Nondrivers Bike, Ride, and Roll

The League of American Bicyclists is proud to celebrate the Week Without Driving, a challenge launched in 2021 by disability rights advocate and League board member, Anna Zivarts. The Week Without Driving challenge was created “so that those who have the option to drive can learn firsthand about the barriers and challenges that nondrivers face and work with nondrivers to create more accessible communities for all.” We hope the following excerpt from Anna’s book, “When Driving Is Not An Option,” inspires you to join the challenge in solidarity with all the nondrivers out there who bike, walk, and roll every day.

From When Driving Is Not An Option by Anna Letitia Zivarts. Copyright © 2024 Anna Letitia Zivarts. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.

Ivy Take grew up in New Brunswick, Canada, and was born with nystagmus like me. Growing up, she knew that she didn’t have enough vision to drive: “I wouldn’t see things soon enough to make a safe decision, like to stop if something was crossing the road unexpectedly,” she explained. Take met her husband at the University of New Brunswick and started raising a family in Alberta. When her oldest child was in kindergarten, they made the move to Oro Valley, a suburb on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, for her husband’s job. She made sure they found a house within walking distance of an elementary school, but the house wasn’t within walking distance of anything else, and transit service in Oro Valley didn’t exist at that time.

At first, Take was mostly reliant on her husband for rides, but he traveled a lot for work and so she was stuck at home too often. Then she saw her neighbor’s golf cart, and after carefully mapping out routes she could take to avoid major arterials where she wouldn’t be able to safely drive it, Take bought one herself. Next, she got seat belts installed for her elementary school–aged kids and strapped a large Rubbermaid container to the rear-facing seat to carry groceries. The golf cart was a hit. Her kids’ friends always wanted to get a ride with her because the prospect of getting somewhere in a golf cart was far more exciting than the usual ride in a minivan. “Boy, did it ever help me,” Take said. “Just to get the kids to playdates, drive them to piano lessons. I could drive my son to Boy Scouts.”

To cross larger streets, Take would often have to pull up on the sidewalk and push the pedestrian crosswalk button. She would frequently get stopped by the police, and she remembers being pulled over on her very first trip out of the neighborhood when she drove onto the sidewalk to push the walk button. Each time, she was able to explain her situation to the police and she was never ticketed, but in the back of her mind, Take always worried that she would get in trouble because of the legal uncertainty around her driving a golf cart on city streets. Initially, Take even tried to get a license plate for her golf cart, but the department of licensing required proof of insurance, and the insurance company required a driver’s license. The insurance company offered to issue the policy to her husband, but Take figured if she was
driving the golf cart, it wouldn’t cover her. So, she decided to risk driving without plates, which was what most golf cart users in Tucson do anyway.

As e-bikes became more widely available and affordable, Take replaced her golf cart with an e-bike. The e-bike batteries last far longer than the golf cart batteries, and she appreciates being able to ride longer distances. On a bike, she doesn’t have to spend as much time plotting and mapping which roads she can ride on and how to get to a destination. It also helps that the Tucson region has continued to build out an extensive trail network, called “The Loop,” which allows her to get more places using multiuse trails.

Many disabled people who cannot drive rely on bikes, trikes, e-bikes, and e-scooters for transportation. Like Take, I bike for transportation, and I’ve met lots of other low-vision adults who use bikes because they can’t drive. While it is not safe for someone like Take or me, with less than 20/40 vision, to drive a multi-ton vehicle at 75 miles per hour, we can safely pilot a small, light vehicle going less than 20 miles per hour. People who can’t drive because of physical or cognitive disabilities may find biking works for them too, and I’ve gotten to know people with autism as well as those with mental health conditions who find biking is a safe option when driving is not.

Cody Shane Fairweather lives in the small rural community of Chewelah, Washington, in a farm valley near the border with Canada. Because of developmental disabilities, Fairweather can’t drive, but he rides a three-wheeled bike (like an adult-sized trike) to get around town, from his house to the library, to the grocery store. “It gets me where I have to go,” he explained, showing off his trike with a large back cargo basket. “The basket helps me haul groceries and books and stuff.”

As in many rural communities, the main street of Chewelah also serves as Highway 395, connecting the regional center of Spokane to a busy agricultural border crossing with Canada. There are no bike lanes on this road, and the city council passed an ordinance banning people from riding bikes on the sidewalk. “It’s really not a bike-friendly town,” Fairweather commented. “There’s no bike lanes. We’re not allowed to ride on the sidewalks on Main Street—we have to push our bicycles. It’s kind of a pain.”

Crossing this state highway is also a challenge. There’s only one stoplight in town, which Fairweather has to detour out of his way to use to get from his home to his job at the library. Traffic volumes are only expected to get worse as the state invests in a major highway widening project along a section of this highway closer to Spokane.

For people who use trikes, recumbents, handcycles, and cargo e-bikes, where bike infrastructure exists, it often isn’t accessible. Bollards used to keep cars out of bike lanes can be too narrow for wider bike frames; bike parking often can’t accommodate these “nontraditional” bikes, and they can be too heavy to carry up and down stairs and too large to fit in elevators. Trikes, recumbents, and handcycles are also expensive, making them increased targets for theft.

Leroy Moore is a Black disabled cyclist who has competed in the Paralympics. He got around on a three-wheeled bike when he was living in the East Bay near San Francisco. Moore described frequently getting pulled over by police who would tell him either that it’s unsafe to ride in the street or that he should not ride on the sidewalk and should ride on the street. ²⁸ Although bikes are allowed on Bay Area Regional Transit (BART), it is often impossible to bring heavier cargo bikes, trikes, or recumbents on transit. Moore has had two trikes stolen when he locked them at Oakland BART stations.

While the increased availability of e-bikes and e-trikes, including less-expensive models, is creating more opportunities for some disabled people to get where they need to go, wheelchair users have few affordable options because of the expense and difficulty in sourcing powerchairs that are designed to meet their needs.

Ian Mackay is a powerchair user who was a mountain biker before he became paralyzed. Being outdoors has always been important to his mental health, and so after his injury he spent a lot of time getting the equipment he needs to do long powerchair rides outdoors. He started a nonprofit, Ian’s Ride, that supports other disabled people by giving them opportunities to experience the outdoors. Annually, he organizes a three-day “Sea to Sound” supported tour along a rail-to-trail segment on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Mackay also organizes annual challenge rides for which he pushes equipment manufacturers to provide powerchairs, nudging them to advance their technology to support traveling longer distances in more weather conditions over different types of terrain. In 2022, Mackay rode the Great American Rail-Trail from Washington, DC, to Columbus, Ohio, around 450 miles. In previous years, he’s ridden across Washington State, over the Cascade Range.

“Oftentimes, people’s lifestyles are shaped by the equipment that they have,” Mackay explained in frustration. “People could do so much more, and the equipment is determining the direction of their life. A family should be able to go spend the day at Disneyland and not run out of batteries.” Powerchairs usually run on lead-acid batteries that have a very limited range and have to be replaced annually. With the lead-acid batteries that came with his chair, Mackay has a range of about fourteen miles. In contrast, the lithium battery pack he put together to use on his chair gets closer to eighty miles. But lithium batteries are more expensive than the lead-acid batteries, so insurance often won’t cover them. Because most people rely on insurance to cover the cost of their chairs, wheelchair manufacturers are motivated to build what insurance will approve, not necessarily what wheelchair users need or want.

As much as those of us who can bike, e-bike, trike, or roll will benefit from accessible and continuous infrastructure for biking and rolling, it’s important to recognize that this same infrastructure, especially if designed without consideration, can create barriers for other disabled people. If you are a person who has a mobility disability or chronic health condition that makes walking or rolling difficult, and you rely on driving or being driven to get places, having parking access close to where you need to be, parking access with wheelchair loading that is not obstructed by or in conflict with a bike lane, is critical.

“Sometimes there’s an assumption that if a project improves active transportation safety overall, then it’s a win for disabled people. That is not always the case,” explains Maddy Ruvolo, who is a disabled transportation planner for San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and a member of the United States Access Board. Ruvolo points out how protected cycling lanes can make it impossible for people with wheelchairs or mobility aids to safely exit a car and get to the sidewalk.

“In my experience, there is often a design solution that maintains or increases access for disabled people while improving safety for cyclists,” she elaborated, explaining that parking-protected cycling lanes can and should be designed with enough space for someone to safely get out of a vehicle with an accessible path of travel from the parking to the curb. “The key thing is that access doesn’t happen automatically: accessibility has to be baked into the design process,” Ruvolo offers as a reminder to planners and cycling infrastructure advocates. For people who are blind or low vision, feeling comfortable navigating often comes from being familiar with a space and knowing what to anticipate, and so encountering unexpected barrierscan be disorienting and dangerous. Too often, “quick-build,” pop-up, or temporary street redesigns, intended to minimize community opposition to change because they are only experiments and not permanent changes, are not designed with accessibility in the forefront. The consequence of this is that blind and low-vision or other disabled community members suddenly find that a street they knew how to navigate safely has become unnavigable because of new bike infrastructure, pedestrian plazas, or floating bus stops.

Because many of these new streetscape designs are being tried in communities for the first time, there is little standardization, so a person who is blind trying to understand if a tactile strip indicates they are ending a road or crossing into a shared bike lane or floating bus stop doesn’t have an answer. Inconsistencies between treatments can be dangerous: a low-vision power wheelchair user I know flipped her chair off a curb when she thought she was rolling down a curb ramp marked by the bright yellow tactile strip. But instead, the yellow strip was demarcating a bus stop in a transit center.

“Accessibility is not a competition but rather a collaboration. It involves problem-solving and focuses on the goal of leaving no one behind,” shared Vancouver, British Columbia–based disabled writer and policy analyst Gabrielle Peters. ²⁹ “Where prioritization must occur, it must be focused on those with the least access currently, those facing the most barriers, and this includes considering the impact of any and all intersecting oppression, such as racism, gender discrimination, income, and classism.” ³⁰

Notes:

28. Rooted In Rights, Disability Rights Washington, “Disabled People Ride Bikes (and Trikes,
    and Tandems and Recumbents)!” March 1, 2021,
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzCPvsPGhbU.
29. In the summer of 2019, Peters collaborated with the BC Bike Coalition to bring mobility
    justice advocates from across the US and Canada to speak at the Bike Coalition’s annual
    conference. Being invited to participate in this conference, where Peters brought disabled
    advocates and people working in public health together with seniors and immigrant and First
    Nation communities, helped me start to imagine the possibility of connecting disability mobility
    advocacy to other conversations about equity in public space.
30. Gabrielle Peters, “Accessibility Is Not a Competitive Sport,” G Peters (MsSineNomine)
    Substack, August 17, 2023, https://mssinenomine.substack.com/p/accessibility-is-not-a-
    competitive.