I spent weeks cruising the unforgiving streets of San Francisco with mobile scooter users

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Getting around the city with a cane, walker or wheelchair can be difficult. San Francisco, with dozens of distinct hills, some reaching more than 30 degrees, is a particularly challenging area for people with disabilities. The streets are constantly busy, the sidewalks can be broken, but worst of all, the BART and Muni entrances are often completely inaccessible.

During an internship at The Standard last summer, I spent a month documenting the lives of Loyce Furlow and Allen Jones, two San Francisco residents who ride scooters. Jones and Furlow have both lived in the city for decades: Jones since the age of three and Furlow since the age of 18. Together, their experiences show how difficult it can be to get around San Francisco with a disability.

Lois Furlow, scooter’s grandmother

Furlow has been using a scooter to get around the city since she had hip surgery in 2019. Although it is technically small enough to fit on public transport, boarding Muni is still difficult. One day, while getting off the bus, Furlow’s scooter caught on the ramp, causing it to tip over and fall. The experience made her bitter about the service.

Bus drivers “don’t help you much,” she said.

On the streets, Ferlo often encounters physical obstacles and bumpy sidewalks that her scooter cannot disperse. Her 8-year-old grandson Silas sometimes accompanies her on business, riding a Razor scooter to keep up.

“He’s talking to me slow down!” Furlow said.

By law, all sidewalks in San Francisco must be ADA-accessible, but the city makes an exception for topographically constrained streets, such as steep hills, according to Rachel Gordon of the San Francisco Public Works Department.

Gordon told The Standard that property owners are responsible for maintaining and repairing broken sidewalks, meaning the city is not involved unless the property owner complies.

Lois Furlow is hardly alone. The Department of the Disabled and Aged reports that 49,773 San Francisco residents have mobility issues, and not all of them can count on family assistance. Some, in fact, lived independently for decades and, despite San Francisco’s hostile topography and sometimes indifferent city government, still managed to thrive.

Allen Jones, Model T driver

Born with spina bifida, a spinal disorder that limits mobility, Jones walked on crutches from childhood. Jones grew up in the Mission with his nine siblings and eventually became a Bible study teacher at the Juvenile Hall in San Francisco. For most of his life, he easily moved around the city on crutches. However, for the past two years, as his condition worsened, he moved around San Francisco on a scooter.

He’s cool too, with a shiny coat of black paint and a grille reminiscent of a vintage Ford Model T. His scooter, which he calls the Black Joy, doesn’t fit on public transport, so it’s his only means of transportation. movement around the city.

Jones spent more than a year filing complaints about obstruction and violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) through the city’s 311 application, sometimes multiple times a day. In July 2021, he filed an ADA complaint with the Department of Justice detailing his accessibility issues.

Physical obstacles such as construction, debris, and campsites often cause Jones to go outside or turn around completely. He often has to squeeze between parquet floors on sidewalks that violate the minimum width of an 8-foot walkway.

This complaint is currently being processed by the Department of Transportation and is still under investigation. Now he’s focused all his efforts on that, stopping filing 311 complaints after the city received little to no action.

“I get help from people all over San Francisco, but not from City Hall,” Jones said.

Jones has another idea: he thinks electric scooters should be able to charge anywhere, like the Lime and Bird scooters. So he wants the city to provide dedicated public charging stations.

In November 2022, Jones discussed his idea with Nicole Bohn and Deborah Kaplan, Director and Associate Director of Program Access at City Hall for the Disabled (MOD). He left with assurances that the chargers would be installed by 2023.

In an emailed statement to The Standard, Kaplan confirmed the meeting with Jones but said they never tied a timeline, instead promising to discuss the concept with other city departments.

“We told him that we agreed with the need, and that since the Department of Defense is not set up to initiate and implement programs, we will study them with other departments,” Kaplan said, adding that only then would the Department of Defense be able to assess the feasibility of implementing the Jones idea. . .

“I don’t know what his claim is based on,” Kaplan said.

Whatever the outcome of his fight against bureaucracy, Jones prefers to focus on his significant accomplishments.

“I was limited in many things,” he said. “But it didn’t bother me at all. When I tell people about some of the things that I have achieved, I wrote a book while living in my truck and published it. I hosted a TV program in my truck for three years.”

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