Someone at the West Dunbartonshire Council must have been channeling the spirit of the Sochi Olympics when they designed this absurd slalom wheelchair ramp. Surely one of the most bonkers ramps you will ever see, it resembles a ski slope or luge track from the Winter Olympics or even an Alton Towers ride far more than it looks like any sensible wheelchair ramp.
A Scottish family with a daughter who uses a wheelchair spent two years campaigning for a ramp after West Dunbartonshire Council gave them a home at the top of three flights of stairs. When they finally got their ramp it turned out to be this monstrosity. Needless to say, this was not the design of ramp they were looking for and they are not happy with the end product. The people who like to shout about “health and safety gone mad” are having a field day. Even those of us who don’t are getting on board in this case.
The ramp covers ten levels which you have to twist and turn down to get from the family’s front door to the pavement taking in a staggering 60 metres along the way. It is, in fact, so vast that if you stand at one end of it, you can’t the other end clearly. Not only is it an impractical use of space and utter eye sore, it’s extremely expensive to boot. A professional construction firm has estimated that this ridiculous ramp would have cost a staggering £40,600 (or £4,060 per turn!). Surely an alternative ramp system or, as it is the twenty first century after all, a lift would have been less dear and more practical.
To really add insult to injury, local kids, noticing the similarities to a Sochi course minus the snow, have started using the ramp as a skateboard run. Once or twice people have even been spotted using it as a public toilet! The council won’t help the family out with the cost of a gate to stop the trespassers because it would have to swing out onto the pavement.
With the lack of sensible thinking from the local authorities and the outrageous amount of twists and turns in this slaloming slope, this wheelchair ramp reminds us of the chicanery at Sochi in more ways than one!
