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
Trucks and Cities Are Like Oil and Water. Is There 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 […]
Silver Lining to the U.S. DOT Shakeup: Barbara McCann Joins the Team
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The loss of Polly Trottenberg and John Porcari from U.S. DOT was a blow for livability advocates. But into the void has slipped Barbara McCann, an architect of the Complete Streets movement. McCann starts Monday as the new director of the Office of Safety, Energy and Environment in the Office of the Secretary of Transportation. “That’s […]
Streetsblog’s Suggested Edits to U.S. DOT’s Seven Priorities for 2014
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Just before we went on holiday break, U.S. DOT’s Inspector General’s office released a document [PDF] detailing the department’s top challenges for the year ahead. The document calls them “management challenges” but by and large it’s just a list of seven things the Inspector General thinks DOT needs to do to meet its mission of […]
TED Talk: OKC Mayor Mick Cornett on Designing a City for Fitness
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I got to know Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett last year, when I interviewed him at the annual meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors. We talked about his realization that he and his constituents (generally speaking) were obese, and how he stood in front of the elephants at the zoo on New Year’s […]
Streetsie Awards, Final Installment: More of the Best of 2013
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We tend to be optimists here at Streetsblog, so we couldn’t end 2013 on a sour note. Yesterday, we brought you some of the best of 2013 — our favorite Republican, the best proof that change is in the air, a city that’s absolutely nailing the whole bike thing. And then we took a turn […]
Streetsie Awards: The Worst of 2013
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We’ve talked about some of the highlights of 2013, but truth be told, there were plenty of lowlights too. For example… Outrage of the Year: Our readers were pretty universally outraged by a Texas judge’s inexcusably light sentence of 10 years’ probation for a teenager who killed four people with his car while his blood […]
Streetsie Awards: The Best of 2013 (Part One)
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Happy 2014, everybody! I hope you had a great winter break and got home safely from your New Years Eve revelry (remembering, of course, the perils of walking or taking transit while drunk). We had an incredible response to our Streetsie awards poll. Here are the winners of Streetsblog’s annual awards for awesomeness. (The boneheads […]
Streetsie Awards People’s Choice: Vote for the Best and Worst of 2013
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We’ve been very restrained all year, people. Out there in the world, people were doing crazy things and amazing things, and all year we have refrained from giving out cheeky awards for awesomeness or idiocy. Well all right, we may have accidentally given out a few cheeky awards along the way — worst intersection (Omaha), […]
Will Old Transit Systems Eat Up All the New Starts Grants?
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One of MAP-21’s many mixed blessings was the New Starts Core Capacity program. It expanded eligibility for New Starts grants — normally reserved as capital assistance for new transit lines — to existing corridors. To qualify, the system just had to show that the improvements would expand the capacity of the line by at least […]
Military Rules on Smart Growth Are About to Become Law
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The U.S. military probably may not be the first institution that comes to mind when you think smart growth and sustainable planning, but it has embraced these practices wholeheartedly. Last year, the military adopted a whole new rulebook on master planning. And now, those rules are about to become law. Over the summer, Rep. Earl […]
A Conservative Utah Republican’s Path to Transit Enlightenment
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Greg Hughes is the majority whip of the Utah State Legislature and the chair of its conservative caucus. He got a 100 percent score last year by the conservative Sutherland Institute, a Utah think tank. He also chairs the board of the Utah Transit Authority. The man loves transit. Hughes grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. […]
Budget Deal Is Good News for Transit
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The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on that rarest of Capitol Hill treasures — a bipartisan budget deal. If both houses approve the deal, negotiated by Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, it will be the first time since 2010 that Congress has passed a budget. The deal would erase […]