Eating My Own dog food

AVENUE UPDATE #1 Eating My Own Dog Food, aka Why I Founded Accessible Avenue 

 In the tech sector, there’s an expression that has always resonated for me: “Eat your own dog food.” 

First, I grew up with dogs and have had dogs in my home for virtually my entire life. As we all know, with few exceptions, dogs love to eat, and they’re content with simple dog food. If we could all approach life like most of our dogs approach their bowl of kibble, we would probably be happier, and the world a better place. 

The other reason the expression resonates is because I have been eating my own “dog food” for the entire time I’ve been working in the public transit industry. That’s 30 years and counting. And over the course of my time in transit, I’ve learned something important. When you eat your dog food, you focus on how it tastes. 

I began riding public transit when I was a little kid—almost fifty years ago. Every Saturday, I would ride the bus with my Grandma Guthrie to run errands in downtown Muncie, Indiana. I also rode buses with my elder sister Yvonne to and from Muncie Central High School, where we both graduated in 1985. From Muncie, it was on to Indianapolis for college and then on to San Francisco for graduate school. Over time, my transit use grew to encompass not only buses, but vans, taxicabs, rideshare vehicles, subway trains, light rail vehicles, commuter trains, the occasional ferryboat and even the storied San Francisco cable cars. Heck, I’ve even been on the Inclined Railroad in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So I’ve eaten a lot of public transit “dog food”. And sometimes, that “dog food” didn’t taste too good. Buses were late, trains too crowded, connections missed, no transit where I needed or wanted to go, the normal stuff. 

 And then there was all the stuff related to me using transit as a blind guy! By high school, my eyesight had gone from bad to non-existent. In the late 80s and early 90s, things like the driver forgetting to announce my stop or passing it altogether; the inability to obtain transit route and schedule information, especially at times when the transit agency’s phone lines were closed; and the inability to use the ticket machines at most rail stations were common occurrences. 

 And then there was the time my guide dog and I got caught in a massive crowd of commuters trying to board a rush hour train in downtown San Francisco. Back then, there were no bumpy tiles installed along the platform edges on many transit systems, including this one, and the combination of a noisy station, the shoving crowds of people and my inability to locate the edge before reaching it, resulted in our stepping off the platform in an area that was in-between two cars of a train that was just about to leave the station. Scary stuff! 

 Bottom line, I was completely dependent on public transit and facing almost daily challenges to use it. 

 Not long after my misadventures at the station, I was invited to attend a meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District’s disability community advisory committee (now referred to as the BART Accessibility Task Force). I jumped at the chance because it would give me the opportunity to tell them what I really thought about transit accessibility. What actually happened is that I learned the people representing BART cared just as much about getting things right as I cared about them doing it. 

 A year later, I was one of them, an entry-level Transportation Planner helping BART make accessibility-related improvements to its Key Stations. Which was required under the newly passed Americans with Disabilities Act. Three years later, I was managing Accessible Transit Services and ADA Paratransit in Palm Beach County, Florida. Four years after that, it was Albuquerque, then the Bay Area, then Illinois, then Phoenix and elsewhere. During the 27 years between 1993 and 2020, I gained a good bit of knowledge about how passenger transportation services can be designed and delivered to be more accessible for people with disabilities, and in May of 2020 (while the world was staggering through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic), I decided to establish Accessible Avenue as a way to share my knowledge and experience with the industry that helped me to learn so much. I also decided to turn Accessible Avenue into a resource for people with disabilities, community-based organizations and others who need help figuring out how to make transportation tastier (more accessible) in the places where they need to go. 

 Our mission at Accessible Avenue is simple. Make transportation for people with disabilities more accessible and easier to use. If you represent a transit agency, mobility provider, technology developer or any other organization committed  to more accessible transportation, you share our goals, and we’d love to connect. And if you’re a person or an organization who needs an upgrade to the transportation that people with disabilities use in your community, we’re here to help, so let’s talk. 

 Our goal for this newsletter is to connect with you. We will share company updates, information about how Accessible Avenue and our clients are collaborating to make transportation more accessible and equitable for people with disabilities, and resources you can use in the communities where you live, work and travel. 

 And we want to hear from you. Have an accessible transportation story to share, a recommendation to offer, or a problem that needs solving? Drop it in the comments or use our Contact Form.