Transportation Alternatives is a non-profit advocacy organization founded in 1973 to promote environment-friendly urban transportation. Our roots are in bicycling, but our agenda embraces broader issues — freedom from automobile-dependence, a grassroots relationship to environmental issues, and protecting and enhancing neighborhoods and civic life by promoting cycling, walking and public transit.

T.A. is both a New York City political force and a support network giving meaning to daily bicycle commutes and neighborhood struggles against the automobile. In recent years, T.A. has grown to become the largest and most influential citizens environmental transportation initiative in North America. Our ability to speak directly to broad transportation policy issues by combining pedestrian, bicyclist and environmental agendas and constituencies, is cited as a model by other grassroots groups and by national organizations seeking to spur local transportation organizing.

T.A.'s Strategy and Mission

Transportation Alternatives works at five interdependent levels to build our organizational strength and to carry our transportation vision into public and policy-making arenas:

1. Grassroots Constituency Building

The main pillar of T.A.'s strength is our 2,400-strong dues-paying membership. This dynamic body gives us the political weight and nucleus of citizen activists necessary for successful advocacy work. Political engagement by T.A. members and supporters combines direct action, mass letter-writing, dissemination of newsletters and other outreach materials, and lobbying political representatives. T.A. is committed to grassroots-initiated political activity; our high level of volunteer enthusiasm owes much to the support and follow-through we provide to budding citizen activists.

2. Incremental Improvements

By winning specific gains for pedestrians and bicyclists, T.A. has obtained respect for our overall agenda while concretely improving the quality of cycling and walking in the NY area. T.A. victories include:

• overturning the midtown bicycle ban (1987-88)
• securing pedestrian and cyclist access to River Road on the Jersey Palisades (1989)
• winning legal bicycle access to the George Washington Bridge ramped sidepath (1990)
• gaining reconstruction of the Williamsburg Bridge bike-pedestrian path (1991-92)
• creating an auto-free block adjacent to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village (1992)
• expanding bicycle access to NY-area subways and commuter rail lines (1992)
• establishing secure bicycle parking in eight private parking garages and several high-rise office buildings (1992).

Current T.A. initiatives include:

• removing motor traffic from the Central and Prospect Parks loop roadways
• further improving pedestrian and bicycle access to suburban commuter rail stations
• creating traffic-calmed and auto-free areas in Greenwich Village, Brooklyn's 7th Avenue commercial district and other sites
• ensuring that Federal transportation funds support NYC bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure projects.

3. Policy Analysis and Pressure

T.A. intervenes directly in transportation policy debates through representation on advisory groups, meetings with elected officials, and distribution of original research. Recent analyses include:

• A comprehensive paper outlining a “Win-Win” Transportation Plan to finance public transportation in the NYC region by charging vehicle users a fair share of the social costs they impose on our infrastructure, neighborhoods and environment.
• A 2-part Greenwich Village Traffic Calming Study demonstrating how European methods of pedestrian-oriented traffic management and street engineering can be translated to NYC neighborhoods.

This work helps to fill a vacuum of serious and creative analyses and design proposals for NYC transportation and land-use. In addition, it presents transportation issues and options within the broader context of community renewal and the revival of public life, lending a much-needed urban perspective to national transportation and “environmental” debates still limited to improving the private car.

4. Outreach Publications

T.A.'s bi-monthly newsletters, City Cyclist and Auto-Free Press (combined circulation of 22,000), inform and inspire New York-area constituencies for cyclists' and pedestrians' rights and automobile reduction. Along with our neighborhood- and issue-oriented brochures, such as those for auto-free Central and Prospect Parks, these publications manifest a grassroots ecological approach to issues of environment, energy and transport.

T.A. is frequently asked by print media to com-ment on urban environmental themes, and we have placed articles and opinion pieces in major New York newspapers on topics such as bike-pedestrian cooperation, urban auto-reduction and infrastructure renewal. T.A. spokespersons and events have also appeared on dozens of national and local television and radio programs. We testify at public hearings, speak before community boards, table at street fairs, and teach at area schools and colleges. T.A. places great importance on maintaining a community presence in our effort to create a public constituency for alternative transportation.

5. Coalition-Building

Transportation Alternatives Organization

T.A.'s 17-member active governing board is composed of community activists, environmental organizers, transportation planners, nonprofit professionals, bicycle messengers, and other specialists such as economists and political advocates. In addition, an Advisory Board of environmental activists, national and local bicycling figures and long-time funders contributes to T.A's pool of expertise.

T.A. raises money from many sources:

• Our dues-paying membership, now 2,400
• Additional support from individuals
• Foundation grants and government contracts
• Special events, topped by T.A.'s annual NYC Century bicycle ride
• Newsletter ads, product sales and other earned income