Arlington Park Kayak Launch

First problem with this Engineer designed ADA accessible ramp to the Kayak launch at Arlington Park in Mobile is a narrow 90 degree turn on a boardwalk that has high sides. Two people carrying their kayak by typical handles cannot get the kayak to the launch without hoisting the kayak above their shoulders.

After making the frustrating difficult  first turn this girl drags her Kayak down the ramp only to face dealing with 2 more difficult turns, both of these 180 degree turns. 

She struggles in the 100+ degree heat index temp to hoist her kayak above the railing in order to get past the first 180 degree turn.

What should have been a quick 2-3 minute drag of her Kayak down the 100 yard ramp to the Kayak launch platform turned into a 20 minute nightmare for this girl. I helped her move her kayak the rest of the way which proved to be even difficult for two people. She could not believe the stupidity of the ramp design. She is right.

It is bad enough that the stupid ass engineer never considered normal transport methods of kayaks in the design of the ramp to the kayak launch. Using kayak handles or a kayak dolly are both normal methods of moving a kayak. This stupid ramp does not allow the use of either normal kayak movement method.

What is even worse is the engineer and authorities know this kayak ramp is poorly designed and downright dangerous but have never fixed the flaws. All that is needed is a secondary ramp without high sides following the ground contour to the platform. Until that happens kayakers will continue to struggle when launching at Arlington Park.

Someone is eventually going to get severely injured or die from a heart attack using this ridiculous kayaker unfriendly public kayak launch. I hope anyone that gets hurt sues the hell out of the engineering firm and the park owner (City of Mobile).

Kayak launch sites in Mobile?

The shoreline of the Mobile Convention would make a decent kayak launch spot for Mobile River access. Instead this small and rare City of Mobile shoreline sits idle and remains lined with recyceable trash all year long. What a pathetic waste of a valuable City of Mobile waterfront asset.

This is the trashy Mobile Bay shoreline seen from the wooden walkway at the City of Mobile's Arlington Park. Arlington Park is an embarrassing black eye on the City of Mobile's promised committment to deal with its community storm water trash pollution. Ignore, ignore and ignore the waterfront trash pollution year after year is a clear indicator of lousy City of Mobile leadership and a community that absolutely does NOT give a shit about their community's polluted waterfront properties despite Lawsuits and Fines by environmental groups.

No wonder why the bayside boat and kayak launch at McNally Park is rarely used. No one seems to maintain this City of Mobile Park launch site.

As usual, the fishing pigs who use the City of Mobile's Helen Wood Park keep it littered with trash. What kayaker trusts parking and launching a kayak at a poorly maintained trashy park?

I did find one kayak launch site in Mobile that was free of trash. Sadly the Robinson Bayou launch site is rarely used because parking for the relatively new launch site is poorly marked.

The community of Mobile should be happy that I am not in charge of the City's waterfront parks. If I was in charge all the parks would be shut down until the community implemented a plan to keep the parks free of litter. People will never appreciate the things they have until they loose them. I can guarantee you if all the waterfront parks in Mobile became no trespassing zones there would be public outcry, especially from the boaters who no longer have places to launch the expensive boats.

City leaders should be clear what they expect from their community with regards to trash in parks. As long as City of Mobile leaders allows its community to freely litter City parks without any consequence to those violating the law, the fishing pigs and retards in Mobile who break the litter law will continue to do so unabated. The continued trashing of City parks comes at significant cost to its taxpayers and tourism. 

What Mobile needs is some volunteer litter police in all its parks to document the litter law violators. If the volunteer's video of some asshole littering in a park results in a conviction and $500 fine, the City should reward the volunteer $100 for each conviction. I can guarantee you if the Mobile community was aware that people of all ages and colors were secretly trying to get video of people littering, littering in public parks would become a rare thing in Mobile.

I wonder how many "litter cams" the City of Mobile has deployed in littering hot spots...

Arlington Park Pollution Ignored

The City of Mobile's Trashy Shoreline at its Arlington Park (aka Mobile Bay Shoreline) remains an eyesore to residents and visitors because the City of Mobile ignores most storm water litter, even after years of complaints.

Storm Water Litter is not just a City of Mobile community problem as storm water trash is abundant throughout the entire Mobile County.

The accumulation of storm water trash along most Mobile waterways is merely a symptom of Alabama having no recycling expectations or requirements along with having ZERO people employed to remove litter once it reaches the state of Alabama's navigable waterways. If there is anyone working full time removing trash from Mobile area waterways I have never seen them or seen any improvement in the trashy shorelines.

The end result? Alabama which once advertised itself "Alabama the Beautiful" is no longer beautiful - it is trashy. To keep up with reality Alabama now advertises itself "Sweet Home Alabama." The new name was probably chosen in reference to all the empty sugary drink bottles acumulating along and polluting most of its waterways. Sweet eh?

07/10/2010 - Arlington Park Kayak Launch Quandary

Arlington Park Kayak Launch Quandary

1) I checked out the kayak launch at the new Arlington Park now that it is finally opened. Because of the height of this ramp, you'll have to hoist the kayak overhead to make the 90 degree turn to the left.

2) When you make the two 180 degree turns at the bottom of the ramp, you might be blindly knocking people down. There are 3 tall pilings in the way on the small floating platform. This kayak launch design is dreadful and puts kayakers and the public at risk for injury.

3) No tall railings on this kayak ramp in Florida. The park even provided carts to use for single person hauling of loaded (heavier) kayaks. This launch facility was well designed and even included wider areas on the ramps for people to move out of the way to as a kayak passes by.

4) Here is a kayak launch site near Spanish Fort, AL - an old boat ramp. No maintenance necessary and several kayaks can setup for launch at the same time. There are a lot of cheap design options for a functional kayak launch site. Then there is Arlington Park - one expensive blunder, just like Five rivers. No kayaking today.

The Arlington Park designers neglected to consider that some kayakers haul their kayaks on trailers. There is not a single parking space for a car with trailer. Where do I park? Looks like if I use this facility, I'll be moving a wheelstop to put the trailer in the grass.

According to the plans, Arlington Park was designed by an out of town engineering company called Moffatt and Nichol, headquartered in Baltimore, MD in conjunction with Alabama State Port Authority. I'm trying to ascertain who did the actual design. Whoever approved the kayak launch design should be fired in my opinion or at minimum, should redesign the launch site and rebuild it properly, at their own expense. Really, it is pitiful to create a ramp design that prohibits transporting the kayak by use of standard kayak handles or standard kayak carts.

(Update: I did complain to the engineer in charge and he said the kayak ramp was designed this way due to the drop in elevation and the need for the ramp to meet ADA design standards. Wonderful! Not only can't a challenged person get his or her kayak down the ramp, thanks to the stupid ADA rules, the kayak launch is difficult for an unchallenged person to use. What happened to common sense? They could have designed a ramp that starts further to the north (lower elevation) and stayed close to the ground so rails could have been eliminated. This would allow a kayak to be carried by the handles...) You end up with crap when you hire an out of town engineering firm that does not consult with the people who will be using the facility...