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
Senate Introduces a Narrower Bill for Wider Sidewalks
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Like everyone else, Safe Routes to School advocates are scaling back. Last year, a bill introduced in the Senate asked for $600 million to enhance pedestrian and bike safety near schools. “We were working in a pretty different environment,” said Margo Pedroso, deputy director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. “Everybody was talking […]
FedEx Chair, New Mexico City Official Ask Senate for Multimodal Transpo Bill
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Congressional committees charged with drafting the new transportation bill have been holding hearings to seek input from stakeholders around the country. In today’s installment, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee heard from five state DOT chiefs, one city official, and the chair of FedEx. Those witnesses’ pleas to the committee ranged from bike trails […]
Obama’s Deficit Reduction Plan Will Look Beyond the “Twelve Percent”
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President Obama just finished his speech at George Washington University. He drew a sharp line between the Republican budget proposal and his own vision for reducing the deficit while preserving the social safety net. The most important thing the president did for transportation in his speech is steer the scrutiny away from the 12 percent […]
House Dems Release Alternative to GOP Budget, Separate From Obama
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With the FY2011 budget finally settled, it’s time for Washington to start fighting over 2012. President Obama released his 2012 budget proposal in February. The Republicans introduced theirs last week. And the House Democrats have just released theirs [PDF]. Meanwhile, President Obama is giving a speech in just a few hours on his plan to […]
President Obama to Embrace Deficit Commission Plan Tomorrow
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Four months ago – just days after the Democrats’ “shellacking” at the polls – a bipartisan commission offered President Obama the chance to retake the budgetary high ground from Republicans, who had positioned themselves as the party of fiscal sanity. The blue-ribbon deficit commission – led by Erskine Bowles, President Bill Clinton’s budget negotiator, and former […]
High-Speed Rail Funds Get Slashed in Detailed Budget Plan
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Just when we thought transportation had gotten off relatively easy in the shutdown-aversion budget deal: The House Appropriations Committee has released details [PDF] on the budget agreement between the two houses, including more information on the agreed-to $38.5 billion in cuts. Where we’d heard before that high-speed rail was getting a $1.5 billion haircut, down […]
Grabbing a Thin Reed, Republicans Attack DOT Over Stimulus Grant Process
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Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood likes to remind critics that there have been no reports of “boondoggles” or “sweetheart deals” related to transportation stimulus funds. He’s proud that the money has been put to the uses it was intended for. Two GAO reports being released today largely bolster LaHood’s claims that the funding was allocated based […]
You Can Open Your Eyes Now: Budget Deal Spares Transpo the Worst
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It’s Monday morning, and the government is open for business. In a last-minute agreement just an hour before the current budget extension was to expire Friday night, Democrats and Republicans avoided the nuclear option of a government shutdown. They cut $38.5 billion from the 2010 budget; $78.5 billion from President Obama’s 2011 budget proposal. Some […]
What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Long For Public Transportation
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Thanks to fabulous pinch-hitting from Kathryn, Noah, and Ben during a crazy week on Capitol Hill, I got to spend most of my week snorkeling and hiking my way through Puerto Rico. It was about as idyllic as I could have wished for – except for one glaring problem. From my perspective as a tourist, […]
Government Shutdown Would Be a Punch in the Gut to Transit Agencies
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A powwow between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, President Obama, and House Speaker John Boehner last night failed to yield a compromise that would put a budget in place before the government shuts down at midnight tonight. The failure of yet another attempt to negotiate makes a government shutdown all but inevitable. Just a month […]
Lowlights From the Transpo Bill Hearing: A Tea Partier Tries to De-Fund Transit
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Last week’s stakeholder extravaganza in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee brought out the best and worst ideas about how to reform the transportation sector. We highlighted some of the good stuff earlier. Now for the bad and the ugly. Really, out of 40 (count ‘em!) witnesses at this mother of all transportation hearings, only one […]
More on the T&I Stakeholders Meetings: The Advocates Edition
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Editor’s note: These are the highlights from this week’s hearings on the upcoming transportation bill, where people made the case to Congress for sustainable transportation options. I’ll follow up with the Bad and the Ugly, like those who want to kick transit out of the Highway Trust Fund. The stakeholder hearings in the Transportation and […]