Company Profile
Transportation Alternatives
Company Overview
Transportation Alternatives’ mission is to reclaim New York City’s streets from the automobile and to advocate for better walking, biking and public transit for all New Yorkers.
Company History
In 1972, a few hundred New Yorkers, led by a city planner named David Gurin, gathered in Central Park with their bicycles. The group called themselves Action Against Automobiles — yes, AAA. Under that moniker, the group rode downtown from Central Park to Washington Square with a stop outside the Auto Show at the New York Coliseum to protest highway funding and to demand that cars be barred from lower Manhattan. A year later, those New Yorkers would repeat their protest, this time under a new, more official name. In 1973, with a grant from the Kaplan Fund, Transportation Alternatives (TA) was born.
That was the first public event that TA ever hosted — a “Ride & Rally for a New York Bicycle Lane Network.” Red Grooms illustrated the flyer and The New York Times came to cover the protest.
“About 400 fresh-air enthusiasts bicycled through the perfect spring afternoon in Manhattan yesterday to dramatize their demand for a separate bike lane on city streets,” the Times reported. The protest was not a flight of fancy but a practical route to meeting the federal standards of the Clean Air Act, enacted just three years prior as part of a growing environmental movement that inspired TA’s founders. “The group's principal demand is that city and state officials add the concept of exclusive bike lanes to strategies that they have devised to reduce automobile pollution.”
The ride ended in Washington Square Park, where Pete Seeger played the rally. The protest, David Gurin said at the time, was born of his estimation that one-third of the city's land area was reserved for truck and car traffic or storage. “This represents a reversal of realistic priorities,” he told the Times.
A LEGACY OF HARD-FOUGHT WINS HAS SHAPED NEW YORK CITY
?Today, we no longer need to estimate. We know that streets make up 80 percent of public space in New York City — and the vast majority of that space is given over to moving and parked cars. Nearly 50 years later, we remain committed to our mission: to re-prioritize public space by reclaiming New York City’s streets from the automobile.
In the past 50 years, TA has made remarkable progress toward that mission. Today, bike lanes ribbon up and down Manhattan avenues. Hundreds of thousands more ride a bike to work every day. The city is equipped with dedicated bus lanes, public bike share, and car-free park spaces that did not exist five decades ago. In just the last two decades, TA advocacy was responsible for the introduction of America’s first protected bike lanes and the world’s largest speed camera program. We lowered the citywide speed limit for the first time in 50 years. We introduced Vision Zero to New York City, then spread the idea across the U.S. The same story is true for the federal Safe Routes to Schools and Safe Routes for Seniors programs.
The few who founded Transportation Alternatives recruited and multiplied, and now TA’s tent of supporters is packed with New Yorkers who regularly take action, make the case to public officials, and testify to the importance of TA’s mission. Each week, TA organizes local meetings, protests, rallies, petition drives, community gatherings and on-street actions to amplify voices. By the power of these people and a track record of transformative change, TA demands New York City’s most influential decision makers pay attention.
In that time, a remarkable subset of our organization was also born. Families for Safe Streets (FSS) is a coalition of people injured in traffic crashes, and the children, spouses, siblings, and parents whose loved ones have been killed. What began in 2014 as a small group of families in mourning has grown to a citywide force for change, and a national inspiration, with chapter organizations in 14 cities. Together, this powerful group of survivors tell their stories as an unignorable testament to the need for safe streets and refuse to give an inch in defense of the status quo.
From the creation of grand public spaces, like the pedestrianization of Times Square, to the construction of protected bike lanes and pedestrian plazas in all five boroughs, TA and FSS have paved the way for remarkable changes in New York City’s transportation infrastructure and transformed New Yorkers’ understanding of bicycling, walking and public transit.
But there is still much work to be done.
REDEFINING WHAT OUR STREETS CAN BE
When Transportation Alternatives printed its first stack of leaflets 40 years ago, bicycling was an act of defiance in a country focused on expanding interstates. Cities all over America were paving highways through historic neighborhoods under the banner of “urban renewal.” In New York, Robert Moses' vision of a city of highways still represented the pinnacle of urban planning. The reigning idea of progress consisted of adding another lane to the highway at the expense of New York City’s communities.
From that car-centric idea, the paradigm shift that TA has achieved is remarkable both in physical change and in public perception. But the legacy of Robert Moses lingers over the city. So today, we are fighting to take the city back from cars and give New York’s public space back to the people who walk and bike here.
With grassroots community organizers on the ground in five boroughs, we run 20+ simultaneous, hyper-local activist campaigns for new bike lanes and other safe street redesigns. At the same time, we push New York to be a national leader in transportation innovation, trying out bold new ideas here which are replicated across America. This model — combining grassroots organizing with national thought leadership — has begun to transform New York City streets for the 21st century. With the 50th anniversary of our organization approaching, we aren’t slowing down.
Benefits
*Medical (with HRA), dental, vision, and life coverage
*Optional pre-tax FSA and Commuter Benefits
*Hybrid work schedule (combination of in-person and remote)
*Three weeks vacation to start + 10 paid sick days
*Summer Fridays from Memorial Day to Labor Day
*401k with 3% match
*Lower East Side People's Credit Union membership eligibility
*Annual Citibike Membership
*LastPass for Families account