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
Clock Ticks on a Popular Way to Pay for Infrastructure
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A few weeks ago, when a new ferry was inaugurated in Puget Sound, Washington Governor Chris Gregoire smashed a bottle of champagne and declared, “God bless this boat.” It had been three years since the leaky electric boats that had ferried passengers between Coupeville, Whidbey Island, and Port Townsend were retired three years ago. The new […]
GOP Demands a Stop to Stim Spending. What Will It Mean for Rail Projects?
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The top Republican currently on the Appropriations Committee wants to take back stimulus funds promised to states and localities for much-needed infrastructure programs, including more than $6 billion in transportation funding. High-speed rail projects would take an especially big hit under the plan. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) has introduced H.R. 6403, the American Recovery and Reinvestment […]
Rahall Responds, Says His Transpo Record Is About More Than Just Highways
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Earlier this month, we reported that Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) was in the running for Ranking Member on the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee in the House. We mentioned our alarm that his ideas about transportation seemed limited and road-centric – specifically, that his website’s issue page on Transportation mentioned only highways, water, and broadband. Got us wondering […]
Earmark Ban Goes Down to Defeat in the Senate
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The Senate just voted down the Republican proposal to ban earmarks. The proposed ban was met with profound ambivalence in the transportation community. Some, like Rob Sadowsky, Executive Director of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, worried that a ban would remove a primary funding mechanism for bike-ped projects. The day after the election, Sadowsky told BikePortland, […]
Another Day, Another Revelation That a Gas Tax Hike Is Necessary
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Add another vote in favor of increasing the gas tax to pay for infrastructure investment. A few weeks ago, a couple of senators proposed raising it 25 cents. Then the deficit commission came out in favor of a 15-cent hike. And now, three left-leaning think tanks – Demos, the Economic Policy Institute, and The Century […]
Happy Thanksgiving! And Take Our Survey!
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Happy Thanksgiving! We at Streetsblog are thankful for your readership and your commitment to sustainable transportation and land use. We’ll be taking the long weekend off to enjoy our turkeys and tofurkys and the company of our loved ones. We hope you’ll be doing the same. But first, would you do us a big favor and fill […]
Turning the Queen Mary: A Conversation with HUD, Part II
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How do three massive governmental bureaucracies (HUD, DOT, and EPA) nimbly change their approaches and procedures to work together on the Partnership for Sustainable Communities? How can communities ensure that transit-oriented development doesn’t end up pricing out existing residents? How can recipients of federal planning grants move from planning to implementation of livability strategies? Streetsblog […]
Paying at the Pump for Oil Wars: A Plausible Option?
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Today, U.S. taxpayers see the cost of oil wars in the Middle East taken out of every paycheck, all to feed America’s driving habit. A new proposal for more transparent pricing would shift that burden to the automobile drivers themselves by imposing a new oil security fee at the pump. That’s just one of the […]
Livability and the GOP: A Conversation With HUD’s Mariia Zimmerman
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Perhaps the Obama administration’s greatest contribution to building more livable, less traffic-choked communities has been the new partnership between three agencies — DOT, EPA, and HUD — which are helping towns and cities grow more sustainably, using strategies from brownfield redevelopment to the provision of affordable housing along transit corridors. The agencies have collaborated to […]
GOP Wants to Bring Transpo Policy Back to the 1950s
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A top Republican transportation staffer gave some clues yesterday about the GOP’s plan to drastically restructure national transportation policy and reverse many reforms of the past 20 years. In an off-the-record luncheon with the Road Gang, a sort of “fraternity” of Washington highway executives, Jim Tymon gave the view from his seat as Republican staff director […]
Bachmann: It’s Not an Earmark If It’s for Highways and Bridges
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The first phase of the lame duck ends today. Has Congress done the heavy lifting of finding consensus on extending tax cuts, or unemployment benefits, or Medicare physician payments, or the surface transportation authorization, or the federal budget? No. But they named a few post offices. And they re-elected their same leaders to keep on […]
Dutch Planners School U.S. Cities on Bikeability
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In the Netherlands, 30 percent of trips under five miles are by bike. I know, I know, Euro-envy can get a little old. So the Dutch are trying to give us a little less to be jealous of. What if our streets were as bike-friendly as theirs? We could get there. Our trip patterns aren’t […]