The Data

The Kitchen Table

Before the chopsticks. Before the five commissioners. Before the name of Ambrocius Bodacious Bocephus was entered permanently into an El Paso County public record — there was a kitchen table.

No whiteboard. No color-coded timeline. No organizational chart mapping the seventeen stakeholder agencies that contributed to the Colorado Springs Safety Action Plan. Just a laptop that needed to be plugged in — the battery had been unreliable since approximately 2022 — and a legal pad belonging to ABB, and two people sitting across from each other with the specific expression of people who might be onto something or might be about to waste an afternoon. The expressions were identical and gave no information either way.

And a phone. Face up on the table. Waiting for USAA to call back about the car insurance claim that had been in process for eleven days and was supposed to be resolved by end of week.

If USAA had called back on time, they would not have been sitting there.

The Map with the Colored Dots

They started where the city told them to start. The crash data dashboard — embedded on the Safety Action Plan page, built with ArcGIS, the official public interface for the data underpinning the entire plan.

Brannon opened it.

Colored dots on a map. Many colored dots.

They looked at it. They looked at each other. They looked back at it.

The dots were color-coded. Different colors meant different things. The legend existed somewhere. Finding it required a specific sequence of interactions that the interface did not announce and did not explain. ABB picked up his pen. Put it back down. Picked it up again.

Not a question exactly. More like something that escaped before he could stop it.

Brannon zoomed in on a cluster of dots near Academy Boulevard. Zoomed back out. Tried clicking one. Something happened but not something useful. The interface required a mouse, functioning color vision, and a specific kind of spatial literacy that neither of them had been trained in and the interface was not offering to teach.

They looked at the Safety Action Plan's own analytical framework — the city's danger rating system for each road corridor, the standard by which the plan prioritized where to intervene. Then they looked back at the dashboard.

Colored dots. No danger ratings. No road segment categorization. No way to tell which corridors the city rated most dangerous and which it rated least. The map showed where crashes happened. The plan needed to know why, and how severely. Those were different questions. The map answered one of them incompletely and the other one not at all.

That's Pueblo

The Colorado Department of Transportation publishes crash data. Annual files, 2007 through 2025. Every recorded crash in the state. Every variable — road condition, lighting, time of day, crash type, severity, location, contributing factors. All of it. Public. Downloadable. Free. No map. No colored dots. Just numbers.

Brannon started pulling it into something readable. ABB worked the legal pad. They were not fast. They were not slick. They made mistakes and backed up and tried differently. At one point Brannon accidentally filtered for crashes in a completely different county and they spent four minutes wondering why everything looked different before ABB noticed.

Brannon looked at the screen. Looked at ABB. Looked back at the screen.

"The numbers made a lot more sense now actually," he said.

He fixed the filter. They continued.

This is what civic data work actually looks like. Not a montage. Not a breakthrough with a musical sting. Two people at a kitchen table doing something slightly outside their comfort zone because nobody else was doing it, it needed doing, they were there, and USAA had not called back.

Gradually the numbers began to resolve. Not dramatically — the way a photograph develops. Slowly, then all at once, the image becoming itself without announcing the moment it became clear. ABB's pen moved steadily across the legal pad. Brannon scrolled, filtered, sorted, scrolled again. Numbers becoming patterns becoming something that almost looked like an answer.

The ADA Moment

At some point ABB looked up from the legal pad. He had been thinking about the dashboard — the colored dots, the interface that required a mouse and functioning color vision and a spatial literacy it wasn't offering to teach.

"We should check the page itself," he said. "Not just what's in it. The page."

Brannon opened Chrome. Opened the WAVE accessibility extension — free, runs in the browser, requires clicking one button and reading what comes back. He ran it on the city's Safety Action Plan page.

Thirty seconds.

Four failures. Listed. Named. Explained. Each one with a plain-language description of what was wrong and what needed to change. He ran it on the CDOT crash data download page. Five failures.

Total time, including reading the results: twelve minutes.

"For a $350,000 project," Brannon said.

Not accusatory. The way you note that the parking meter has expired.

They sat with that for a moment.

"We used a free browser extension," ABB said. "And a checklist."

"The city could have done this before the page went live," he said.

"Yes," said Brannon.

They went back to the crash data.

Why Does the City Need ArcGIS

It arrived the way things arrive when you've been looking at something long enough. Not planned. Brannon looked at the ArcGIS dashboard, looked at what they were building, and said it out loud before he'd fully decided to.

"Why does the city need ArcGIS for this."

ABB looked up.

Brannon kept going. The Google Maps API — free up to usage limits. Custom data overlays. Crash locations from the raw CDOT numbers. Filterable by zip code. Linked to the city's own danger ratings for each corridor when that data becomes available. Accessible. Keyboard navigable. Screen reader compatible. An afternoon of development work. No license fee. No contract renewal. No colored dots requiring color vision to interpret.

ABB wrote it all down on the legal pad, then looked up.

"We're already building something," he said.

"Right," said Brannon. He stopped. Looked at the screen. "Right."

They went back to the numbers.

The Forest Gump Moment

It wasn't dramatic when it happened. More like the moment you realize you've been holding your breath.

Brannon stopped scrolling. He looked at the numbers. ABB was already looking at him.

88% of crashes on dry roads. 70% in daylight. 31% rear-end collisions. Serious injuries rising 75% between 2020 and 2024 while total crashes declined — meaning each crash was hitting harder, not more often. The roads were getting more dangerous per crash. Not more crashes. Worse crashes. Low impairment numbers. Low weather-related numbers. Normal lighting conditions in most cases.

"Is that it?" ABB said.

Brannon scrolled up. Scrolled back down. Filtered differently. Got the same shape.

"…I think that's it."

They sat with it. The specific quiet of two people who expected a maze and found a hallway. Then, slowly, they talked it through — the way two people do when they're still making sure they haven't missed something obvious:

People are looking at their phones. On a sunny day. Dry road. Full speed. And the light changes. Maybe a little fast. Or just fast enough that if you're not paying attention — you don't stop in time. And you hit the person in front of you. Hard. Because you were going full speed. Because the road was dry. Because conditions were perfect. Except for the phone.

"That's it."

ABB picked up his pen. Wrote one word: Signal. Looked at it. Wrote two more: Road surface. Then kept writing — something smaller underneath, angling the legal pad slightly away from Brannon.

Brannon leaned forward. ABB covered it with his hand.

"Are you doodling," Brannon said.

A pause. The specific beat of a man who is absolutely doodling and has been caught and is deciding how to handle this.

"…it's a diagram," ABB said. "Of the problem."

"We already solved the problem."

"It's a diagram of the solved problem."

Brannon looked at him.

"That's a doodle," Brannon said.

ABB said nothing. Picked up the pen. Started writing on a fresh page. Where Brannon could see it.

Productive Waiting

ABB looked at the fresh page. At everything they had. Signal. Road surface. Map doesn't match the plan. Forty-five minutes. Google Maps. Free. A diagram of the solved problem on a separate page.

"How did we end up here," he said. Not philosophically. More like a man trying to retrace his steps after finding his keys in the freezer.

"USAA," said Brannon.

"Right."

A pause.

"Productive waiting," Ambrocius Bodacious Bocephus said. "We had a little time."

"Why not," said Brannon.

They both looked at the phone. USAA not calling. The afternoon still available.

"Life is simple," ABB said. "Not easy. Simple."

"Do you want to present it?" Brannon asked.

ABB looked at the legal pad. Then at the diagram page. Then back at the legal pad.

"Yeah," he said.