Experience managing field and coalition organizing on a political or issue campaign is a must. The Illinois Field Organizer will report to the T4 America Campaign Field Director in Washington DC, and will be housed in the Center for Neighborhood Technology offices in Chicago, Ill. He or she will work closely with the existing Illinois network to expand the coalition, build leadership, and meet local capacity-building goals. The applicant must be a dynamic individual, prepared to speak to audiences, and work with the Illinois coalition to organize both grasstops and grassroots events for NGOs, business leaders, and elected officials.

Responsibilities will include:

• Staff a table of local organization partners and allies and provide assistance with local education and outreach efforts of Illinois groups;
• Develop tools and materials (in coordination with other local coalition partners and other T4 America campaign teams) to engage in advocacy and media efforts in an expanding role over the course of the campaign;
• Build a powerful field operation to mobilize “grasstops” supporters of the campaign. (This will include leaders from the local business community, local environmental organizations, union leaders, the real estate sector, equity and health groups, elected officials and others.)
• Work with state coalition partners to build capacity for organizing, advocacy and communications.
• Build the capacity of local and state campaign partners, including Downstate, to engage with state and federal leaders on transportation and other related policies.
• Acting as the T4 America liaison on the ground: communicating the latest legislative knowledge from Washington to the Illinois coalition, and collecting information at the local level to pass back to the campaign in Washington.

This position requires a self-motivated and detail-oriented person with excellent organizational skills. The candidate must have good communication and interpersonal skills, and be able to work independently with minimal supervision.

Candidate qualifications:

• At least two years of experience organizing with a political or issue campaign is a MUST;
• Experience working on bicycling, walking, transit, or community development is a strong preference, experience with unions, business groups, health interests or seniors will be considered an asset;
• Knowledge of Illinois communities and politics and campaign experience in Illinois strongly preferred;
• Knowledge of federal legislative process will be considered an asset;
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and meet deliverables, deadlines and show measurable results, with willingness to be part of a team working towards a common goal is required;
• Available for travel on a frequent basis throughout Illinois and to Washington D.C. required;
• Strong communication and writing skills and an ability to work and communicate with a diverse group of people and audiences are essential;
• Must demonstrate experience managing partnerships through internet communication, in person and by phone.

Full-time, will include some nights and weekends. Must be available for frequent travel. Resumes will be accepted on a rolling basis. Job is available for an immediate start. Interested applicants should send a cover letter, resume, short writing sample and 3 references to Bridget Torres, bridget@cnt.org. Interviews will be held on a rolling basis.

Equal Opportunity Employment: Transportation for America is an equal opportunity employer. People of color are strongly encouraged to apply.

As a follow-up on the release of the report, Transportation for America is working to arrange a meeting with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, perhaps as soon as next week. At this meeting, we plan to deliver the message from our hundreds of partner organizations and thousands of supporters across the country that safer streets must be a priority!

Sign our petition today and help us send a strong message to the USDOT!

Secretary LaHood has already demonstrated a strong interest in safety with a distracted driving initiative and the creation of a new Safety Council, and we have praised his vocal commitment to livability in our towns and communities. Because the Department of Transportation holds the purse strings, if Secretary LaHood adds Complete Streets to his list of safety priorities, we can ensure that every road project facilitates safe travel for everyone — including vulnerable pedestrians.

So if you have not yet signed the petition, go and sign it now so we can take an enormous stack  with names from across the country to Secretary LaHood soon. This is our chance to make a big impression and to let him and the DOT know how many of you care about making our streets safer for everyone.

If you have signed the petition already, be sure to post it to Twitter or Facebook with the links below, or tell a friend about it.

Post about this action on Twitter!

Post a link to your Facebook profile

New York City is one of those places. If you looked at the detailed rankings of the largest 52 metro areas in Dangerous by Design, you might have seen that New York is already one of the safest metros in the country when measured with the Pedestrian Danger Index. Part of the reason for that is the relatively low number of fatalities when compared against the high percentage of people who walk to work in the metro area. But that doesn’t mean it’s inherently safe. New York City has the largest share of pedestrians dying in traffic accidents in the country, with pedestrians making up a whopping 31% of all traffic fatalities.

So for the last few years, the City has been committed to making the public realm and their streets safer for walking and biking, and the numbers are bearing it out in a positive way. Watch this encouraging video from the gang at Streetfilms chronicling the huge rise in the numbers of people bicycling in the Big Apple.

For other cities, like Boston, the coverage centered around a relatively positive rating for pedestrian safety. (Globe)

In the mid-sized cities of Montana, the verdict was mixed: low fatalities, but a lot of work left  to do. (Billings Gazette)

Several Senators are asking for additional hearings on safety concerns in the Washington DC metro. (WP)

And, pushing for an early summer vote on climate change legislation in the House was probably a wise move on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s part. (Klein)

Aaron says:

I was able to catch up with John Robert Smith, CEO of Reconnecting America, and he recorded a short two minute video for me. If you only watch one of the videos I post, make it this one. He makes two incredibly important points that are too often overlooked when it comes to the livable cities agenda. The first is that we need to build an urban-small town-rural coalition around a new transportation policy. The other is that these issues are, or should be, non-partisan.

Thanks to Aaron for the video.

What would the national reaction be if a jumbo jet full of passengers went down with regularity every 31 days or so? How loud would the calls be for a fundamental change in airline safety? It’s easy to imagine the shock and outrage if such a thing happened. Yet that is essentially what happens every year with preventable pedestrian fatalities on our nation’s streets and roads.

Every year, nearly 5,000 Americans die preventable deaths on roads that fail to provide safe conditions for pedestrians. This decade alone, more than 43,000 Americans – including 3,906 children under 16 – have been killed while walking or crossing a street in our communities. With more than 76,000 Americans dying in the last 15 years, it’s the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down roughly every month, yet it receives nothing like that kind of attention.

A new report from Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, Dangerous by Design: Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Death (and Making Great Neighborhoods), ranks metropolitan areas based on the relative danger of walking.

Download the full report, see the comprehensive rankings and view all of the companion tables of data online right here: http://t4america.org/resources/dangerousbydesign. After you’ve taken a look, ask U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to make pedestrian safety a priority for the administration. Pedestrian deaths are preventable, and we demand safer streets!

Many of these preventable deaths are occurring along roadways that are dangerous by design, streets engineered for speeding cars with little or no provision for people on foot, in wheelchairs or on a bicycle.

YikesPedestrian Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Look carefully in the turning lane above the center of the photograph. There’s a pedestrian trying to cross this 7-lane urban arterial road. See any crosswalks anywhere on the road? Photo courtesy of Dan Burden.

Over the last several decades, many of our cities and communities have seen the same shift of daily business from walkable, downtown Main Streets to wide, fast-moving state highways. These “arterial” roads are the new main streets in most communities, drawing shopping centers, drive-throughs, apartment complexes and office parks. Unlike the old walkable main streets, however, the pressure to move as many cars through these areas as quickly as possible has led transportation departments to squeeze in as many lanes as they can, while disregarding sidewalks, crosswalks and crossing signals, on-street parking, and even street trees in order to remove impediments to speeding traffic.

As a result, more than half of fatal vehicle crashes occurred on these wide, high capacity and high-speed thoroughfares. Though dangerous, these arterials are all but unavoidable because they are the trunk lines carrying most local traffic and supporting nearly all the commercial activity essential to daily life.

Before the top 10 most dangerous city rankings, here are just a few facts you might like to know:

Inadequate facilities. Of the 9,168 pedestrian fatalities in 2007-08 for which the location of the collision is known, more than 40 percent were killed where no crosswalk was available.

Spending disparity. Though pedestrian fatalities make up 11.8 percent of all traffic-related fatalities, states have allocated less than 1.5 percent of total authorized transportation funds to projects aimed at improving safety for pedestrians (for funds spent under current transportation bill.) No state spends more than 5 percent of federal transportation funds on safety features or programs for pedestrians or cyclists, despite a 30 percent increase in total federal transportation dollars beginning in 2005.

Complete streets save lives. Providing sidewalks, crosswalks and designing for lower traffic speeds saves lives. Only one in 10 pedestrians deaths occurred within crosswalks, while six in 10 occurred on arterial-type roads where speeds were 40 mph or higher.

The danger is not shared equally. Older adults, disabled and low-income Americans are being killed at disproportionate rates. African-Americans, who walk for 50 percent more trips than whites, and Hispanic residents, who walk 40 percent more, are subjected to the least safe conditions and die disproportionately.

Aging in place, yet unable to leave the house on foot. An AARP poll of adults 50 years and older found that 40 percent reported inadequate sidewalks in their neighborhoods and nearly half of respondents reported that they could not safely cross the main roads close to their home.

Philadelphia’s buses, subways and trolleys are moving again this morning after a tentative agreement halted the six-day strike. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

The Stack, a tower of freeway interchanges in Los Angeles and frequent spot for traffic gridlock, has become an unexpected landmark. (NYT)

Detroit metropolitan transit officials need to get their act together or risk losing federal funds to other regions, the Free Press editorialized today. (Free Press)

A one-cent sales tax increase for transit improvements cleared the Hillsborough County Commission in Florida. (Tampa Bay Tribune)

And, New Jersey Gov.-elect Chris Christie should make transit a high priority, if for no longer reason than his own experience being stuck in traffic. (Daily Record)

The Safe Routes to School program could expand to the high school level under legislation introduced by Representative Earl Blumenauer. (Bike Portland)

Transportation did well at the polls this week, with pro-transit initiatives winning voter approval in Colorado, Michigan and Maine, and an anti-transit initiative defeat in Ohio. (Dallas Morning News)

Transit officials in Philadelphia received a new offer intended to end the four-day long strike, with Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell hoping to see buses running by tonight. (AP)

Narrowly re-elected New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is asking for patience as he tackles problems in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. (NYT)

And, portions of Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast DC will be retrofitted under the city’s “Great Streets” program, with funding from the federal stimulus. (WP)

Retooling America’s transportation network by rebuilding infrastructure and increasing transit choices is a key challenge for the 21st century, writes House Transportation Committee Chair James Oberstar in his hometown paper. (Duluth News-Tribune)

As Philadelphia’s transit union chief, Willie Brown – not to be confused with former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown – says he is the most hated man in town. (Inquirer)

High-speed rail in California needs Senator Dianne Feinstein to become a champion, the San Jose Mercury News editorializes today. (Mercury News)

Residents of Hillsborough County in Florida took a step toward a 1-cent sales tax increase to fund mass transit. (Tampa Tribune)

And, Warren Buffett is telling investors to bet on rail. (USA Today)

Congress must take bold action on climate change, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a joint session in Washington yesterday. (WP)

The road to any Democratic victory in Virginia runs through suburban Fairfax County in the DC metropolitan area, but Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell won it yesterday in part by convincing voters he had a better transportation plan. (WP)

Two political newcomers are too close to call in the race for mayor of Seattle, where incumbent Greg Nickels, a leader on transportation, lost in the primary. (Post-Intelligencer)

Bow-tie wearing bike enthusiast Earl Blumenauer, a Democratic Congressman from Portland, cycled New York City this week to help push for transportation reform. (Streetsblog)

And, transportation specialist Tom Vanderbilt pens a “defense of jaywalking.” (Slate)