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
One Week Left: Send Us Your Pics of Kiddies in Cities and Win a Free Bike
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You’ve got one more week! We’re looking for pictures of children taking part in urban street life — kids walking to school and riding bikes, kids playing in the street, kids enjoying public spaces. We can’t get enough of this stuff. There’s one week left in our Kiddies + Cities photo contest, so don’t delay! […]
Vitter: Sure, Raise the Gas Tax — Just as Long as You Don’t Raise More Money
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Well here’s a sobering thought: Transit advocates, cyclists and the road lobby have the same talking points these days. All anyone is talking about is how to rescue the Highway Trust Fund from its own fiscal cliff. I attended yesterday’s “Asphalt Fly-In,” the National Asphalt Pavement Association’s first-ever Washington legislative conference. If I went in […]
The Long, Painful History of Terrible Parking Policy in One 71-Second Cartoon
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If you haven’t been keeping up with Sightline Institute’s excellent series on the scourge of parking minimums, you’ve been missing out. They’ve posted 11 readable and informative articles on the subject. From here, Sightline is pivoting from problems to solutions, and we’ll be sharing their next few posts on Streetsblog, as well as re-posting some […]
Lawmakers Push to Permanently Upgrade Transit’s Second-Class Tax Benefit
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While the rest of the Capitol prepared for President Obama’s visit to lobby members of Congress on Syria military strikes, three lawmakers gathered under the hot sun with transit advocates to push for a more bread-and-butter issue: tax benefits for transit riders. For years, car commuters could claim up to $240 per month in tax-free […]
ULI Survey: DC Real Estate Pros Think Bike-Friendly Buildings Are the Future
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This summer, the Urban Land Institute’s Washington, DC, chapter held a forum on bicycle-friendly design. As a follow-up, they focused their first member survey on biking and walking. The questions are general, and it wasn’t a survey of the entire real estate industry. While most of ULI’s membership is made up of people involved in […]
Your Photo of Kiddies in Cities Could Win a Breezer Bike
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Have you sent in your submissions to our Back-to-School photo contest yet? You haven’t, have you? Of course not. You were holding out to see what these supposedly fabulous prizes consist of. Well, listen up people: When we promise fabulous, we deliver fabulous. Breezer is offering two stylish and fun Downtown EX bikes for the […]
TIGER V a Shot in the Arm for Livable Streets in Cities and Small Towns
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Out of 585 applications, U.S. DOT has chosen 52 transportation projects in 37 states to receive TIGER awards totaling $474 million. The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program was originally an element of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package. Although it hasn’t been reauthorized and many Republicans claim to hate it, funding somehow keeps being appropriated for […]
In DC, the Danger of Enraged Driving Is on the Rise
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Road rage is boiling over. Twelve percent of people surveyed in the Washington, DC, metro area said they often feel “uncontrollable anger toward another driver.” The number of people reporting such feelings has doubled since 2005, according to the Washington Post, which conducted the survey. Rage can be an impairment like intoxication or distraction, according to Leon […]
Nine Days in September: Congress’s Chance to Break the Gridlock
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I hope you all had a good Labor Day. Streetsblog is back to work today, and you probably are too. But Congress? Not until next week. Every time there’s a Monday holiday, Congress takes the whole week off, and they’re milking the last moments of their August recess. It’s no wonder lawmakers are procrastinating. They have […]
More Evidence That Unemployment Doesn’t Explain the Decline in Driving
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For those who say driving rates will pick right back up again when the economy’s really humming, here’s something to chew on: In a report released this morning, “Moving Off the Road,” U.S. PIRG presents further evidence that unemployment rates and driving rates have changed independently of each other. Transportation reformers have made the case that there […]
Commemorating March on Washington, Foxx Links Transport to Civil Rights
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Today marks 50 years since the landmark March on Washington, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his historic “I Have a Dream” speech. I was privileged to join tens of thousands of others on the National Mall this weekend to commemorate the anniversary. In a blog post today, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx noted the […]
Stop Fretting About Whether Millennials Will Stay in the City
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More than 9,000 babies have been born in each of the last five years in Washington, DC — but will their families stay in the city as these kids grow up? A recent study by the real estate company Trulia found that there was just one zip code in DC’s city limits where backpacks outnumbered […]