For a winter wheelchair, Anchorage's mean streets

What does it feel like to wait to cross the street on the icy corner of A Street and Fireweed Lane in a wheelchair? A few words came to mind on Thursday morning as the cars whizzed by me, too close for comfort. One was "invisible." Another was "terrifying."

Access Alaska, an organization that assists people with disabilities, set me up with the wheelchair. The idea was to ride to the bus stop and take a bus, to get an idea what Anchorage in winter is like for people with disabilities.

My guide for the trip was Johnnie Bustamante, a 59-year-old former communications engineer who has painful nerve damage in his feet. He can walk a bit with a cane, which he did as I rode on Thursday, but his main mode of transportation for the past three years has been a wheelchair.

I am no expert at driving an electric wheelchair, so that added to my anxiety as Bustamante and I set off through the parking lot of the Access Alaska building on Fireweed. I attempted my first maneuver: go halfway down a small, sloped driveway and turn left onto the narrow path along the road.

WITH A LITTLE HELP: Julia O’Malley steers a wheelchair, aided by Johnnie Bustamante. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)WITH A LITTLE HELP: Julia O’Malley steers a wheelchair, aided by Johnnie Bustamante. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)

"Go ahead," Bustamante said. And so I started down the driveway. It was covered with ice. Instead of turning, the chair slid toward traffic. I leapt up. Bustamante grabbed the chair.

"That was scary," I said.

"Now you see what I deal with," he said.

He gestured for me to get back in the chair.

I got back in and motored on. Driving over a narrow, icy, uneven path obstructed by chunks of snow wasn't easy. More than once I got off balance and Bustamante had to give me a little shove. We waited at the corner of Fireweed and A for the light to change, the breeze from passing traffic chapping our cheeks.

The way Bustamante saw it, the city and state weren't doing enough to clear the sidewalks of snow. He told me a story about a time earlier this winter when he got stuck in the street after a storm.

He had been trying to get to a bus stop in his wheelchair. The people waiting at the stop tried to get him unstuck, but they couldn't. He had to call the fire department. Firemen picked him up and lifted him onto the sidewalk. Then he realized the sidewalk was blocked with snow. He tried to drive through it, but got stuck again. About then a truck with a blade attached came and plowed the sidewalk. Then the bus showed up, but it stopped in the wrong place, and the patch of sidewalk to the door was blocked. In the end, people got off the bus and carried him to the ramp. It was frustrating, he said. It wasn't fair.

The light changed. It was time to cross Fireweed. I felt small in my chair, passing in front of trucks and SUVs. Could they see me? I couldn't tell. I cringed looking at one woman dialing a cell phone.

Bustamante cautioned me to make sure I gave cars room. Motorists can slide through lights in this kind of weather. And the ones making turns can do some damage if they aren't paying attention. I floored it, trying to get across the street, but the chair wasn't very fast. I felt my heart race as the crosswalk sign counted down: 4, 3, 2, 1. I made it onto the curb just in time.

Later, I called the city and state to ask about clearing sidewalks for wheelchairs. They both said they plow more sidewalks now than ever. Both have added equipment for that purpose over the past few years. They try to get sidewalks clear within 48 hours of a storm.

"What most people don't understand is how much of a continuous process this is," said Tom Grman, superintendent of Anchorage District maintenance and operations for the state.

GO AHEAD: Daily News columnist Julia O'Malley experienced maneuvering a wheelchair along Fireweed Lane on Thursday with the help of Johnnie Bustamante through Access Alaska. Officials say clearing city sidewalks is a continuous process. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)GO AHEAD: Daily News columnist Julia O'Malley experienced maneuvering a wheelchair along Fireweed Lane on Thursday with the help of Johnnie Bustamante through Access Alaska. Officials say clearing city sidewalks is a continuous process. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)

A sidewalk gets plowed, then a street plow comes through and kicks snow back on the sidewalk, he said. Then the sidewalk has to be plowed again. Both the city and state said they would pay special attention to an area if a person in a wheelchair needed to travel there. But someone had to let them know.

"Our crews are doing the best they can to accommodate everybody," Grman said.

Bustamante and I inched down Fireweed toward the bus stop. So far, just going one block, crossing the street and heading down another block took me 15 minutes. I crept along to avoid over-correcting and veering into traffic. The cars were so close, I could almost reach out and touch them.

That's another problem. A number of roads, like Fireweed, weren't really designed for wintertime pedestrians, according to Randy Vanderwood, who oversees roads for the central region of the state.

The sidewalks are narrow, in some cases too narrow for plowing equipment, and there isn't room for snow collection and pedestrian traffic. Even without snow, there is very little buffer between the traffic and sidewalk.

When the roads were built, he said, the engineers didn't anticipate so much wintertime pedestrian activity. But interest in wintertime walking and biking has spiked in recent years, he said. (There are road improvement plans for both Fireweed and Spenard, but the plans have met opposition from local businesses.)

Once Bustamante and I got to the bus stop, we realized that at the rate I was going, we didn't have time to get on the bus and go for a ride. Instead, he coached me on how to turn my chair around and head back. I buzzed through the gritty ice.

He told me sometimes he just rides in the road when the sidewalk gets too bad or disappears completely. More than once, a police officer has stopped him because what he was doing looked dangerous. Each time he told them he had places to go. The city might not be set up for someone like him, but he still had to get around.

What else was he supposed to do?

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