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
Can High-Speed Rail Reduce Air Travel and Highway Expansion?
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Yesterday, Miller-McCune’s Michael Scott Moore accused Southwest Airlines of helping to bury a potential Texas bullet train 15 years ago. “Southwest understood better than most high-speed rail critics just how well the trains could work,” Moore wrote. “[High-speed rail in Spain] has reduced Spanish highway traffic — even for cargo, by freeing up space on […]
You Count on Streetsblog. We’re Counting on You, Too.
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Things are about to get crazy in the transportation arena here in D.C. Some would say things are already pretty crazy. But just wait: We’ve got a monumental fight over the debt ceiling coming up and with it, a Republican push for massive budget cuts that will make the last round look like a mere […]
GM CEO: “We Ought to Just Slap a Dollar Tax on a Gallon of Gas”
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Well, it’s unanimous – everyone agrees the country needs a significant hike in the gas tax. Everyone outside of Congress, that is. Last week, General Motors CEO Dan Akerson told The Detroit News that a higher gas tax would help solidify the market for more fuel-efficient cars. Akerson told The Detroit News that, rather than […]
Labor and Environmentalists Unite to Push for Transportation Reforms
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The BlueGreen Alliance, a union of labor and environmental interests, has released its own vision for a transportation reauthorization. The alliance has made the reauthorization one of its top priorities for the year. Just as business and labor have found a lot they agree on when it comes to infrastructure, so have environmentalists and labor. […]
Cul-de-Sacs Are Killing Us: Public Safety Lessons From Suburbia
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People choose suburban neighborhoods over urban ones for myriad reasons: because they can afford it, because the schools are good, because it’s a quiet street, or crimes rates are low, or everyone walks around with baby strollers and golden retrievers, or their family is nearby. But countless other consequences stream from their decision of where […]
How Car Dependency Turns Suburban Dreams into Foreclosure Nightmares
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According to an analysis by the Center for Neighborhood Technology of 2002 mortgage data, 250 people applied for mortgages every day in Chicago, and only 150 were approved. The top reason for rejecting the other 100? Applicants had too much credit tied up in car ownership. And mortgage lenders have only gotten more skittish since […]
Fmr. Comptroller General: We Can’t Solve Our Problems With Spending Cuts
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In an op-ed in this morning’s New York Times, Laura D’Andrea Tyson argues for increased investment in infrastructure, pointing out that the nation’s infrastructure will deteriorate quickly if spending is not increased. Tyson chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton and currently serves on President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. “Infrastructure spending, […]
Highwayman Inhofe Still Wants to Rob Bike/Ped Funding From Transpo Bill
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Last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) briefed reporters on the points of consensus reached by the four leaders of the Environment and Public Works Committee with regard to the transportation bill. In answer to a question by Streetsblog, she said that guaranteed federal funding for bike and pedestrian programs would be in the bill. She […]
Video: LaHood Answers Questions About Bike Lanes, Fuel Economy, and HSR
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It’s no fireside chat, but Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been doing a series of video “dialogues” with people who submit questions online. Today’s installment is all about livability: one person asks what USDOT is doing to improve and expand bicycle infrastructure, another expresses excitement about high-speed rail expansion and asks about LaHood’s personal transportation […]
Lawmakers Introduce Reality-Based Plan to Achieve “Freedom From Oil”
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Members of Congress of all stripes are trying to show that they’re concerned and responsive to the financial strain caused by high gas prices. Some are recommending more oil drilling. Some want to end subsidies to oil companies. Today, members of the Congressional Livable Communities Task Force suggested that providing more diverse transportation options to more people […]
What The Debt Ceiling Vote Means For Transportation
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Yesterday, the House of Representatives took a “symbolic” vote on raising the debt ceiling without any “strings attached” – i.e., the trillion dollars worth of spending cuts the Republicans are insisting on before they’ll agree to raise the debt ceiling. The vote went how it was supposed to go: not a single Republican voted for […]
Study: Building Roads to Cure Congestion Is an Exercise in Futility
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We hear it all the time: The road lobby insists that the only way to reduce mind-numbing traffic congestion on the roads they built is to build new roads. Federal funding gives huge blank checks to state DOTs, which tend to prioritize road building over transit, bridge maintenance or anything else. But mounting evidence suggests that […]