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
Fighting Freeways: War Stories From Portland
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Rail~volution is underway in Portland, Oregon, bringing together more than 1,000 city planners, engineers, transit advocates, bike policy experts, and elected officials to strategize about making cities and towns better for transit, walking, and biking. Monday started with 15 different workshops that took place around the city, including one highlighting Portland’s “Lost Freeways” – the […]
TIGER II Leaks Begin: New Haven’s Highway-to-Boulevard Project a Winner
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We reported earlier today that Ray LaHood is keeping mum about the TIGER II grant winners until the middle of next week, but the info is beginning to drip — and it’s members of Congress doing the leaking. Word is out that New Haven, Connecticut has landed a $16 million TIGER II grant to convert […]
HUD Announces Winners of $100M in Sustainability Grants
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Planners in 45 regions in 27 states have a little more to work with in their efforts to shape sustainable growth. Yesterday the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the winners of nearly $100 million in grants from its new Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant Program, intended to connect “housing with good […]
Angela Glover Blackwell on Equity, Infrastructure, and the President
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On Monday, President Obama talked infrastructure with two governors, eight mayors, four former transportation secretaries (and the current one), two labor leaders – and one public interest advocate. That advocate was Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of the think tank PolicyLink and chair of the Transportation for America Equity Caucus, which launched last week. The roundtable […]
Five Reasons Reformers Are Rallying Behind Obama’s Transpo Push
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When President Obama announced his push for a long-term transportation bill on Monday, he introduced a report by his Council of Economic Advisors and the Treasury Department analyzing the economic impact of infrastructure investment [PDF]. At face value, the numbers in the president’s plan might not look so impressive. It calls for rebuilding 150,000 miles […]
Drawing Ideas From Reformers, Obama Gets Behind 6-Year Transpo Plan
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President Obama told reporters today that he’s committed to a six-year plan to rebuild 150,000 miles of roads, lay and maintain 4,000 miles of railways, restore 150 miles of runways, and create a national infrastructure bank. He made his remarks after meeting with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, former Secretaries Samuel Skinner and Norman Mineta, L.A. […]
Frontrunner for Tenn. Gov Gets Bike Award — But Look Behind the Curtain
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Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam is a biking mayor. He shows up almost every year to Bike to Work Day. The small-government Republican has allocated $20,000 for bike improvements. “Twenty thousand may not sound like a lot,” said Kelley Segars, Knoxville’s Principal Transportation Planner. “But it meant that we could put up our first three signed […]
How the Information Age Can Make Streets and Transit More Efficient
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In Pittsburgh, elderly para-transit riders get automated phone calls with the precise arrival time of their vehicle. Bus priority lanes and preferential traffic signals in the Twin Cities are improving on-time service. Here in Washington, DC, stored value on SmartTrip cards pays for Metro parking, train and bus, and it can sync with pre-tax employee […]
High-Speed Rail vs. Low-Cost Bus
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Last week I mentioned I was about to take Amtrak from DC to New York. Well, it cost over $200 (and there was nothing particularly “high speed” about that rail experience). Next time, I might take the bus instead. For all the attention given to the potential expansion of high-speed rail, there’s also been a […]
If Republicans Take the House, What Happens to Transportation Reform?
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It’s November 3. The Republicans have won a majority in the House of Representatives. Meet John Mica (R-FL), the new chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Will it happen? Depends which pundit you listen to or which polls you look at. It’s likely enough that some transportation advocates are concerned about what would happen […]
FTA: Transit Maintenance — Not Just Expansion — Will Grow Ridership
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Aging infrastructure across the country has become an enormous safety risk. It’s also becoming an economic hazard. Last year, the Federal Transit Administration announced that the seven largest rail transit systems had a backlog of $50 billion in maintenance needs to bring them into a state of good repair. In June, the agency determined that […]
State DOTs Make Deeper Bike-Ped Budget Cuts Than Expected
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We reported recently that the federal government was demanding $2.2 billion back from state DOTs in rescissions — money that was already allocated to states that they were then asked to give back. Bike and pedestrian advocates were worried that states would disproportionately target active transportation projects for cuts, instead of carving into car-centric programs. […]