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
House Passes Transportation Extension Unanimously
| | 4 Comments
Well, that wasn’t so hard. The GOP-led House just approved a six-month extension of the transportation law. After about 45 minutes of debate, the chair called for a voice vote, and no one objected. In this way, a unanimous consent vote might be even easier to pass than a vote under “suspended rules” which require a […]
House Prepares to Vote on Extension, Coburn Will Try to Kill Bike/Ped
| | 4 Comments
In a couple of hours, the House will vote on the transportation extension bill – under unanimous consent rules. That means a single vote in opposition could delay passage. It’s unclear how we went from a House determined to cut spending levels by more than 30 percent to a House unanimously committed to passing a […]
Fact Check: Sen. Sessions Gets It Wrong On Bike Paths in His Hometown
| | 9 Comments
Last week, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told Streetsblog freelancer Alice Ollstein that he had good reason to oppose Transportation Enhancements, the program that funds bicycle and pedestrian facilities. “I just saw that in my hometown, they stopped construction of a highway because the federal government insisted on bike paths,” Sessions said. “It’s going to delay […]
House and Senate Agree on 6-Month Transpo Extension
| | 5 Comments
Just days after a Senate committee asked the full chamber to consider a four-month extension of SAFETEA-LU, new negotiations have replaced that idea with a six-month extension at current spending levels. The bill also extends the gas tax. Over the weekend, the House and Senate decided to combine the long-overdue FAA reauthorization with the pending […]
Rail Advocates: House Bill Would Kill Amtrak
| | 8 Comments
The 2012 transportation budget passed by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee yesterday cut all high-speed rail funding and slashes Amtrak’s operating grant by 60 percent. What’s more, it forbids Amtrak from using that money to fund short corridors. Ridership on those short corridors grew five percent in the last year [PDF]. Twenty-seven train […]
Good News and Bad News: Obama’s Plan Would Work, But GOP Won’t Pass It
| | 6 Comments
This morning brought some useful indicators about the outlook for President Obama’s jobs bill. Good news first: Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says President Obama’s job creation plan will likely add 1.9 million jobs, cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point, and grow the economy by 2 percent. The plan includes $50 billion for infrastructure, […]
Obama Includes Infra Bank in His Jobs Push; Mica Rejects It Out of Hand
| | 5 Comments
Last night, President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to present his new jobs plan, a bill he’s calling the American Jobs Act. He relied on the well-worn appeal to people’s patriotic competitiveness by pointing out that China is improving its infrastructure while the U.S. is sitting idly by. Without mentioning the dollar figure […]
House GOP’s 2012 Transportation Budget: Deep Cuts, Especially for Livability
| | 3 Comments
In about an hour, Congressional appropriators will vote on how much money to allocate for transportation in the next fiscal year. It won’t be pretty. The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) is planning deep cuts to many programs, some reminiscent of House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s notorious budget proposal, […]
Inhofe Supports Clean Extension, Won’t Vote Against Bike/Ped (This Time)
| | 1 Comment
The Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously agreed this morning to send a four-month extension of the transportation bill to the full Senate. Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) emphasized that it wasn’t easy to get consensus on the extension, especially with many members wanting to move forward with the full two-year bill. And yesterday, as frazzled […]
The Consequences of Political Foot-Dragging
| | 3 Comments
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is meeting tomorrow to discuss a four-month extension to the current transportation bill, SAFETEA-LU. The map above is from a short but powerful document the Federal Transit Administration put out this week explaining “The Impacts of Failing to Extend Surface Transportation Funding” [PDF]. How much transit work would grind […]
Behind President Obama’s Call For More Infrastructure Projects
| | 3 Comments
Tomorrow night, President Obama will unveil his jobs plan before a skeptical Congress. It’s unclear how much of the $300 billion proposal will go to infrastructure, but the president has said that will be a centerpiece of the proposal. An infrastructure bank and a new version of the expired Build America Bonds program could also […]
Over Previous Objections, Bike Share Is Coming to the National Mall
| | 1 Comment
Readers, all that awful news about Republicans trying to kill active transportation’s tiny share of federal support is getting me down. So even though I don’t normally post anything new this late in the day, I just can’t leave you without some good news. In July, the Park Service made an inscrutably ridiculous decision to […]