What are We Working On? And Why?

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Avenue Update #10

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I want to begin this edition of Avenue Update with a trip down Memory Lane…

Back in the late 1990s, I served as the Director of Accessibility Programs for Palm Tran, the transit agency serving Palm Beach County, Florida. I was sitting at a small table in our break room one day, having lunch with three or four other long-time employees, and we were swapping the stories of how we got into public transit. I don’t remember who was in the conversation with me, but I remember that we all claimed to have joined the transit industry by accident, and I remember that we all believed this was basically a universal truth for all the people we each knew. 

In my own case, I was working on an International Relations graduate degree at San Francisco State University, when I attended a couple of meetings focused on transit accessibility, got hooked, and joined the staff at the Bay Area Rapid Transit District as an entry-level Planner. That was 1993, and I never figured my involvement within transit would last beyond my job at BART. 

Fast-forward to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. By this point, I had been working in transit for 27 years, and I still thought of my transit career as having begun with an accident which I perpetuated with a series of jobs that included better pay and more responsibilities. Here I was—sitting at my home office desk, at the height of the pandemic, and pondering how I had gotten here, and it hit me. My career in transit was no accident. It represented a logical progression that began during the early years of my life—when I wanted to go places, but could not, because I was blind. 

In November, I was an attendee and presenter at the MPact Conference (formerly known as Railvolution), and I had the opportunity to sit down with Jeffrey Wood, and record an edition of the Talking Headways Podcast which is hosted by Streetsblog USA. We had a wide-ranging conversation about everything from how I got into the transit industry and Accessible Avenue’s origin story, to discussions of several current transit accessibility related topics, including paratransit equity, the importance of accessible community engagement, and my work with UZURV. Jeffrey asked some very good and thoughtful questions, and I really enjoyed the chance I got to share a bit about me and why this work matters so much. So, feel free to check out the podcast, and if you like it, you can sign up to receive future editions, where you can learn even more about the people, technologies and services shaping public transportation. 

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/12/07/talking-headways-podcast-sausage-making-and-the-ada 

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#Accessibility 

#AccessibleTransit 

#ADA 

#PassengerTransportation 

#PeopleWithDisabilities 

#PublicTransit 

#TransportationEquity

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