It´s very difficult to cross it if you have your luggage with you (and most people is coming from the station, so they are all carrying their big bags).There is no ramp, no elevator, no nothing… not even mention disabled (wheelchair) people!

Second point is that when you are about to cross it, there is a big announcement which says that if you are carrying something (bags, luggage, whatever) which exceed more than (i guess it says 30kg) then you cannot cross by that bridge. Which for my way to see things, the structure is not really good enough or it was just made for slim, able (that both of your legs are just perfect) and without carying anything… stupid thing!!!

Third point. I don´t understand why there are these glass steps if you cannot see anything under the bridge, it just made it more expensive that what it was already.

I know it is a struggle to travel with handicaps, (and I include very small clueless children here) but the bridges cannot be flattened with the boat traffic there. There are also very few buildings with an elevator in Venice, so we count the steps to the door we go to. By law, and due to acqua alta, the ground floor cannot be inhabited in Venice.

My sister in law wanted to see the apartment where she grew up and barely recognized it as the two rios there are no more. The city filled in and paved them over.

Venice also has “streets” that would be too narrow for a wheelchair.

I love Venice. If I became handicapped, though, I would have to think very hard about travel to it

I am a master of architecture student and I was in Venice yesterday. I crossed the bridge and even for me, a 25 year old healthy and fit man, the steps were amazingly unconfortable.

The ultimate problem with this bridge to me is that it could very simply have been done without steps: if you pay attention to the lower part of it you can see that the skeleton actually has a toll of maybe two to three meters in the heightness of the bridge, so if its aim were to create the tray of the bridge as lower as he could the bridge could almos seem horizontal.

What Calatrava obviously did was to selfishly – as somebody said here before – put his design before the inhabitants period

And I agree with the guy that said that if you have this then you neither have architecture nor design. It is an action of the same degree as to make all the bridges in Venice flat and stop the boats from navigating in the canals.

And I saw an old man in the middle of Venice in a wheelchair being help to cross the bridges only with the assistance of his, also old, wife. Should they not have one less bridge to cross as an obstacle? And what about people who want to go to the train station?

A healthy person may spend a nice time in Venice using all the bridges but to go to the train station with the luggage at the end of their staying they will have one more BIG bridge to cross.

Either in wheelchair or not it would be much simpler without the steps, and like I said before, it could have been easily done.

Not many wheelchairs users would expect an old city to be pulled apart in attempting to give access to the mobility impaired but we would expect evolution towards access to be evident – especially where significant public money is being spent. There is little enjoyment, to my mind, in modern design that is not inclusive. Incorporating access should surely be a presumption for great design in a world where we now cherish equality.

To say that it is OK to exercise prejudice because it has been OK in previous times or because it is redundant in this situation is no excuse. We evolve do we not..in attitude and design? Maybe some of us do not!