For most of his life Bill Lavicka paid little attention to the parking needs of the handicapped. Then one day in January his wife, Alys, who has Parkinson’s disease, fell in a parking lot at the University of Illinois at Chicago and broke her nose. That’s when he launched a crusade to force the university to set aside affordable, accessible parking spaces close to its main classrooms. “The way they treat disabled students like my wife, they’re saying, ‘Don’t come–we don’t want you,’” he says. “They might as well put up a sign that says Disabled Get Lost!”
During the fall semester she had no trouble getting to and from her classroom. But in January the treks grew more difficult as her condition deteriorated. Places in the lots were also becoming sparse because the city was pulling meters off the street, forcing people to park in the lots. “It seemed like the main lot, what the university calls ‘Lot 4,’ which is on Halsted near Harrison, was always filled,” says Bill. “She had to park in other lots that were further from her class.”
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There wasn’t much street parking because the city had removed almost all of the meters from Halsted, Roosevelt, Harrison, and other streets around the campus. “I think they’re doing away with on-street parking to make you park in the university’s lots and garages,” says Lavicka. “Think about it. They’re limiting access to public streets to make you park in private lots where you have to pay–what?–$8 a day. That’s a racket.”
Increasingly frustrated, Lavicka went to the Mayor’s Office for People With Disabilities. “All you need to know about that office is that it’s located in the most inaccessible part of City Hall,” he says. “It’s on the 11th floor at the end of the hall. What a city. They basically told me there was nothing they could do.”
So Lavicka is pressing on. One day last week he drove around campus, pointing out the lack of parking on the main streets, the expensive garages, the crowded lotsâ even the eyeball lot. He got the gate to rise by swiping his special card. He parked and got out just as a Mercedes van pulled in. “I wonder if that’s the chancellor,” he said.
And then they got into it. He demanded more accessible parking. She said there was already enough.
