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
Will an Upcoming Tax Reform Finally Be the Place to Hike the Gas Tax?
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Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal has gotten a conversation going about a tax code rewrite. Rep. Dave Camp, head of the Ways and Means Committee, recently put out a small business proposal that included some tax reform, and he’s pledged to pursue more reforms this year. His committee has already set up 11 bipartisan working […]
Eleven Things to Look for in the Passenger Rail Reauthorization
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Now that the surface transportation bill fight is over — at least for the moment — transportation reformers are eying the expiration date of another key piece of legislation later this year. The reauthorization of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA) could be a chance to make some needed changes to jump-start progress […]
Transit Trips Rose Faster Than Driving in 2012, Despite Impact of Sandy
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As driving continues to stagnate in America, transit ridership keeps rising. Last year saw the second highest annual ridership since 1957, despite the fact that the nation’s busiest transit systems had several days of blackout due to Superstorm Sandy. The numbers still haven’t topped 2008, when gas prices spiked above four dollars a gallon for the first […]
Senate Unlikely to Challenge House Cuts to MAP-21 Budget
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If you were hoping the Senate would swoop in and save the day after the House voted to cut $785 million from the transportation budget, you might be disappointed. Politico’s Burgess Everett reports that Senate Appropriations Chair Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) isn’t planning to present an alternative transportation budget proposal. Mikulski is considering rolling several appropriations bills […]
Bicycling Means Business: How Cycling Enriches People and Cities
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If bicyclists want to convince policymakers of the benefits of cycling, they need to stop talking about cycling. That was one major lesson of this year’s National Bike Summit, thanks to some strategic research done by a friendly consultant. So the Summit’s theme was “Bicycling Means Business” – and the economic impacts of a healthy […]
Congress Comes to the Bike Summit (and the Bike Summit Goes to Congress)
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Tuesday morning, Rep. Earl Blumenauer took his usual place behind the podium at the National Bike Summit. (He never misses a Bike Summit.) “I’m coming up this morning and smiling at someone going past me on the bike lane on Pennsylvania Avenue,” Blumenauer said. “Remember four years ago, I talked about risking my life on […]
Bike Summit: With a Seat at the Table, Cyclists Need to Master the Etiquette
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When you talk to policy-makers, do you complain about how bicyclists lost out in the last transportation reauthorization and demand that cycling get its “fair share” of funding? Do you tell them that more and more people are riding bikes, and maybe they ought to try it too? If so, you’ve been doing it all […]
AAA Releases Bike Safety PSA at Bike Summit
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Why would a representative from AAA be the keynote speaker at the National Bike Summit? “It may seem surprising,” admitted Bike League President Andy Clarke. And even AAA PR Director Yolanda Cade acknowledged that the 750 bicyclists in the room may be asking themselves, “‘Why is AAA here today?'” After all, she said, “We do have ‘Automobile’ […]
How to Diversify Bicycle Culture in Three Easy Steps
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Everything you think you know about bicycling is wrong. At the National Women’s Bicycling Forum this morning, one message came through: the underrepresentation of women and people of color in cycling isn’t simply due to safety concerns and lack of protected infrastructure, as is often surmised. It’s more complicated than that. Megan Odett, who founded Kidical Mass […]
Shuster Shows His Thoughtful Side, Boxer Heaps Praise at AASHTO Conference
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In a sense, there’s not much to say about the joint appearance at the AASHTO conference yesterday of House Transportation Committee Chair Bill Shuster and Senate EPW Chair Barbara Boxer. They thanked AASHTO for all its help getting MAP-21 passed. They addressed the big question of how to raise revenues without actually making any proposals. […]
Sequester Would Cut New Starts By $100M, Could Trigger FTA Furloughs
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The consequences of the near-certain sequester for aviation have been well publicized by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s recent media blitz, but less well-known are the effects for surface transportation. LaHood broke that silence in a memo to department staff earlier this week and released yesterday by Politico, warning that even after taking measures like “instituting hiring freezes, cutting contracts, […]
U.S. DOT to Challenge AASHTO Supremacy on Bike/Ped Safety Standards
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For years, the federal government has adopted roadway guidelines that fall far short of what’s needed — and what’s possible — to protect cyclists and pedestrians. By “playing it safe” and sticking with old-school engineering, U.S. DOT allowed streets to be unsafe for these vulnerable road users. But that could be changing. The bike-friendliest transportation […]