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
Miami-Dade Squanders Transit Tax on Roads, Thanks to Florida DOT
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Only one of every five federal transportation dollars are set aside specifically for transit. So it’s infuriating when a local government plunders the small pool of transit funds and spends it on roads. Particularly when that place has some of the country’s most notoriously car-dominated and dangerous streets. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Miami-Dade County, Florida. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Bikes of Ill Repute
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Jeff Wood and I are back with episode 8 of the Talking Headways podcast. We talk about Los Angeles Metro’s decision not to extend light rail all the way to LAX (and what they’re doing instead), plus some analysis of what rail can really do in a city as spread-out as LA. Then we head […]
De Blasio Calls for More Local Control of Federal Transpo Funds
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At a convening of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington today, Mayor Bill de Blasio made reference, without really naming it, to the single biggest demand of transportation reformers going into the negotiation for the next national bill: local control. Bicycle advocates successfully fought for local control over some bike and pedestrian dollars precisely […]
Senators Seek to Shield Motor Vehicle Crash Data From Public View
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A new bill introduced by Senators John Hoeven (R-ND) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) would further entrench rules that make it difficult for crash investigators to access black box data from cars. Nearly all light passenger vehicles have event data recorders (EDRs) installed in them, which record everything from speed to seat belt use, though the data is […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Vision Zero
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The best thing about hosting a Streetsblog podcast is getting to call on other Streetsblog reporters for the lowdown on the biggest news of the week. In this case, Jeff Wood and I called Ben Fried, Streetsblog’s editor-in-chief based in New York, to provide some context for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s big announcement […]
Secretary Foxx Pledges to Make Bike/Ped Safety a Priority
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Pedestrian crash statistics aren’t just numbers to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. He himself was the victim of one of those crashes once, while out jogging. “I got lucky,” he told a packed room at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board today. “But there are lots of people out there that aren’t so lucky.” […]
TIGER Funding Gets 20 Percent Boost in Final 2014 Spending Bill
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In a rare instance of Congress producing some halfway decent news, funding for the federal TIGER program, which issues grants for multi-modal projects, will increase after the House and Senate unveiled the details of an omnibus budget bill yesterday. For the past few years, Congress has been unable to agree on a budget, so funding […]
Talking Headways Podcast: The Year Ahead in Transit, With Yonah Freemark
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Readers, rejoice! Perhaps you feared that you would never get to sit in on nearly an hour of transit talk between world-renowned brainiac straphangers Jeff Wood and Yonah Freemark. But ho! Fear no more. This week, podcast co-host Jeff Wood and I got to chat with The Transport Politic’s Yonah Freemark about the outlook for […]
NHTSA Chief David Strickland Gets Caught in the Revolving Door
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When David Strickland announced last month that he was stepping down as the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, he didn’t give any clues about where he might be going. The news came out this week: The nation’s top auto regulator is going to be a lobbyist at a law firm that deals […]
Trucks and Cities Are Like Oil and Water. Here’s a Solution.
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About 350 pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists are killed each year by large trucks in this country. Big freight trucks are incompatible with cities in many ways, bringing danger, pollution, noise, and traffic congestion. They park in bike lanes and have shockingly big blind spots, putting everyone around them at risk. And yet, most cities haven’t […]