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
TIGER III News Begins to Leak — Chicago Bike-Share Among the Winners
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U.S. DOT is officially announcing the winners of the third round of TIGER grants tomorrow, but they give the news to members of Congress first so those members can brag about all the bacon they bring home. See below for a list of the grants we know about so far. Chicago’s Blue Line and bike-share […]
Transit’s Not Bleeding the Taxpayer Dry — Roads Are
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We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Roads don’t pay for themselves. But maybe they should. The latest evidence comes from the State Smart Transportation Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Along with the smart growth group 1,000 Friends of Wisconsin, SSTI published a study in October [PDF] showing that “between 41 and […]
OMB: Senate Seeking Too Much Highway Money to Fund Transportation Bill
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Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and his Finance Committee have been looking high and low for a $12 billion patch to fund the transportation reauthorization bill that passed the Senate EPW Committee a few weeks ago. According to Politico’s transportation reporters, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch, has already rejected several of […]
Mapped: How Federal Funding Fails to Match Demand for Transit in the U.S.
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How much is New York’s Second Avenue Subway estimated to cost? What transit lines really make up LA’s ambitious 30/10 initiative? Besides the silver line to Dulles Airport, which may or may not ever be completed, what other changes are projected for DC’s metro system? And what’s all this construction in Fort Worth? The answers […]
Is Congress Trying to Put the Kibosh on TIGER Funding For Bike/Ped?
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Did TIGER spend too much money on bicycle and pedestrian programs? That’s the question Larry Ehl at Transportation Issues Daily is asking. After all, Congress appears to be encouraging USDOT to spend TIGER grant money on something — anything — other than bike/ped. It’s right there in the 2012 transportation appropriation bill, which President Obama […]
HUD Awards Bring “Bittersweet” End to Sustainability Program
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Just days after the interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities was issued a death blow by having its funding axed in the FY2012 transportation budget, which President Obama signed into law Friday, HUD issued a reminder of just how sad that loss is: The agency released its list of 2011 award grantees — communities embarking on […]
Mapping the Fatal Consequences of Automobile Addiction
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Leave it to the Brits to create an incredible tool for examining America’s own crisis of traffic fatalities. Behold this somber map, made by ITO World, a UK-based transportation information firm. Each dot on the map is a traffic-related death. The entire eastern United States is blanketed with them. The purple dots represent vehicle occupants […]
House GOP Previews Transpo + Oil Drilling Bill, Details to Come Later
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Rumors were flying that this morning House GOP leaders would unveil their proposal for a multi-year transportation bill funded in part by oil and gas extraction fees, but they revealed no details at their press conference. Instead, House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica gave a preview, saying the bill will: consolidate duplicative parts of the […]
2012 Transpo Budget: Sustainable Communities and HSR Out, TIGER In
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Remember those radically different appropriations bills passed by the House and the Senate? And how I said they’d never come together, and they probably would never pass a 2012 budget anyway because all Congress ever does anymore is extend previous budgets because they can’t agree on anything? Well, color me wrong. House and Senate members […]
Mica Warns Boxer on Highway Trust Fund; House Plans Hearing on “Drill Bill”
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“I want to congratulate you on your Committee’s approval of the ‘Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act,” begins House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica’s letter yesterday to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee. From there, the letter changes tone: However, I am concerned that the Senate […]
Senate Bill May Weaken Smaller Metros, Empower State DOTs
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In Indiana, the state DOT wants to build a 142-mile extension of Interstate 69, but the Bloomington metropolitan planning organization won’t allow it – the group had written the road out of its three-year transportation plan and members are standing firm, refusing to write it back in. The MPO in Charlottesville, Virginia, similarly, is fighting […]
More Election Results: Transit Wins Big
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Out of 11 transportation-related measures that were voted on Tuesday, seven represented a victory for transit, two were losses to learn from, and two more aren’t really a win one way or another but are worth noting. According to the Center for Transportation Excellence, these numbers bring the year’s total to an impressive 79 percent […]