Lawsuits have prompted the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to budget $820 million over the next decade to replace 117,000 handicapped curb ramps along state roads -- a program that attorneys say would be unnecessary had the agency installed the ramps properly the first time.

This year $28 million of that cost will come from federal stimulus money, which is being allocated for "shovel-ready" projects.

PennDOT says its program to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act is "proactive" in that the agency is voluntarily assuming responsibility for ramps on state roads even though state law puts the onus to maintain them on municipalities.

"This is an important mission for the disability groups and for us, too," PennDOT spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick said. "The law requires this mission, and there is no getting around it, it is expensive."

But J. Mark Finnegan, a Michigan lawyer representing disabled people who has filed scores of curb-ramp suits against targets such as PennDOT and the cities of Erie and Meadville, views the agency's decision as more strategic than altruistic.

PennDOT, Erie and Meadville all recently entered into consent decrees or settled litigation brought by advocates for disabled people. They are on schedule to rebuild or install thousands of ramps in the two communities during the next several years.

Mr. Finnegan believes PennDOT adopted its statewide push last year only when it realized it could potentially lose similar suits across the commonwealth.

"They saved us the trouble of filing an identical lawsuit in every city across the state," Mr. Finnegan said.

Also, Mr. Finnegan said that regardless of state law, the disabilities act makes PennDOT responsible for ramps along state roads. Not fixing those ramps would be akin to the state erecting the capitol and then relying on the city of Harrisburg to maintain it, he said.

Mr. Finnegan and others -- including lawyers, local officials, politicians and contractors -- point to a range of factors leading to the need to spend hundreds of millions for new or updated handicapped ramps -- over and above what PennDOT spent in the early 1990s after the disabilities act took effect.

They claim that PennDOT and municipalities tolerated sometimes sloppy work by contractors; provided lax oversight by not demanding strict compliance with ADA standards; and initially did not always stick to federal guidelines, resulting in flawed ramps.

"They spent a lot of public money but wasted it because they did it wrong," said Erie lawyer Craig A. Markham, co-counsel on the suits with Mr. Finnegan. "If people want to be upset about something, that is what they should be upset about."

Mr. Kirkpatrick, however, attributed problems with ramps to PennDOT's differing interpretation of federal construction guidelines. PennDOT in April 2008 issued new, more strict curb-ramp guidelines as a result of the lawsuits filed against the agency, Erie and Meadville.

While the suits in Erie and Meadville were in progress over the past several years, PennDOT "determined that it would assume responsibility for installing or retrofitting curb ramps on the state system that needed to be brought into compliance," Mr. Kirkpatrick said.

As staggering as PennDOT's nearly billion-dollar price tag is, that money covers only state-maintained roads. Municipalities are not obligated to follow PennDOT's guidelines, but most do.

"They're sort of the gospel in the state of Pennsylvania," said Joseph Olczak, director of Allegheny County's Department of Public Works.

There is no estimate of how much more municipalities will need to spend to redo curb ramps on roads under their exclusive jurisdiction. But already some municipal officials are exasperated.

"The commonwealth of Pennsylvania has tremendous transportation needs. We might have served the state better if we had invested in roads, bridges and rail transportation instead of replacing curb cuts," Chester County Commissioner Carol Aichele said.

Douglass Yerger, public works director for Pottstown, Montgomery County, just ended in 2007 a 15-year odyssey of making his borough's 60 miles of roads ADA-compliant.

Now under the new, stricter curb-ramp guidelines issued by PennDOT, Mr. Yerger said he will likely have to rip out numerous curb ramps on roads that are being repaved and reinstall them to the latest specifications.

"Apparently that changed the dynamics of the design, and now what they want us to do is just totally unbelievable costwise," Mr. Yerger said.

Advocates for those who are disabled say properly designed ramps are essential for people who use wheelchairs and scooters. They also say that flawed ramps are a national problem. According to 2008 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 800,000 Pennsylvanians have problems walking.

Federal standards that took effect in 1992 for designing and installing curb ramps were "quite specific and clear, but ignored" by some municipalities and contractors, according to Mr. Markham.

Lawyers said there are two major problems with curb ramps: PennDOT and municipalities did not always install them when they were supposed to. And when they did, the ramps were often flawed.

"It was lax oversight by the municipalities. I think PennDOT could have been more involved with this," said Rocco Iacullo, a staff lawyer with the Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania, which has sued Lancaster and is working with Allentown on curb-ramp issues.

Standards for curb ramps are little changed since the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, which ordered federal programs or recipients of federal funds to accommodate the handicapped. That mandate was broadened in the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, which applied to public facilities and private businesses whether they received federal money or not.

Then a key 1993 federal court decision in Philadelphia established resurfacing a city street as a trigger for mandatory installation of ramps, also known as curb cuts. As a result of ADA, communities went on a ramp-building binge -- but not always to good effect, lawyers said.

There were various foul-ups: ramps were too steep; lips at the bottom were not flush with the street; and landings at the tops were not level enough to allow people in wheelchairs to turn around.

But without a formal federal oversight program, state transportation agencies and communities were left to their own devices until they were sued or complaints were brought through the U.S. Justice Department.

PennDOT's Mr. Kirkpatrick could not pinpoint why some state-built curb ramps "deviated from the strict requirements of the ADA Architectural Guidelines."

He said a likely explanation was that terrain and other conditions at particular sites made it difficult to build ramps to exacting federal standards. Prior to the suits in Erie and Meadville, Mr. Kirkpatrick said, PennDOT interpreted the federal guidelines as permitting more wiggle room than it actually had.

Some leeway is available for certain site-specific problems, Mr. Finnegan said, but he added that exceptions are few.

Mr. Kirkpatrick acknowledged that some state-built ramps did not meet federal standards with regard to steepness, "but we thought there was some leeway to meet extenuating circumstances at specific locations."

The suits against Erie, Meadville and PennDOT proved otherwise, and "it has been determined that the slope standard is absolute," Mr. Kirkpatrick said.

Mr. Kirkpatrick also acknowledged that PennDOT installed ramps in Erie and Meadville "that didn't reflect the latest instructions" on including raised surfaces -- bumps called truncated domes that warn the visually impaired that they are approaching a slope.

PennDOT's curb-ramp policy issued last year is more extensive than in the past but still adheres to basic federal requirements. The policy now includes more detailed information about how to handle ramps in unforgiving locations.

Michael Facchiano Jr., a spokesman for Michael Facchiano Contracting Inc. in Mt. Lebanon, said PennDOT has long been a "stickler" for meeting specifications. Rather than inspections getting tougher, specifications have gotten stricter, he said.

But some people directly involved in building curb ramps said they also can see the difference in enforcement today.

"They're paying a lot more attention to the fine-tuning details of the ADA requirements," Dan Engen, of New Castle-based Eckles Architecture and Engineering, said of PennDOT. "If it's slightly off of tolerance, it is requested to be modified."

Mr. Engen said PennDOT forced him to redo an intersection for a Richland school along a state road that the agency had previously approved without curb ramps. The change cost the school district $60,000.

Mr. Engen said no one uses the ramps at the rural intersection, but they are required anyway under the 2008 policy. PennDOT District 11 spokesman James Struzzi, however, said pedestrians use the intersection to walk to a nearby baseball field.With the knowledge that PennDOT can and will force a contractor to modify intersections or rip out ramps that do not exactly meet ADA specifications, contractors are factoring that into their bids -- pushing up the cost of compliance.

"The contractors are starting to cover themselves with money to compensate for how difficult these things are to put in," said Heath Younkin, vice president of operations for C.H.&D. Enterprises Inc. in New Stanton, a PennDOT contractor.

Mr. Younkin traces what he views as increased PennDOT stringency to the Erie and Meadville lawsuits and the advent of "smart levels," tools that allow easy measurements of slope. That makes it easy to verify whether a curb ramp meets federal standards for steepness.

Cynthia Veiga, a plans engineer and ADA coordinator for PennDOT's District 6 in King of Prussia, Montgomery County, acknowledged that technology has impacted policy.

"Before, when people were out working on the highways back in the early '90s, we didn't have these digital levels. Probably people weren't checking as tightly as they are now," Ms. Veiga said.

Offficials with the Allegheny League of Municipalities and state associations representing township supervisors and borough officials said the issue is not a widespread crisis among their constituents. Still, observers believe municipalities would be wise to prepare to rebuild any curb ramps that do not meet federal guidelines, especially in light of the suits in Erie, Meadville and Lancaster.

Locally, the prospect of litigation is not new. McKeesport is under a court-ordered timetable to complete its curb ramps. If cities of that size have problems, there is no telling what might lurk on street corners throughout the state.

"If I'm a council person somewhere, I see this as something coming my way," Mr. Markham said. "Maybe I don't want to get caught flat-footed and be sued. If I'm being prudent, I'd like to set out a plan of how to financially address this."

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