I’ve borrowed the phrase “last mile problems” from the shipping industry. It perfectly explains why traveling around in an electric wheelchair is harder than you’d imagine.
For context, I’ve been fully mobile most of my life until about 2014. At that time, arthritis in my left hip and right knee made walking painful (hip) and difficult (knee does’t fully extend). After a few years of resisting treatment out of ignorant fear, and during a pandemic, my hip replacement worked perfectly (yay, UCSF!). I didn’t get Covid; I still haven’t gotten it. My neighborhood masked up for the flu in the before times, so we knew what time it was and responded like grownups.
Sadly, my knee grew worse and then I had a heart-lung situation that nearly killed me. And then a cancer situation that was nicely resolved (yay again, UCSF!).
So now, I’m one of the approximately 30% of people who recover incredibly slowly. Getting enough exercise to get the weight off is super problematic because I can’t walk more than a few hundred steps at a time, also I am very lazy and write for my day job and my fun time, which has slowed my reconditioning so much. However, I really need to get the weight off to avoid risky complications with knee replacement. I am changing my diet and relationship to food (thank you for all the help, Zepbound!), slowwwwly adding duration to the exercise I can do, and when I need to travel, I use an electric wheelchair. The good news is, I’ve lost 60 pounds. The less good news is, I have another 50 to go before knee surgery complication likelihood is sufficiently reduced for my cowardly self.
Meanwhile Electra glide in blue wheelchair, problem solved, right? Not so much.
I discovered that having the chair doesn’t fully enable anyone to travel alone, because of last mile problems. Remember, I can get myself in and out of my chair, walk short distances, even drag the damn thing up a few sets of stairs if I have to. And still it is stressful-to-terrifying to travel alone.
Here are some of the problems I’ve encountered:
- A wide broad sidewalk that ends in a steep curb.
- Narrow doorways.
- Doorways with sharp turns right before or after, or giant impediments like decorative columns blocking access.
- In Times Square at rush hour (I had no choice! Had to get to the theatre! Didn’t realize Times Square was between the hotel and the theatre!), crowds so thick I couldn’t see which way to go. A kindly Texan with a resentful girlfriend rescued me. But it was a close one.
- Effing cars in effing driveways that are draped across the effing curb cut, so I can’t even get around them, but have to back up to another curb cut and drive in traffic.
- Sidewalks with tree roots that have pushed the sidewalk to unpassable angles.
San Francisco I love you but you’re a bitch
To be fair, able-bodied people struggle with some of the hills in San Francisco. Let’s set the steepest hills aside for now. Let’s just stick to my neighborhood, Oceanview, on the east side of 19th Ave, across from San Francisco State and Park Merced. We live in the middle of a block on a medium steep hill–I can manage it, though it drains the battery. But in between me and the H Mart are inclines so steep my chair just can’t handle them. They aren’t just up and down, but also left-to-right curved, so sometimes the chair just kind of goes wild.
I tried riding Muni from the chair twice. Once, all the elevators were out of service, so I had to travel to other stations before I could get out. Another time, I didn’t know to ride near the driver, so he didn’t give me enough time to get out of the car.
What can we do about it?
As long as the president hasn’t dismantled the ADA, airports are accessible, and after a half dozen trips, my chair has never been damaged in the plane’s hold. However, hotels are another story entirely. Last year they checked me into a room that had a half-dozen stairs from the elevator to the room level–and a hole where the wheelchair lift had been until recently. They kindly moved us, but I’ll never forget the face of the front desk clerk as the penny dropped, connecting a situation she clearly knew existed with me and my wheelchair.
Cities older than my beloved San Francisco (Edinburgh, London, Manhattan) have corners and steps and twists and turns. They do try, especially in Scotland, but there are some things I’ll just never be able to see or do from the chair. Things I can identify beforehand, like maybe not plan a trip to a pub that’s in the third sub-basement. However, there are also last-mile surprises at the end of many a non-cobblestoned, wide thoroughfare. In Manhattan, a curb cut on 6th Avenue was so degraded that I hit it with the wheelchair and stopped with a jolt. Before I could even clamber out and yank it across, a man jumped forward and pushed the chair. People don’t mess about in New York City.
If I had the technical chops, I’d build a Last Mile app to identify 100% accessible paths on maps, or flag the last mile problems so wheelchair users can plan ahead. Would it really be that hard for Google Maps to add a wheelchair icon to the planes, trains, automobiles, and foot symbols they already have?
Here’s to future solutions, especially for folks with greater mobility challenges than I have. Let’s not leave anyone behind.
