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: 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 […]
Brother of T&I Chair Bill Shuster Hired to Lobby (Yes, Lobby) Against Transit
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In addition to some recent high-profile spins through the revolving door, we now have a new example of ethically questionable influence peddling in Washington: A powerful Congressman’s brother working to bring down a transit line in Maryland. Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) wields the gavel of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee — a post his […]
The Revolving Door Spins Again: LaHood Joins DLA Piper
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When former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced earlier this month that he was going to co-chair Building America’s Future, I thought, “well that seems like a good place for him, but it’s not going to make his wife happy.” Mrs. LaHood has famously been needling him for years to get out of public office and […]
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio Calls for More Local Control of Transpo Funds
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We normally leave the Bill de Blasio coverage to the Streetsblog NYC crew, but the new mayor made some remarks today at the U.S. Conference of Mayors that everyone should take note of. At the conference’s plenary session, de Blasio made reference, without really naming it, to the single biggest demand of transportation reformers going […]
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 […]
The Riches That Resulted From a Failed Transit Experiment in Philadelphia
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Philadelphia’s Route 47 bus snakes along narrow, one-way streets down nearly the entire length of the city. It starts about a mile from the house I grew up in (just on the other side of the city boundary) and ends just north of the ballparks in South Philly. Along the way, it stops on every […]
What If There Was No Highway, Transit, or Rail Agency — Just U.S. DOT?
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“Highway people like highways, transit people like transit, rail people like rail,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said yesterday at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board. “But our transportation system should be greater than the sum of its parts.” Foxx wasn’t the first to lament the atomization of the various modes at the federal level. […]
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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We’re less than a third of the way through fiscal year 2014 and we already have a budget! Well, almost — the president still has to sign it. But the House and Senate unveiled the details of the omnibus budget bill yesterday, and just having a complete bill that both parties and both chambers have […]
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 […]