VENTURA : Ramp Brings Wheelchairs to Ocean’s Edge

On a recent visit to Marina Cove Beach, Ron Herrera enjoyed his bumpy ride in a wheelchair along a newly reinstalled access ramp near Ventura Harbor.

“It feels like I’m strolling over a pier,” Herrera said.

City workers laid down the tough 200-foot plastic path late last month, seven months after it was removed to make way for a construction project at the harbor.

It was initially put in place last summer to allow wheelchair-users to roll right up to the Pacific Ocean.

A wide platform at the path’s end allows users to watch waves lap at the sand up close, observe children playing or just laze in the sun.

The day Herrera picked to visit was damp and chilly, but he said he enjoyed the ride anyway.

It was his first visit to the city-installed ramp.

“I think it’s great for someone like me who has never gone out to the water unassisted,” he said.

Herrera, 38, a Ventura resident, has spina bifida, a birth defect that has confined him to a wheelchair his entire life.

He said he does not go to the beach often because it has not been accessible.

The city, working with a coalition of government agencies and philanthropic groups, raised the $20,000 needed to install the ramp last year. The ramp is the first of its kind in Ventura County, although a shorter, concrete ramp is available to the mobility-impaired at a beach in Oxnard.

Ventura County has 15,000 people who use wheelchairs or are otherwise impaired, said Renee Gomez, a city recreation coordinator.

She said the ramp is also used by parents pushing strollers or beach-goers who don’t want to get sand in their shoes.

“Every time I’m down there, it’s the most well-used, well-traveled part of the beach,” Gomez said.

“It is being used by all types of people.”

The city is purchasing a special wheelchair with inflated wheels that will allow wheelchair-users to roll even closer to the water’s edge, Gomez said. That wheelchair should be available at Marina Cove Park in a few weeks.