ADA Parking Compliance Audit in West Linn, Oregon: What to Expect

Why a West Linn Property Owner Orders an ADA Audit

Most West Linn property owners do not think about ADA parking until something forces the issue: a demand letter, a complaint, a tenant build-out, or a planned repave. An ADA compliance audit gets ahead of all of that. It is a structured inspection of your parking lot against the 2010 ADA Standards and Oregon requirements, producing a clear list of what passes, what fails, and what it takes to fix.

This page walks through what to expect when you have a West Linn lot audited, so there are no surprises. For the legal background behind each checkpoint, our ADA parking lot compliance guide for Oregon is the place to start. For a deeper look at the inspection itself, see our ADA compliance audit process page.

This is general guidance. An audit gives you a property-specific picture that a guide cannot.

What the Audit Measures

A thorough West Linn audit checks every requirement that an enforcement officer or plaintiff's expert would look at. The major checkpoints:

• Space count: Does the number of accessible spaces match your total count? The ratio is one per 25 spaces through the first 100.
• Van-accessible ratio: At least one in every six accessible spaces must be van-accessible.
• Dimensions: Accessible spaces at least 8 feet wide; access aisles 5 feet for standard, 8 feet for van.
• Slope: No more than 2 percent across spaces and aisles in any direction.
• Signage: Symbol signs mounted at 60 inches minimum, van plates, and the Oregon fine sign.
• Surface: No potholes, no cracks over one-half inch, no abrupt level changes, no standing water in accessible areas.
• Accessible route: A continuous, compliant path from the accessible spaces to the building entrance.

Our common ADA parking violations checklist lists the failures we find most often, and most of them show up in the audit results.

The West Linn Wrinkles

A few things make West Linn lots more likely to fail certain checkpoints, and a good auditor knows to look hard at them.

Slope. West Linn's hillside terrain is the single biggest audit risk locally. Lots that were graded acceptably years ago drift past the 2 percent ceiling as the base settles. An auditor uses a digital level on every accessible space and aisle, not a visual guess, because a slope failure is invisible until it is measured.

Freeze-thaw surface damage. Clackamas County's wet winters and overnight freezes open cracks and lift pavement edges. By spring, an accessible space that passed in fall can have a trip hazard at the aisle line. The audit documents these as surface failures with photos and locations.

Undersized van aisles. Many older West Linn lots painted every accessible aisle at 5 feet, which fails the 8-foot van requirement. The audit flags these for restriping.

How the Audit Runs

A typical West Linn audit is a single on-site visit. The inspector measures and photographs each accessible space, aisle, sign, and the route to the entrance, then compiles findings into a report. Expect:

1. Walk and measure — counts, widths, slopes, sign heights, surface condition.
2. Photo documentation — every finding tied to a location on the lot.
3. Findings report — each item marked pass or fail against the standard it relates to.
4. Remediation plan — what to fix, grouped by whether it is a striping fix, a signage fix, or a grading and surface fix.

The output is something you can hand to a contractor for a scoped quote, or keep on file as evidence of good-faith compliance effort.

From Audit to Fix

The value of the audit is the plan that comes out of it. Most West Linn findings fall into three buckets. Striping fixes — wrong layout, undersized aisles, faded symbols — are handled by restriping; see our parking lot striping in West Linn page. Signage fixes mean installing or raising signs and adding the Oregon fine plate. Surface and slope fixes — potholes, wide cracks, over-2-percent grades — may require patching or regrading before any paint goes down.

Bundling these into one mobilization saves money. A repave is also the ideal time to correct everything at once, since the alteration already triggers the obligation to make the path of travel accessible.