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
FHWA to Engineers: Go Ahead and Use City-Friendly Street Designs
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NACTO’s Urban Street Design Guide includes engineering guidance for transit boulevards. Image: NACTO The heavyweights of American transportation engineering continue to warm up to design guides that prioritize walking, biking, and transit on city streets. On Friday, the Federal Highway Administration made clear that it endorses the National Association of City Transportation Officials’ Urban Street […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Square Footage
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Welcome to Episode 29 of the Talking Headways podcast. In it, we evaluate the potential of Boston’s attempt to “gentrification-proof” the Fairmount Line, building affordable housing to keep transit from displacing people with low incomes. Too often, the allure of transit raises rents, bringing in a new demographic of people who can pay them — […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Good Riddance, “Level of Service”
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All the buzz right now is about Arlington, Virginia — the DC suburb has seen its population rise and its car traffic drop since the 1980s. How did they do it? It could be a lesson for Palo Alto, California, which is considering various growth proposals, including one that would invite greater density as long as […]
UberFAMILY: Finally, a Taxi Option for People With Kids
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Childless people, let me let you in on a little secret: Car seats are a huge pain in the ass. They’re no big deal if you own a car, I guess, except for the fact that your kid probably squawks at the prospect of being immobilized in that iron maiden too long. For car-free parents, […]
The New Way to “Screw Obama” — Poisoning Your Neighbors’ Air
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Warning: The crazies are getting crazier. Behold the new depth to which macho car culture, blatant anti-environmentalism, and Obama hating has sunk. “Coal rollers” retrofit their pickup trucks to “trick” the diesel engines into thinking they need more gas. The result: big, billowing plumes of black smoke — the better to spew at Priuses and […]
Talking Headways Special Episode: Walt Disney, City Planner
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While most people know Walt Disney as the creator of lovable characters like Mickey Mouse and movies like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Fantasia,” Disney doesn’t get as much credit for his design of Disneyland. Turns out Disney made himself an expert on the subject. This podcast isn’t a typical Talking Headways conversation. […]
Paris Vélib’ Launches Bike-Share for Kids
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While in the U.S., bike-share systems are issuing threatening letters to parents who invent ways to tote their kids along, Paris is pioneering bike-share for the under-10 set. As far as we know, P’tit Vélib’ is the first of its kind in the world. In June, Vélib’ made 300 kids’ bikes available in five locations […]
Arizona Police Arrest “Jaywalking” Professor in Racially-Charged Incident
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Arizona earned its reputation for police excess yet again recently when an officer demanded identification of an African-American pedestrian — for the crime of walking in a campus street to avoid construction on the sidewalk — and got violent when she refused to produce it. Arizona State University professor Ersula Ore was walking around some […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Helmet Hair
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Did you wear your helmet when you biked to work this morning? Whether you did or you didn’t, it’s up to you. So why are there so many people shrieking about it? On one side, the 85-percenters, overstating the protection helmets offer against head injuries. On the other side, the 3-footers, claiming that it’s actually […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Rondo Revisited
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Finally, there is a light rail line connecting the Twin Cities. The Green Line, running 11 miles from Union Depot in downtown St. Paul to Target Field in downtown Minneapolis, cost $957 million and took decades to build. The process of choosing stations was contentious but eventually incorporated the proposals of low-income communities that wanted […]
Is Philly’s 24-Hour Subway Service the Wave of the Future?
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This weekend, Philadelphia ran subways all night on two of its lines for the first time in 23 years, and ridership jumped. The city normally runs a night-owl bus that mirrors the subway between midnight and 5 a.m., but the early Sunday morning subway ridership this weekend was 35 percent higher than the average for […]
The “Worst Cities for Driving” Include a Lot of America’s Best Cities
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Don’t you just hate going to a really lively city with a pulsing street life? Where there’s a lot going on and people can walk from one place to the next? You might if you’re trying to drive there. And once again, NerdWallet has delivered the windshield perspective on America’s cities. The pop-finance website’s new […]