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
A National Look at the Terminal Island Freeway Removal Project
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As the nation prepares for the expansion of the Panama Canal and all port cities go crazy deepening and widening everything in sight, the second biggest biggest port in the country is doing something unexpected: planning a highway teardown. The LA Times reported this week that Long Beach officials are studying the possibility of replacing […]
Stuck With No Bike Lane? Your Complaint to Congress Is Three Clicks Away
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A few months ago, we told you that Building America’s Future had released an app called, “I’m Stuck!” It allowed you to send a quick email to your Congressional representatives, telling them that you were stuck in traffic, or on an overcrowded bus or a delayed train, and you wanted Congress to approve more funding […]
Transformation for America: T4A Reemerges With Focus on Local Control
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Transportation for America has been in hiding. Perhaps you’ve noticed. The coalition of over 500 organizations that came together to advocate for policy reform and adequate funding in the transportation reauthorization seemed to disappear for a little while after the dust settled on MAP-21. T4America, often called simply T4, provided analysis of the bill and […]
Senators Warner and Blunt Take Another Stab at an Infrastructure Bank
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You’d be forgiven for being cynical about big plans in Washington to create an infrastructure bank. President Obama has been talking about it for years. Every so often he comes out with a new big “push” for infrastructure investment, and it includes a bank of some kind. Multiple Senate bills have proposed an infrastructure bank […]
Blumenauer, Bipartisan Co-Sponsors Set Out to Improve Street Safety Metrics
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After a long period of inaction on Capitol Hill, the wheels are beginning to turn again. Lawmakers introduced not one but two good transportation-related bills yesterday: one that aims to improve the safety of walking and biking and one that would establish a national infrastructure bank. We’ll get into the infrastructure bank bill in a […]
It’s Official: 33,561 People Killed in Traffic on American Streets Last Year
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The official 2012 death toll is out for our nation’s poorly-designed, auto-centric transportation system. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, traffic injuries on the nation’s roadways claimed the lives of 33,561 people. The headline of the agency’s press release, “NHTSA Data Confirms Traffic Fatalities Increased In 2012,” is quickly walked back by the subhed, […]
Talking Headways: The Streetsblog Podcast, Episode 2
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Welcome to the second edition of the new Streetsblog podcast, which we’re calling Talking Headways. Reconnecting America’s Jeff Wood and I return as your hosts, talking about everything from bicycle carnage to Texas sprawl, and from misguided transportation priorities in Tennessee — one place that ought to know better — to motorcycle-riding assassains in Bogotá. […]
HUD and U.S. DOT Embrace Housing + Transportation Metric for Affordability
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A few years ago, the Center for Neighborhood Technology gave a wonderful gift to urbanists and planners: the Housing + Transportation Index. This simple calculation clarified and popularized a key concept: that transportation costs must be taken into account in any measurement of “affordability.” Without that, potential homebuyers and renters make the mistake of “saving” […]
WSJ Invites More Ignorant Anti-Bike Zealots to Sully Its Pages
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Law professor Frank H. Buckley seems to want to be the next Dororthy Rabinowitz. That is, he wants to gain notoriety by clinging to old and unsafe street designs while, simultaneously, shoring up the Wall Street Journal’s reputation as a bastion of change-averse curmudgeons. Done and done. Buckley wrote an op-ed in Friday’s Journal about the controversy on […]
Tuesday’s Quiet Transit Victories
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Yesterday was a relatively quiet election day for transportation-related ballot measures, but of the six transit initiatives that came before voters yesterday, five six passed, with a sixth seventh too close to call. That’s in line with last year’s 79 percent success rate — 71 percent since 2000. When asked, voters overwhelmingly choose to raise […]
Streetsblog’s Brand-New Podcast: Episode 1
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Behold, Streetsblog’s brand-new podcast! In what we aim to turn into a recurring feature, Reconnecting America’s Jeff Wood and I recently chatted about the week’s news in livable streets, urbanism, and sustainable transportation. The topics are drawn from Jeff’s excellent daily compendium of transportation and planning links, The Direct Transfer, and from stories we’re tracking […]
State DOTs Brazenly Request a Blank Check to Build More Highways
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“This is a money and power grab.” “It’s very disappointing and very AASHTO.” That’s how some transportation reformers are describing the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ new recommendations for the next surface transportation bill. The current bill, MAP-21, expires in less than a year. AASHTO’s proposal is “so mired in protective technical-speak that […]