Tanya Snyder
Tanya became Streetsblog's Capitol Hill editor in September 2010 after covering Congress for Pacifica Radios Washington bureau and for public radio stations around the country. She lives car-free in a transit-oriented and bike-friendly neighborhood of Washington, DC.
Recent Posts
With Ridership on the Rise, Will Congress Step Up and Invest in Transit?
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Yesterday the American Public Transportation Association reported that Americans made more transit trips in 2013 than in any other year since 1956. Of course, per capita ridership is still low compared to the 1950s, and we’re nowhere near the ridership peaks of the 1940s. But when transit trips increase 1.1 percent while population rises 0.7 percent, you […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Live (Well, Taped) From the National Bike Summit
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This week, more than 700 bicycling advocates converged in Washington — despite a snowstorm that closed down the federal government on Monday cancelled thousands of flights — to learn from each other and compare notes from the past year. Tuesday, as the summit wound down and participants started gearing up for Wednesday’s Lobby Day on Capitol […]
If Your Local Elites Have Gone Completely Bonkers, You May Have Bikelash
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With a cry of “Code Red Bikelash! Code Red Bikelash!”, “doctors” Aaron Naparstek (founding editor of Streetsblog) and Doug Gordon (blogger at BrooklynSpoke) dashed into the most fun panel the National Bike Summit has probably ever seen. In their presentation, “Moving Beyond the Bikelash” — a play on the overall Summit theme of “Moving Beyond […]
Women’s Bicycling Forum Confronts Obstacles to Getting More Women Riding
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This year marks the third time a Women’s Bicycling Forum has preceded the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC, and, despite weather emergencies and an epidemic of flight cancellations, this is by far the best-attended one yet. Despite impressive momentum, the movement to get more women on bikes faces many obstacles. Yesterday, National Organization of […]
For Children New to Obamacare, Transportation May Be a Barrier
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As more provisions of the Affordable Care Act take effect, children across America whose access to health care has been limited by lack of insurance stand to benefit. But transportation to medical appointments could be a major obstacle that will reduce the impact of Obamacare, according to a letter from children’s health experts printed this […]
Will Obama and the GOP Align on Plan to Fund Transpo With Tax Reform?
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Today, both President Obama and Republican House Ways and Means Chair Dave Camp unveiled plans to pay for transportation with corporate tax reform. Few details have emerged about exactly how Camp plans to do this, but Politico has heard from Capitol Hill staffers that it would push $100 billion to $125 billion to transportation over […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Hug This Streetcar
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Jeff Wood of the Overhead Wire (now working with NRDC’s crack transportation team) and I talk to Randy Simes in this week’s podcast about the streetcar movement in Cincinnati — and how they finally grabbed the long-elusive gold ring. Then Randy stayed with us to discuss the false choice between transit that’s useful and transit […]
Why Is It Still So Hard to Find Out How States Are Spending Transpo Money?
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You would be lucky to get half as much information about a $5 million transportation project in your state as you can get from a toothpaste tube about how to brush. That sad comparison comes from a new report by Advocacy Advance (a project of the League of American Bicyclists and the Alliance for Biking […]
Talking Headways Podcast: How Does This Podcast Make You Feel?
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This week, Jeff Wood and I get indignant about Miami-Dade County’s misuse of transit funds for roads, and we speculate about why — with the current success of pedestrian projects like Times Square — old-style pedestrian malls are still going belly-up. And then we peek behind the curtain at an exciting new frontier for urban […]
Talking Headways Podcast With Special Guest Jan Gehl
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Danish architect and urban planner Jan Gehl, who led Copenhagen’s turn away from car-domination toward streets and public spaces for people, is on a U.S. tour. I got to sit down with him this week in Washington. Where traffic engineers count cars, Gehl and his colleagues count people. So instead of telling city officials to […]
Tom Vanderbilt in NYT: Jaywalking Tickets Don’t Make Streets Safer
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Enforcement of jaywalking doesn’t improve pedestrian safety. So what will? Tom Vanderbilt, best-selling author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do, gave a succinct answer in a New York Times op-ed this weekend. Our cities will be safer to walk in when we have “better walking infrastructure, slower car speeds and more pedestrians.” […]
New Bill Would Make Bike/Ped Projects Eligible for Federal Loans
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The day after President Obama’s State of the Union plea to improve economic opportunity for struggling Americans, New Jersey Democrat Albio Sires introduced a bill that he says will help meet that goal. His bill [PDF] would build on the TIFIA loan program, which is so beloved by Congress its funding was expanded by a […]