Is Your Lot ADA Compliant?
Regular maintenance is crucial to keeping your commercial property in good shape. Not only does it keep your lot safe and appealing, but routine maintenance is also a great way to stay up to date with laws and regulations. If striping or restriping your lot is a maintenance item on your list for the near future, you need to understand ADA compliance and how that relates to the project.
A Readily Achievable Service
The ADA has stated business and public entities are required to comply with ADA standards when it is readily achievable. They consider striping and restriping a “relatively inexpensive” service, which makes it readily achievable for most property owners. Failure to comply could result in lawsuits or large fines.
Amount of Parking Spaces
When you’re determining how many disabled parking spaces you need to include in your lot, you need to consider how many parking spaces you have in your lot all together. These numbers directly correlate with each other, so each lot will require a different amount of disabled spaces. At least one out of every six of the disabled parking spaces needs to be van accessible. For example, a lot with 25 parking spaces will need at least one accessible space including one accessible to vans, whereas a lot with 300 parking spaces will need at least seven accessible parking spaces, including two van accessible.
Keep in mind certain medical facilities require more than the norm. For example, a hospital outpatient facility must have 10% of their spaces accessible.
Location of Spaces
The parking spaces closest to the entrance of your building are the spaces that should be accessible, supposing those spaces are level. If you have multiple entrances, each of them should have an equal amount of accessible spaces close by.
Dimensions of Parking Spaces
According to the ADA, accessible parking spaces have to be 96 inches wide. They must be clearly marked to that width with an aisle of at least five feet on either the left or the right. Van-accessible parking spaces need to be 132 inches at a minimum and the aisle also needs to be five feet.
When it comes to ADA compliance, there are many reasons you don’t want to fall short. For help in getting up to code, contact NVM Paving & Concrete by calling 703-423-0471 or sending us an email today!