50 YEARS OF STREETS FOR PEOPLE
We’re Just Getting Started
This marks the 50th year of Transportation Alternatives’ fight to reclaim New York City’s streets for people. Our five decades of impact are impossible to miss: hundreds of miles of protected bike and bus lanes, acres of pedestrian plazas, car-free parks, lower speed limits, bike share, Open Streets, and so much more.
Today, we continue to dream up the impossible — from NYC 25x25 to bike superhighways to pedestrianizing entire neighborhoods — all ideas that show what is possible when we put people first in New York City.
To get there, we’ve worked hard on solutions and the tools that help deliver change. This includes ensuring New York City’s first-in-the-nation congestion pricing program is set up for success. We also launched Spatial Equity NYC, a new tool to empower New Yorkers with the data they need to understand and combat car traffic, pollution, and crashes while envisioning and providing tangible solutions such as new bus lanes, protected bike lanes, public plazas, and Open Streets.
As we look toward the next 50 years, we will, together, advance even bolder and more ambitious ideas to transform this city for generations to come.
Help us change New York City for the better — support our work!
By the Numbers
Raising the Bar in 2023
In TA’s 50th year, we won transformative policy changes, delivered new and innovative infrastructure, and advanced expansive ideas about what’s possible for our streets.
We published Seven Steps for New York State’s Leaders to Transform Our Streets, influencing state and city policymakers to reduce the city’s vehicle fleet, pilot the nation’s first “low-emissions zones,” launch automated fines for overweight trucks, and set up New York’s first micro-delivery hubs in January.
We launched our School Streets toolkit during the spring to empower parents and teachers to lead local campaigns for car-free streets around schools.
We established the first-ever Memorial Grove for victims of traffic violence with Families for Safe Streets in Brooklyn.
We built Spatial Equity NYC, a revolutionary new tool helping New Yorkers to visualize the toll of car traffic on our city and see how their neighborhood compares to others across the city.
Our borough committees won brand new bike lanes on Schermerhorn Street in Brooklyn and Broadway in Manhattan; expanded the Long Island City bike network in Queens; and saw the completion of phase four of Grand Concourse’s protected bike lanes in the Bronx.
We expanded permanent Open Streets from 34th Avenue in Queens to Berry Street in Brooklyn and pushed for new ones, including Underhill Avenue in Brooklyn and 103rd Street in Manhattan.
We continued to fight for the expansion of Citi Bike citywide, with new docks now open in Jackson Heights.
We hosted the first-ever BQE walk-and-talk series to imagine what New York City could look like without the destructive and divisive Robert Moses-era highway.
Help us accomplish even more in the coming years — Donate today and join the fight for a better New York City!