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
Talking Headways Podcast: Taking Transit Numbers for a Spin
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What a week! Transit ridership skyrocketed (ahem, by 1.1 percent) to levels not seen since 1956 (depending how you look at it). Radio Shack is shutting down 20 percent of its stores. Is brick-and-mortar retail collapsing — and is it just as well, if getting delivery from Amazon is more efficient than driving to the […]
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 […]
Friday Afternoon Cartoon: T-Rex Nails It on Auto-Centric Urban Design
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Thank you, Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics, for this righteous and oddly poignant look at the dangers — and drudgery — caused by auto-centric urban design. Bravo, sir. You should get an honorary urban planning degree for this.
Talking Headways: 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 […]
Anthony Foxx: Bicycle Infrastructure Can Be a “Ladder of Opportunity”
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This morning, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx’s blog post is all about bicycling. He opens by touting the complete streets policy he helped implement in Charlotte (it passed before he was mayor) and the city’s bike-share system — the largest in the Southeast. His post follows on his speech yesterday to the National Bike Summit, which […]
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 […]
Shuster “Encouraged” By Obama’s Transportation Funding Announcement
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Bill Shuster is still digesting yesterday’s twin funding proposals from President Obama and Ways and Means Chair Dave Camp, but he’s “encouraged” by what he’s heard. Both proposals rely on corporate tax reform to plug the hole in the highway trust fund. Camp’s proposal would raise about $125 billion; Obama’s, $150 billion. Neither has yet […]
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: One More Freeway Without a Future
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So, Bertha is stuck digging an enormous highway tunnel underneath Seattle. Jeff Wood and I ask the essential question: Does Seattle really need to spend $2.8 billion on a new traffic sewer, when traffic on the Alaskan Way Viaduct has been plummeting? We also highlight this week’s public conversation about CNU’s big report calling out highways just […]
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 […]