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Eric Mazariego navigates El Cerrito Plaza Station. 

BART is developing detailed descriptions of station tactile guideways, a navigation system for riders who are blind and low vision that leads to bus bays, fare gates, and platform stairs. Find the descriptions here and read the story of their development here. 

Eric Mazariegos has been taking BART “forever.”  

His earliest BART memory is riding trains to eye doctor appointments in San Francisco with his mom. He was eight years old when he started losing his vision, and it took doctors two years to figure out what was happening. That meant lots of appointments – and lots of BART.  

Those long BART rides from his home in Concord to San Francisco and back turned out to be a useful educational tool as his vision loss continued.  

“I rode it so much as a kid, I’d memorized a lot of the stations,” he said. “I had a head start [for navigating the system without vision].”  

Later in life, he began taking BART regularly, first to get to class at San Francisco State, then a job in Fremont, and now to his current workplace, the Orientation Center for the Blind (OCB).  

“It’s my primary mode of transportation,” he said. Rideshares fill in the blanks when necessary (though BART is always his first choice).  

Eric uses his white cane to follow the tactile guideway at El Cerrito Plaza. 

When Eric navigates a BART station, he is listening to the sounds around him and translating the tactile clues from his white cane to the spatial map in his mind.   

Every BART station has a unique soundscape and tactile geography that allows Eric to make his way through a station and onto a BART train.  

“I listen for the turnstile, so I know where to enter. I feel for the carpets near the escalators – a clue that I’m almost there. I hear my cane on the metal landing platform. Then I ascend to the platform,” Eric said, describing some of the cues he uses to navigate a station without vision. When he reaches the platform, there are other guide tools – bumpy tactile guideways that signal you are nearing the trackway, speakers announcing the approach of trains. 

Part of Eric’s job is to support people like him -- people who are blind or low vision -- in learning to move around their cities and regions.  

Eric serves as the Administrator of OCB, a 60-year-old residential training program run by the Department of Rehabilitation (DOR) that provides free on-site training to job seekers who are visually impaired and blind. Said Eric: “The mission of the DOR is everyone who wants to work can work.” 

Eric started at OCB as a dorm counselor in 1999. Twenty-five years later, he’s overseeing the organization’s entire staff of 35. To get to OCB from his home in Concord, Eric takes BART, twice a day, five days a week. Without it, his travel options would be extremely limited. 

Eric stands on a BART train. 

The OCB campus is about a half mile from El Cerrito Plaza Station. Every day of the week, you’ll see OCB participants on campus going to and from classes, which include courses such as Daily Living Skills, Cooking, Braille, Adaptive Technology training, and independent travel. Some students are new to blindness. Some come from outside of the Bay Area. Many live on campus through the duration of their training course.  

“I’d have to find a job closer to my house,” he said. “BART opens up the possibilities to work wherever you want, and your job is a huge part of your life. A lot of people take that for granted.” 

There’s a learning curve for OCB students ready to set out on their own via public transportation. First, they must learn white cane skills so they can detect obstacles and pathways and safely orient themselves in spaces they haven’t experienced before.   

Teachers provide hands-on guidance and “BART field trips” to show students how to confidently navigate the system, and they have tactile maps of some stations so they can get a sense of their layouts. Many students want to go out and learn by experiencing it for themselves.  

“When students advance to the point of being able to use BART, they love it. It’s so freeing because it takes you everywhere, runs frequently, and is dependable,” Eric said. “A lot of our students come from Southern California, and they’re not used to having great transit. Many don’t like going back home because they fall in love with our transportation system.” 

Eric enters Downtown Berkeley Station's platform via the stairs. 

About BART Connects 

The BART Connects storytelling series was launched in 2023 to showcase the real people who ride and rely on BART and illustrate the manifold ways the system affects their lives. The subjects of BART Connects will be featured in videos as well as a forthcoming marketing campaign that is slated to run across the Bay Area. Find all the stories at bart.gov/bartconnects.  

The series grew out of BART's Role in the Region Study, which demonstrates BART’s importance to the Bay Area’s mobility, cultural diversity, environmental and economic sustainability. We conducted a call for stories to hear from our riders and understand what BART means to them. More than 300 riders responded, and a selection of respondents were interviewed for the BART Connects series. 

Linda Healey pictured at Walnut Creek Station. 

Do you have a favorite BART memory or story to share? Email a short summary to BART Storyteller Michelle Robertson at [email protected], and she may follow up to schedule an interview.    

Linda Healey took BART to work for more than twenty years. When her son was young, those daily BART rides were her only downtime in the day.  

“BART got me home to my child quickly,” she said. “And it got me home unstressed because I could relax, rather than sit in traffic. That was a gift.”  

Now retired, Healey still looks back on her BART commute fondly. Each morning, Healey would walk about ten minutes from her home to Walnut Creek Station, where she’d board a San Francisco-bound train.  

During the ride, she finally had a few minutes time to read, and she treasured that time. She alternated between the classics and pure “pleasure reading,” from Finnegan’s Wake to Agatha Christie. Thirty minutes or so later, she’d disembark at one of the Market Street stations in San Francisco and head to work for the day at a large financial institution.  

Healey still takes BART to those same stations, but nowadays, her destination is mostly dinner or the theatre, a lifelong passion of hers. In the eighties, she said she took BART to see the original touring casts of classics like Cats, Phantom of the Opera, and Les Misérables. She’s especially grateful for BART’s Senior Clipper card, which gets her 62.5% off her fare.  

One of Healey’s most treasured BART memories doesn’t involve her commute or theatergoing. Eleven years ago, she met a 21-year-old Italian woman on a train who was traveling alone. Her name was Stefania, and she couldn’t remember which station she was supposed to meet her aunt at, but knew she lived in Danville. Healey suspected Walnut Creek was their meeting place.  

The two women struck up a conversation, and Healey learned Stefania lived in Lucca, Tuscany, and was staying with her aunt for 29 days to practice her English. Healey was charmed by her wit and “beautiful Italian accent.” They chatted the entire way.  

When they got to Walnut Creek Station, Healey made Stefania a deal. She would walk home, wait a few minutes, and then return to the station in her car to make sure Stefania had been picked up. Healey told her, “If you’re still there when I get back, I’ll drive you to your aunt’s place.” She returned a half hour later, but Stefania was nowhere to be found. 

The two women kept up a correspondence, with Healey sometimes helping Stefania with her English class homework. In the decade since, Healey has watched Stefania fall in love, get married, and have a child. She sends Healey baby pictures now. Healey hopes to meet the family in Italy one day.  

“We were at such different points in our lives,” Healey said. “But we just hit it off on BART. It never would have happened if it weren’t for that train ride. I really scored.”  

Healey intends to visit Stefania in Tuscany in the near future. She’ll take BART to the airport, as she always does.  

Today, Healey’s son – now in his thirties and living in Oakland – does the same commute his mother did for so many years, though he hops on the train a few stops up the line. He even works for the same company.  

“I passed the BART baton to him,” Healey said. “Hopefully one day, he’ll get to take it just for fun.”  

About the BART Connects Storytelling Series

The BART Connects storytelling series was launched in 2023 to showcase the real people who ride and rely on BART and illustrate the manifold ways the system affects their lives. You can follow the ongoing series at bart.gov/news. 

The series grew out of BART's Role in the Region Study, which demonstrates BART’s importance to the Bay Area’s mobility, cultural diversity, environmental and economic sustainability. We conducted a call for stories to hear from our riders and understand what BART means to them. The call was publicized on our website, social media, email blasts, and flyering at stations. More than 300 riders responded, and a selection of respondents who opted-in were interviewed for the BART Connects series. 

Sandra Escalante pictured above at El Cerrito Plaza Station. 

Happy International Women’s Day! BART is celebrating Women’s History Month by sharing stories about the incredible women who work with and have impacted our agency. Stay tuned for additional content. 

In the construction world, small business owner Sandra Escalante said she is often referred to as a “unicorn.”  

“I’m a woman, a minority, and a member of the LGBT community,” she said recently. “It’s very difficult just to be an employee in the construction world. A business owner? Ha.”  

Escalante owns Laner Electric Supply Company, a wholesale distributor of electrical and lighting tools and supplies headquartered in a 16,000-square-foot warehouse in Richmond, Calif. The company is one of 670 small businesses supported by BART’s Small Business Support Services (SBSS), a program operated by BART’s Office of Civil Rights. SBSS provides a variety of free services to small businesses owned by women, minorities, disabled veterans, and members of the LGBT community, that are looking to bid on BART construction contracts or require technical assistance on active BART construction contracts.  

Escalante happens to meet every single one of the criteria for participation in SBSS. In addition to working with the program, she also served for multiple years on BART’s Business Advisory Council.  

In her interview with BART, Escalante confessed that owning a small business “is not easy,” and all the more so if you’re a woman or minority.  

"Programs like SBSS are the beginning of changing mindsets,” she said. “If you don’t change mindsets, nothing will change materially." 

Escalante’s path to entrepreneurship has been long, winding, and full of challenges. After leaving an engineering program in the Philippines when she was young, Escalante joined the military. When they found out she was gay, they kicked her out. Escalante then went on to work for the U.S. Postal Service, walking up and down the hills of San Francisco “with a mail bag that was bigger than me.” In time, she landed at a construction management firm as a mail clerk working for $10 an hour. Little by little, she climbed up the industry ladder.  

Throughout her career, Escalante said she’s “had to break a lot of glass ceilings." She can share numerous anecdotes of people in the room discriminating against her. When she was helming major companies, she was sometimes mistaken for the secretary, she said. Once, an administrator refused to order her business cards because “only men get them, not women." 

Everything she’s experienced in her many decades of experience has only fueled her internal fire. It’s also compelled her to “pay it forward.” In addition to serving on a number of business advisory councils, including BuildOUT California, an LGBT industry association, Escalante is a hands-on mentor for up-and-coming entrepreneurs, many of whom are treading a path trod by Sandra herself.

 It's a lot of time and effort, but she believes sharing her knowledge and experience is important. 

“If there are people out there that are not just looking out for themselves, the good comes back to them,” Escalante said of her mentoring efforts. “It’s karma. Don’t do things for yourself, and the rest will fall into place.” 

Before she took over Laner Electric, Escalante held a series of executive positions in the construction industry. Though she has decades of experience under her belt, Escalante said she’s never stopped learning, especially in her current role as the CEO and president of a small business.  

She said BART’s SBSS program, especially its pre-award administrator, Paul Pendergast, has supported her in a variety of ways, including editing capability statements (promotional/marketing documents that advertise a company and its services); advising on ways to secure funding; helping her craft requests for proposals (documents that announce and describe a project to solicit bids); and offering technical support. Pendergast even hired Escalante a coach to help her conquer her stage fright ahead of speaking engagements.  

Pendergast said he hasn’t “met many entrepreneurs who have donated as much time as Escalante to advocating for all small businesses.” 

“With Sandra, it is always about lifting ‘all boats’ equally,” he said.  

Escalante knows well the challenges of owning and operating a business as a woman and a minority. But she’s never given up, even after she experienced a debilitating stroke and heart attack in 2006 that continues to have lasting effects on her.  

Her responsibility to her employees keeps her going despite the setbacks, she said, and she’s learned to ask for help when she needs it, including by reaching out to services like SBSS.  

"[SBSS] is actually making a difference,” she said in closing. “I hope BART continues to expand it and keeps taking chances on small businesses.”