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
RAND: Car-Sharing Could Cut Carbon Emissions From Cars By 1.7 Percent
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The brilliant thing about car-sharing is that it leads people to drive less by providing access to cars. It allows people to give up their personal vehicles (along with the gas, maintenance, parking, and insurance costs they entail) without giving up the ability to use the car once in a while when necessary. It diminishes […]
Walk Score Calculates City Bikeability, and Minneapolis Comes Out on Top
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The people behind Walk Score, the real estate rating service that goes by the slogan “Drive Less, Live More,” are out with a new rating system, based on hard data, that should prove useful to prospective city dwellers: Bike Score. The company launched the Bike Score website today, using its new algorithm to rank the ten […]
Are Americans Driving Less Because They’re Working Less?
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Everyone’s trying to figure out why, after decades of consistent growth, the amount Americans drive is leveling off and even declining. The decline started during the recession, to be sure, but was more dramatic than in previous recessions. As the economy began to get back on its feet, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) just barely ticked […]
With or Without Tougher CAFE Rules, Today’s Gas Tax Is Unsustainable
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Would stricter fuel economy rules bankrupt transportation funding in America? The Congressional Budget Office seems to think so, but environmentalists are quick to say that the system was hurtling toward bankruptcy anyway. Under a new rule proposed by the NHTSA and the EPA, CAFE standards are expected to raise the average fuel economy of the new-vehicle […]
Live-Blogging the First Meeting of the Transportation Conference Committee
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5:41 Adjourned. Thanks for following our live-blog coverage — all 3,276 words of it. 5:40 Boxer: I heard no lines in the sand here today, I heard lots of passion. I’m going to do everything to improve the Senate bill. I’m going to work with you, but it does streamline dramatically. Sen. Inhofe wouldn’t vote […]
Seven Questions as Transportation Bill Conference Gets Underway
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The first meeting of the transportation bill conference committee is today at 3:00. (To familiarize yourself with the participants, see Ben’s reports on the House and Senate conferees.) We’ll be live-blogging it, beginning to end. It’s unusual for conferences to meet in public, and leaders have indicated that this won’t be the only meeting they have in front of television […]
Political Jockeying Over Gas Prices Is Divorced From Reality
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Though many transportation reformers, economists and environmentalists would say that gas prices aren’t nearly high enough to disincentivize single-occupancy-vehicle use and to pay for the external harms, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill take it for granted that gas prices are too damn high. In fact, it’s one of the very, very few things that they do agree on these […]
Mapped: Dramatic Changes on London Streets in the Congestion Pricing Era
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For the last nine years, private motorists entering central London between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. have paid a fee (currently £10 or US$16.22) to drive on the city’s scarce street space. The revenue from the congestion charge is plowed into the city’s transit system, and as Transport for London has amply documented, many Londoners […]
The Cast of The West Wing Walks the “Walk and Talk” Walk
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The characters of The West Wing were known, in their heyday, for walking down long hallways and talking a mile a minute without stumbling. Now, six years after the show went off the air, the cast is back — with this tribute to the health benefits of walking. It’s a promotion for EveryBody Walk, a […]
FHWA: Small Investments in Bike/Ped Infrastructure Can Pay Off in a Big Way
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If you ever doubted whether a small investment in biking and walking could have a large impact, here is your proof. The last transportation law, SAFETEA-LU, provided four communities with four years of funding to build an infrastructure network for nonmotorized transportation (a fancy way of saying “sidewalks and bike paths”). It wasn’t a lot […]
FRA Guidance on Pedestrian Safety Still Misses the Real Problem
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The Federal Railroad Administration doesn’t call people walking near railroad tracks “pedestrians.” It calls them “trespassers.” True, a person walking on railroad tracks is often, by definition, breaking the law, since the tracks are private property. But the nomenclature gives the impression that the agency might be somewhat less sympathetic than they should be about […]
Have a Question for Secretary LaHood? Ask It Here.
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Last spring, Ray LaHood’s office approached Streetsblog seeking reader questions for the transportation secretary’s monthly video blog series, On the Go With Ray LaHood. His aides have repeatedly told me that of all the blogs and organizations that got a similar shot, Streetsblog readers were the most engaged and asked the most insightful questions. LaHood […]