store that isn’t near either of the entrances, but might be a candidate for a bike rack.­

This is the side of the store facing Far Hills. Maybe one of these parking spaces could be made into a bike parking space.

Veloroutes.org allows you to create your own bicycle map by clicking points on a map to form your route. You then save your route and Veloroutes gives it its own webpage. Click here for a map of my route to Trader Joe’s. I just wish I could edit it after saving it.

­Click here to learn more about this contest from the Drive Less Live More campaign. From there you can register and record the trips that you do not take alone in your car. There will be prizes for the ­people who have replaced the most trips alone by car with another form of transportation.

­­­­­­Many months ago I submitted a comment to Kroger via their website asking them to make a safer, more accessible path between their store at the corner of Dorothy Lane and Woodman and the Route 12 bus stop to the east. Currently, one must walk either through a drainage field, behind some bushes in the entrance for cars or climb over a mound. There is no way to get to or from this stop safely and easily walking, let alone pushing a cart or in a wheelchair.

Kroger was very good about responding to my email quickly and the manager of that Kroger location, Jeff Tigner, sent me emails explaining what was happening in response to my request. Finally, in his most recent email on February 11, 2009, he writes:­

I wanted to touch base with you regarding your sidewalk concern here at the Dorothy Lane Kroger. We are in the process of getting approval from the Kettering city council for the construction of a new fuel center on the east side of our store — that’s the Woodman Road side. Part of the construction would involve a sidewalk being built across the drainage ditch around the bus stop.

All signs are pointing to the city approving our zoning request by the first part of March. If this happens then construction should begin in the spring and should be completed by the fall. So hopefully by the end of the year we will have everything built and ready to go…

Yay! Please respond to my discussion topic, “What are your grocery store access problems?”. I am very encouraged by this victory and would like to ask for more changes from more grocery stores, grade them on the availability and quality of car-free access they offer after they’ve had some time to respond to our requests and send out a press release with all of their grades and an explanation.