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
Election Day Finds Two Livability Champions on the Ropes
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Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) will likely lose his chairmanship of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, as control of the House is widely expected to shift to the Republicans after today’s election. But Oberstar could also lose his seat in Congress. As committee chair, Oberstar has been a strong advocate for transit investment and livability reforms. […]
Will Florida’s Next Governor Sink the State’s Chances for Rail?
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We’re keeping the news coming on the governor’s races we’re following most closely. Check out our previous coverage of Wisconsin, Ohio, California, Texas, Maryland, Colorado, and Tennessee. This one could be the most important yet. The most high-profile election in Florida is the three-ring circus of a Senate race, with Republican-turned-Independent Charlie Crist trailing badly […]
Bike-Ped Funding Dips as Stimulus Spending Slows
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Via the League of American Bicyclists, new information is out about how much the feds are spending on bike-ped projects. While federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects is down a bit from last year’s all-time high, it still comes in at more than a billion dollars. A third of the money is from the […]
Anti-Rail Candidates Take Aim at High Speed Dreams in the Midwest
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In the latest installment of our series on key governor’s races, here’s the news from Wisconsin and Ohio. Check out our previous coverage of California, Texas, Maryland, Colorado, and Tennessee. Let them serve as a reminder to vote on Tuesday. “I’m Scott Walker. And if I’m elected as your next governor, we’ll stop this train.” […]
T4America Maps TIGER Grantees: Find One Near You
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Thanks to Transportation for America for putting together this handy map of U.S. DOT’s TIGER grant recipients. It shows the geographical reach of the program, as well as the broad range of projects benefiting from the grants. T4America says: In two batches in February and October 2010, USDOT gave out a total of $2.1 billion […]
Texas Gov Rick Perry Could Get Four More Years to Build Mega-Highways
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This is the fourth installment of Streetsblog Capitol Hill’s series on key governor’s races. Earlier we brought you stories about a candidate who likes bikes but isn’t sure about transit in Tennessee, the choice between light rail and bus rapid transit in Maryland, and how bike paranoia is cutting the GOP off at the knees […]
Will Bike-Phobic Dan Maes Cost the Colorado GOP Major Party Status?
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This is the third installment of Streetsblog Capitol Hill’s series on key governor’s races. Earlier we brought you stories about a candidate who likes bikes but isn’t sure about transit in Tennessee, and the choice between light rail and bus rapid transit in Maryland. Here we turn our attention to Colorado. Colorado is a classic […]
Light Rail Line Hangs By a Thread as Maryland Goes to the Polls
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With election day fast approaching, Streetsblog Capitol Hill is turning our attention this week to key governor’s races. As Ya-Ting Liu of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign recently wrote (and as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has made painfully clear), “decisions by state and local elected officials ultimately determine whether federal transportation policies become instruments of […]
Avoiding the Unintended Consequences of Transit-Oriented Development
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We see it over and over again in our cities. Migration out of central cities hollows out neighborhoods and leaves the people who remain struggling with the consequences of disinvestment. But when development returns to urban areas, the arrival of new residents can impose burdens on people who never left. Often, as amenities come into […]
Why Transit Agencies Expand Capacity While They Cut Service
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The past couple of years have been bittersweet for American transit riders. While the Obama administration’s TIGER grant program and livability initiatives have spurred investments in new streetcar and bus projects, service cuts and fare hikes have been the order of the day in cities large and small, as transit agencies cope with shrinking revenues […]
If You Come, They Will Build It: Notes on Livability From Rail~volution
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Those looking for hope in this era of transit service cuts took heart from the words of William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), at the Rail~volution conference yesterday. In his keynote speech, he Millar reasons to hope for a better future — despite the fact that 84 percent of APTA members […]
How to Slay a Highway: Notes on the Mt. Hood Freeway and Harbor Drive
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I promised in my last post to tell you the triumphant stories of citizens beating back highways, both planned and already built. Here are more stories from the Rail~volution bike tour around Portland’s “lost highways.” Exhibit A: The Mount Hood Freeway “There was a period of ignorance, a period of enlightenment and catharsis, and a […]