2.3 miles is a lot longer this way

Not being paralyzed from the waist down, I never thought much about sidewalks. No reason to. Though often cracked, uneven and worn, the most basic of public rights of way always got me to my destination.

That perspective changed recently after I spent five hours in an electric wheelchair navigating several miles of sidewalk on Pacific Coast Highway in central Long Beach.

For the ambulatory, the stretch is an easy walk. For the disabled, it’s an unforgiving obstacle course that can tip over wheelchairs or force their occupants to divert onto the highway, where they risk being hit by automobiles, buses and cargo-hauling trucks from the nearby port.

My transition began with the insistence of Ben Rockwell, 61, of Long Beach, a polio victim and disability rights advocate who has been asking Caltrans for years to fix impassable sidewalks on Pacific Coast Highway and other state routes.

In late August, Rockwell joined a federal lawsuit brought against the transportation agency by Disability Rights Advocates, a Berkeley-based nonprofit. The class-action suit alleges that Caltrans has violated state and federal laws that require equal access for the disabled to sidewalks, crosswalks and park-and-ride facilities.

“I want to show you what we are talking about, what we face every time we go out of our homes,” Rockwell told me when I gave him a call about the case. “Of course, you’ll have to go in a wheelchair.”

Rockwell lent me his spare -- an uncomfortable rig with a stiff black metal frame and hard gray rubber wheels.

Our excursion began on the south side of Pacific Coast Highway at Santa Fe Avenue and ended 2.3 miles later at Orange Avenue. The route passed through low-income neighborhoods and a commercial district of used-car lots, strip malls and motels.

Along this stretch of sidewalk, we encountered dozens of conditions that hampered or blocked our passage. Curb ramps were often so steep and narrow that they violated state and federal regulations. Such ramps were missing entirely at alleys that intersected the highway. Sloping driveways caused us to lose traction and skid into the street.

In many places, our route was obstructed by broken concrete slabs, light poles, signs, bus stop benches and news racks. Often there was less than 32 inches of clearance -- the minimum required to accommodate the handicapped.

When there was no room to pass or no curb ramps, Rockwell and I had to travel in the busy street to get around the barriers. Our detours -- nine of them over 2.3 miles -- sometimes lasted for blocks. The worst occurred on the bridge over the Los Angeles River, just past the Long Beach Freeway. After traveling over the span, we reached a light pole in the middle of the sidewalk west of Golden Avenue. There was no room for a wheelchair to pass.

On one side was the curb. On the other was a 6- to 8-inch ledge above a gentle slope. So we backtracked to a busy Long Beach Freeway offramp and entered the street to re-cross the bridge. As we made our way back toward Golden Avenue, a school bus swerved to avoid Rockwell. Trucks and cars changed lanes at the last minute and sped past with a rush of wind and dust.

I felt vulnerable and exposed. After all, people in wheelchairs have been killed doing this.

The effort to get around the light pole added almost half a mile to our journey, but our problems were hardly over.

At Golden Avenue, Rockwell noticed that the button to activate the crosswalk signal was out of reach for anyone in a wheelchair. “Look at this,” Rockwell said. “I could sit here for an hour before someone came along to help me.”

After we were forced into the street for the fifth time, I became indignant. I was tired of threading my wheelchair through tight spots and negotiating tricky slopes to keep from tipping over or sliding into the street. No walking person would put up with this.

At Myrtle Avenue near the end of our run, a rare stretch of pavement gave us plenty of room to get around a light pole. But short of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, we had to zigzag through several narrow passageways with utility poles, news racks and driveways.

Orange Avenue, the finish, was just ahead. However, a ledge obstructed a final length of sidewalk, forcing us to backtrack and use the street to complete the route.

“At times it looked like you weren’t going to make it,” said Rockwell, who took more pleasure in my effort than I did. “You should have seen the look of determination on your face.”

From Orange, we retraced our route to the Blue Line station on Long Beach Boulevard. Rockwell talked about the lawsuit as we waited on the platform for a train that would take us back to his apartment.

“Caltrans doesn’t have to tear up all the sidewalks at great expense. Just fix the bad spots,” Rockwell said. “All we want is a good, safe path of travel.”

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dan.weikel@latimes.com