We
are excited to announce the official launch of Streetsblog Capitol
Hill. With major transportation, climate and energy legislation coming
before Congress in the next year or two we felt that it was critical to
have a talented journalist down in Washington D.C. covering the issues
on a daily basis. With the financial support of the Surdna Foundation
and the Wallace Global Fund the Livable Streets Initiative has hired
reporter Elana Schor
to cover the federal beat for us. DC.Streetsblog.org (as it’s known to
your web browser) will be her new home. Sarah Goodyear, editor of our national blog nework, and talented writers like Ryan Avent will be contributing to Streetsblog Capitol Hill as well.

Broadly
speaking, we hope to do two things with this new edition of
Streetsblog. First, we aim to make it a high-quality daily source for
news and analysis of federal transportation policy and related issues.
We want to create a blog that is a daily must-read for the advocates,
lawmakers, Congressional staffers, urban planning practitioners, policy
wonks and lobbyists who are working to shape the future of America’s
transportation systems.

Our second goal for Streetsblog
Capitol Hill is to help bring outsiders into the federal transportation
policy-making process. For decades, transportation policy on Capitol
Hill has mostly been an arcane, complex insiders game
— a game that’s been played best by highway lobbyists. Streetsblog
Capitol Hill will put locally-oriented livable streets advocates on the
playing field and help them better understand the rules of the game. As
the 293 bloggers who are now members of the Streetsblog Network
make clear every day, a vibrant, grassroots movement for sustainable
transport, smart growth and livable streets is active and growing
increasingly powerful in cities and states nationwide. Streetsblog
Capitol Hill will help connect these local activists to the important
action taking place inside the Beltway. 

Regular
readers will notice that "Capitol Hill" has replaced "National Blog
Network" in the tab above. Streetsblog.net has not gone away. You will
still find Sarah Goodyear’s daily Network round-up posted on all of our
blogs. Network headlines and access to the Network web site can be
found in the sidebar at right. Likewise, the RSS feed for Streetsblog
Capitol Hill can be found here.