2023 in Review — Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

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Avenue Update #11

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As we approach the Christmas holiday season and the dawning of a new year, it’s a good time to take stock of some of the work we completed in 2023, and then turn our attention to what might lay ahead in 2024. 

Memorable Mission Moments from 2023 

Although our mission to make transportation easier and more accessible for everyone is broad, we sought to focus our work in a few key areas, including:  

• helping transit agencies make their community engagement activities more accessible for people with disabilities,  

• providing guidance on how to make the process of navigating to, from and within transit networks more accessible (aka wayfinding),  

• promoting the potential value of accessible autonomous vehicles for transforming the future of transportation of all people, and  

• encouraging and supporting innovation within the delivery of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) paratransit.  

Those were the areas where we wanted to focus, and that’s exactly what happened. Put simply, it was a very full and satisfying year.  

Here are a handful of our favorite highlights and achievements. 

Making Community Engagement More Accessible 

We presented strategies transit agencies and other organizations can use to make their community engagement efforts more accessible at a number of transit industry conferences throughout the country. We are also collaborating with several other industry professionals on a book that will provide a comprehensive look at why accessible community engagement is so important, at the impacts that different types of disabilities might have on the ways that people with different disabilities are able to interact with an agency’s community engagement activities, and lots of recommendations for how agencies can make written materials, in-person and virtual meetings, and other engagement activities more accessible for more people. Expect publication in early to mid 2024. 

Advancing the State of the Art of Wayfinding 

One of the biggest challenges people with disabilities may face when attempting to move about their communities is navigating to, from and within transit networks. Even when the transit system itself is accessible, the communities where it operates may not be, and of course, there are often additional difficulties associated with the lack of accessible information needed for planning the trip, for paying the fare, and for navigating to, from and within the transit system.  

Wayfinding refers to all of the activities necessary for traveling between Points A and B within a community, and it was a major area of focus during 2023. 

• In January, we joined a research team led by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute on a long-term federally supported project to design and deliver a guidebook and toolkit that transit agencies can use to assess the availability and accessibility of transit information for people who are blind or have low-vision. 

• In November, we joined a project being led by the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the nine-county San Francisco Bay region (Bay Area Metro) to provide support in the areas of accessibility and disability community engagement for a long-term effort to create a more harmonized approach for presenting transit and wayfinding information to Bay Area commuters using any of the region’s 27 public bus, rail and ferry services. 

• Along the way, we made several presentations across the country on strategies for making wayfinding information more accessible and on a myriad of tools and technologies that can make the process of navigating to, from and throughout transit networks more accessible for everyone. 

Promoting Accessible Autonomous Vehicles  

Autonomous vehicles are currently operating in several cities around the country, and literally dozens of companies are working to introduce autonomous vehicles and supporting technologies to the transportation industry. Throughout the year, Accessible Avenue remained engaged as a voice of support for these rapidly advancing technologies—with the understanding that autonomous vehicles (AVs for short) are accessible for people with disabilities, including those who are blind or who have low vision, those who need access to a wheelchair-accessible vehicle, and a range of other types of disabilities. There were several high points of our work in this area, including the opportunity for founder and CEO Ron Brooks to present at the National AV Celebration hosted by the Jacksonville Transportation Authority on May 31, a follow-up webinar presentation in the Fall, and several workshops and presentations delivered within the disability community throughout the year. 

Encouraging and Supporting Innovation of ADA Paratransit 

When the ADA was signed into law, in July of 1990, by President George H. W. Bush, the law included a requirement for transit agencies to provide what the law called “paratransit” for individuals whose disabilities prevented them from using conventional transit services. The law required that service be offered, on a next-day basis, to any location anywhere and at any time local transit services (such as bus and light rail) were available, without prioritization or limits, and at no more than twice the cost of what the same trips would cost on transit. 

ADA paratransit transformed the lives of millions of disabled Americans who had little or no access to their communities, and it continues to serve as a critical link for millions of people with disabilities and their communities, but in many communities, service hasn’t changed all that much since the 1990s. Customers must still endure bureaucratic processes to gain eligibility, must book trips by phone at least a day in advance, and must wait for as much as 20 or 30 minutes for a trip that might or might not include stops for other riders along the way, and that might take as little as a few minutes or as long as one or two hours—or more, depending on the needs of the service. Meanwhile, technologies like GPS and mobile communications have utterly transformed the entire way most types of public transit operate—from trip planning, to purchasing fares and tickets, to getting across town in a mix of everything from bicycles to rideshare vehicles, buses, trains, and coming soon, autonomous vehicles. 

We believe that it is time for the innovation sweeping most types of public transit to be incorporated into paratransit. We also believe that it is time to rethink some of the most basic assumptions underpinning the delivery of ADA paratransit, such as the provision allowing agencies to require customers to book trips at least a day in advance, the rules permitting agencies to negotiate a customer’s requested travel time by up to one hour, and the ADA provisions allowing agencies to charge people with disabilities who need paratransit up to twice as much as they charge other transit customers. We would also like to help the industry retool the fragmented way customers apply for service. 

In October, Founder and CEO, Ron Brooks participated in a panel presentation convened during the annual Transform Conference of the American Public Transportation Association. The title of the session was “Rethinking Paratransit – Can we Do Better,” and our answer is an unequivocal “Yes!” 

Other Activities 

In addition to the foregoing, Accessible Avenue continued to provide presentations and workshops for disability community events and conferences, and we conducted monthly educational calls called “Untangling Transportation,” where we brought in industry experts to discuss transportation issues relevant for people with disabilities. Put simply, 2023 was a busy year. 

Looking Ahead – What’s Up for 2024? 

 In addition to the book on accessible community engagement which should be published in 2024, and the ongoing wayfinding projects described above, Accessible Avenue will continue to focus on its core mission to help make transportation easier and more accessible for everyone. And our year will get off to a quick start at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, taking place from January 6-11 in Washington, DC.  

From there, who knows where the road leads, but one thing’s certain. People with disabilities need better, easier, more affordable, and more accessible mobility within the communities where they live, work, and play, and our goal is to help the pedestrian and passenger transportation industries deliver it. 

Before closing, I want to thank our clients, our industry colleagues, friends and partners, and everyone in the disability community who has engaged with us throughout the year. We appreciate your time, experience, expertise, and energy, and we look forward to even greater efforts and success in the future. But first, we want to wish each of you a happy, safe, and festive holiday season and a healthy and prosperous New Year! 

Sincerely Yours, 

Ron Brooks and the entire Accessible Avenue team 

#Accessibility 

#ADA 

#AutonomousVehicles 

#CommunityEngagement 

#Innovation 

#Mobility 

#Paratransit 

#PedestrianSafety 

#PublicTransit 

#Wayfinding 

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