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VIDBE-Q Volume 63 Issue 4
accessible, and many are non-compliant. For example, every house, building, or park
that a pedestrian travels in front of is likely owned by a different person or organization.
Although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Architectural Barriers Act
(ABA) require that pedestrian paths be accessible, the result is often slow-paced with
the burden placed on people with disabilities, who have to struggle to travel along the
unmaintained sidewalks, or find routes around impassable sections.
pathVu Technology
PathMeT
PathMeT (shown in Figure 1) (pronounced path-met) is a manually propelled,
multi-sensor, stroller-type sidewalk profiling tool. PathMeT sensors include GPS,
camera, and laser in order to collect data about the quality of sidewalks and other
pedestrian pathways. PathMeT continuously identifies tripping hazards, roughness, pot
holes, running slope, cross slope, and width of sidewalks. It also gathers images every
10 feet and geo-locates all of this data using GIS (Geographic Information Systems)
mapping tools, such as Google Maps. PathMeT data has two primary purposes: 1) To
help cities and communities prioritize improvements to the sidewalk infrastructure 2) To
help pedestrians understand the most accessible routes to travel.
