Fiona Hinze can see it coming when she spins around the streets of San Francisco: An indicator showing that her wheelchair battery is running out of juice.
Hinze is always with someone when she’s out with her power chair. When the battery dies, she switches on the manual mode, takes the chair out of gear, and asks her companion to push her chair — which weighs a couple hundred pounds, plus her body weight — to her car.
“Really, you just focus on getting somewhere safe,” said Hinze, director of public policy at the Independent Living Resource Center, a disability-rights advocacy group in San Francisco.
Hinze, like other wheelchair users, keeps a mental map of possible charging locations: the library, friendly restaurants or cafes. Sometimes, chair users ask public-toilet attendants if they can plug into the city’s outlets, even though that’s against city rules.
Wheelchair users are forced to strategize like this because San Francisco, unlike other even smaller cities, has zero public electric-wheelchair charging stations, according to a 2024 report presented to the Mayor’s Disability Council under Mayor London Breed.
City officials say they are working on the issue, but wheelchair charging offers a unique set of problems, and wheelchair users complain about a lack of progress.
Allen Jones, a wheelchair user and former District 5 supervisor candidate, was frustrated to see the city touting EV charging ports, for instance, while leaving electric-wheelchair users in the dust: San Francisco has more than 1,100 publicly accessible charging ports — a 470 percent increase since 2019 — for electric vehicles, and none for wheelchairs.
“We who use an electric wheelchair to get around town should not be left to fend for ourselves,” Jones said. The lack of charging ports means wheelchair users are often effectively confined to different parts of the city.
“I live downtown, and would love to spend time in Golden Gate Park,” Jones said. “But I can’t, because the distance drains my wheelchair batteries to the point of making a round trip nearly impossible.”
Slow progress
The 2024 report on wheelchair charging found that each charging station costs just $749, compared to around $1,200 to $3,500 for electric-vehicle ports. They have been installed in other cities around the country. Seattle, for example, installed a power-wheelchair charging station at its central library earlier this year.
“It does seem like something that wouldn’t cost a lot to be implemented as a pilot project,” said Liz Henry, a chair user and part-time worker at the Disability Cultural Center, which provides free charging at 165 Grove St. near Civic Center.
“See if people use it. See how much it costs in electricity and equipment. See if it creates social problems. I think it would be worth it,” Henry said.
The city has already received funding for wheelchair ports. In March, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was awarded a $2.2 million grant to expand charging access in San Francisco.
Most of the funding will be used to install electric-vehicle charging stations, but it also promises “e-bike and assistive mobility device charging infrastructure at up to two locations.”
SFMTA, in a statement, said it will be designing and implementing two “mobility device charging hubs” in its off-street parking garages. The locations have not been determined, but will either be at the SFMTA parking facility at 5th and Mission or Ellis and O’Farrell.
The agency is also looking to include wheelchair charging in its mobility hub program, which aims to create spaces in the southeastern part of the city — from Bayview to the Excelsior — that will connect transit and community services all in one place.
“The SFMTA recognizes the need for charging personal mobility devices,” the statement reads. “Staff are actively keeping that in mind as opportunities and funding arise.”
One obstacle is the “proliferation of new and potentially lower-quality lithium-ion batteries” in power wheelchairs, which can damage mobility devices and increase the risk of fires and injuries, according to a statement from the San Francisco Human Services Agency. The agency oversees the Office on Disability and Accessibility.
“Given these new developments, which pose serious safety considerations, these charging stations will and must be carefully designed in order to ensure safe operations for all,” the statement reads.
The Recreation and Parks Department, for its part, said it has installed an outlet that can charge wheelchairs in the Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park. But users need to bring their own chargers.
The department is adding “a small concrete pad to improve access and maintain nearby seating,” and finalizing signage.
But for Jones, who has been advocating for public electric wheelchair charging stations since 2022, these efforts are too little, and too slow.
Stuck in the chair
Advocates are particularly worried about unhoused wheelchair users.
Just like electric cars, different electric wheelchairs can make it different distances before needing to power up. Some users have access to better chairs or spare lithium batteries, like Henry, the wheelchair user who lives in Bernal Heights.
They call their spare battery a “luxury” that lets them travel from their home to Berkeley by BART and back, run a couple of errands, and “be okay.”
But for those living on the streets, it’s challenging enough just to make sure chairs aren’t stolen, Henry said, and to keep track of where their chargers are.
While Henry can usually get away with charging their wheelchair at a cafe or restaurant, merchants might turn away someone who is visibly homeless.
And it usually takes two to three hours of charging to get someone going, said Vincent Lopez, a wheelchair repair technician with the Independent Living Resource Center. That means people in wheelchairs have to stay put, and the location of a charging station matters.
“You have to feel safe, because sometimes you’re stuck there for several hours,” said Hinze.
For now, people whose wheelchair batteries are running low can ask for help from people like Lopez.
Under a contract with the city’s Human Services Agency, Lopez works from Monday to Friday to respond to people who face a dead battery or broken chair on the street. He brings a portable charger, batteries and a cord, and can pick people up in a wheelchair van and take them somewhere safe.
But it’s an imperfect solution. If a breakdown happens late at night or on the weekend when Lopez isn’t available, people could still be stuck.
To prevent that, Henry would like to see a high-speed portable wheelchair charger become part of the standard emergency response from the city’s street teams.
“If you’re stranded, you could call and they can charge your chair on the street and then you would be independent again,” Henry said.
But widely available charging stations could prevent that situation, they added. “That’s better than people being stuck in the corner all night with a wheelchair that won’t go anywhere, and possibly having to call emergency services, who may or may not help them.”
A company or non-profit to partner with the city and set up charging stations?
Infrastructure comes at a cost. Either the end user pays for it or is stuck waiting for others (government?) to figure it out.
It really shouldn’t cost that much to do this. SF’s goldbricking problem nonwithstanding, of course.
Yeah, everything progressives do costs taxpayers arm and a leg! Remember almost $2,000.000 public toilet? https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/san-francisco-noe-valley-expensive-toilet/3511302/?amp=1
That had nothing to do with progressives. Departments are largely under control of the mayor, and we haven’t had a progressive mayor since the early 1990s.
Precisely. But let’s play the “how much can Park & Rec make this cost” game for 8-12 electrical outlets, right?
Do I hear 20 million? 200 Million?
My niece is in a power chair. It broke down during a visit several years ago. Having a friend in a power chair, I called her and asked for suggestions on a mechanic to fix it. She didn’t have any. I called the Center for Independent Living. A few people were mentioned, but none replied. More beating of the bush before I finally called a motorcycle friend who was very handy and we drove around town and Berkeley fixing it ourselves. I was amazed at how little assistance was available for wheel chair users. Charging a wheel chair should be readily available at every public building just to start with. Every police station, fire house, city office building, DPW, SFMTA, SFUSD, etc etc. It is just a few kilowatts of power to some of the most oppressed people in our society, the disabled.
On the fire hazard, I hope that the standards for batteries for wheel chairs, which are very expensive, more than $13,000 as I recall years ago, are high. Obviously, power chair users need to charge their chair often, and if it starts a fire they are likely to be injured or die in the fire. Do not charge cheap batteries while you are asleep nor in a place that is combustible. The Fire Department goes to lots of battery fires.
There are frivolous articles and then there is this article.
Actual Chair users know they have to be responsible for their approx $10,000 (average cost) chair and they already know they have to do their part to keep their chair moving.
If they are out and about and there is no option to recharge, what exactly are you suggesting is frivolous about their needs? Speak clearly on that.
Wow! I have never been able to walk and I am 69-years-old. I have lived in San Francisco since 1960, and have always been treated with much respect. But reading these comments tells me that times have changed. I wonder what they think of those who drive electric cars?
It’s able-ism. The same people hate on renters, ‘why don’t they just buy a house’?
I’m sorry to see all the ableist comments. You matter and deserve better in terms of mobility. The article itself, I thought, was great.
This is why a lot of news sites are shutting down their comments section. It’s not representative of what real people think. It attracts the biggest jerks with an axe to grind, in some cases folks who may not even live in San Francisco trying to sow discord.
I am seeing a lot of cruelty and ableism in the comments here. If you can’t imagine how it must feel to be disabled and stranded away from home, when the solution is a couple kilowatt hours of electricity, you need to stop poasting and work on fixing your hearts.
Progressives have exploded the deficit to billion dollars, and now they demand even more reckless spending.
A single charge on those electric wheelchairs gives 8–20 miles of range—plenty for anyone who isn’t completely incapacitated. There’s zero excuse for “running out of power.”
As for the homeless rolling around in them: charging stations are everywhere, right alongside the endless taxpayer-funded services already handed to them. But let’s be honest—they’re usually too strung-out to even plug the damn thing in.
“they’re usually too strung-out to even plug the damn thing in”
So your typically Republican comment is that wheelchair users are drug addicts.
This article reads like parody. The services for out of town drug addicts weren’t enough, the supportive housing wasn’t enough, the free motorized wheelchair wasn’t enough. We also need to install free public charging stations for their free wheelchairs. Okay then.
You don’t think disabled people’s basic mobility needs should be considered?
That makes sense for you, I’d have guessed that about you.
Keep swiping at those straw men!
Straw men are fake, your disdain for little people is demonstrated here on the daily.
Deny it, I dare you. I have the receipts.
Punching down all the time must get tiring.
Just like you don’t care about immigrant rights, the rights of the poor, the accused…
Why should disabled be any different?
Can you hear yourself?
This will be abused by the homeless, guaranteed. Better to provide city subsidized voucher for low income disabled people.
What good is a voucher if there’s nowhere to charge in public?
If ‘the homeless’ are charging up a few devices in addition to the validated need of disabled people charging up their chairs, that costs pennies. It’s a non-issue unless they are physically blocking the disabled from getting to the chargers. The amount of electricity we’re talking about is literally a few bucks.