Proposal and Grant Preparation

Transportation Alternatives has prepared a number of grants for public agencies (e.g., City of Carson, City of Santa Monica) and a vast number of proposals for pursuit of its own projects as well as for other private consulting firms and service providers, the latter including:

  • Transportation Concepts, Inc. (TCI)
  • Wilmington-Checker Cab
  • TELACU
  • Diversified Paratransit, Inc.
  • TransSystems, Inc
  • ATE/Ryder (currently First Student and First Transit)
  • Public Transportation Safety Institute (PTSI)
  • Rhode Island Department of Administration

Grants prepared for public agencies included a series prepared for the City of Carson in the areas of: Expanded transit service; paratransit system design; and marketing, safety, security and monitoring. TA’s experience in grant preparation originated from TA President Ned Einstein’s successful efforts to procure grant funds from USDOT for a two major projects: the National Conference on Transit Performance (for Public Technology, Inc., September, 1977), and a study to examine Barriers to the Diffusion of Innovation within the Transit Industry (for Smith & Howard, Associates).

TA has, naturally, been more active in preparing and winning awards to conduct many of its own projects — including the proposal to create TAM-USA, originally a U.S.-Yugoslav joint venture company which initially involved $2.5 million in investment capital in exchange for an offset obligation to Combustion Engineering Trading Company (since acquired by Asea Brown Boveri) equivalent to $50 million worth of hard currency from bus and coach sales in North America and other hard-currency western markets. Apart from TAM-USA proposals to agencies such as the California Energy Commission, TA prepared a series of proposals for PTS Transportation’s successful award of services from the North Los Angeles County Regional Center and its brokerage of the City of Los Angeles’ VALTRANS dial-a-ride program.

Finally, TA prepared successful proposals to conduct technical workshops for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and to conduct planning studies for, and provide system design services to, more than 20 Los Angeles County communities and, more recently, successful proposals to the New Britain (Connecticut) Public Schools, the Rhode Island Department of Administration, two proposals related to a class action lawsuit (Petties v. District of Columbia Public Schools) to examine system productivity and loading zone safety, USDOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (for a study to motorcoach driver fatigue), USAID (to study the products, production facilities and export potential of major Russian bus manufacturer PAZ), the City of Edmonton’s Disabled Adults Transportation System (DATS), and the National Academy of Science’s Transportation Cooperative Research Program (to develop model technical specifications for a combined school/transit bus).