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
“Every Street’s Going to Prioritize Pedestrians”: MoveDC’s Lovely Fine Print
| | No Comments
Livable streets advocates all over the country are buzzing about DC’s far-sighted new transportation plan, called MoveDC. So yesterday Streetsblog sat down with some of the people responsible for writing and implementing the plan. I spoke to Matt Brown, the District Department of Transportation’s new acting director; Colleen Hawkinson, strategic planning branch manager at DDOT’s […]
Building a Bike-Ped Data Model That Planners Will Take Seriously
| | No Comments
It’s hard to make the case for public spending on biking and walking without hard data. And quality data has been hard to come by. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is looking to change that. The group has taken on a new project to rigorously measure walking and biking on various corridors, providing baseline data that can […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Les Rues Are Made for Walking
| | No Comments
Last week, Smart Growth America brought us the bad news: More than 47,000 people died while walking between 2003 and 2012. Most victims are killed on high-speed arterial roads. A disproportionate number are elderly or racial minorities. Paris showed us a powerful solution: The city is lowering its default speed limit to 30 kilometers per […]
Talking Headways Podcast: Houston, Transit Paradise?
| | No Comments
Welcome to a super-long extra-bonus episode of Talking Headways! We only took on two topics this week, but we got so enthralled by both of them we just couldn’t shut up. First, we talked to Christof Spieler, a member of Houston Metro, about the “blank-sheet” bus overhaul he helped design. Instead of trying to tweak […]
Mayor Chris Koos of Normal, Illinois: Gutting TIGER Hurts Small Towns
| | No Comments
Last week, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed its transportation bill. The bill is a blueprint for spending $265 billion on surface transportation over six years. It doesn’t include transit or rail provisions yet, and no funding source has been found for it. Streetsblog wanted to hear from a local official about how […]
Deadline Extended! Vote for the Best Rainy/Snowy Picture
| | No Comments
Last week, we brought you the best 10 pictures from our photo contest of biking and walking in the rain and snow. They were pretty beautiful, weren’t they? Well, unfortunately, someone got a little too enthusiastic about his or her favorite pictures and hacked the voting over the weekend. We’ve made a more secure form […]
Talking Headways Podcast: A Deep Dive Into Biking and Walking Census Data
| | No Comments
We were so excited about the first-ever Census report exclusively on biking and walking that we devoted this entire episode of the Talking Headways podcast to an interview with its author, Brian McKenzie. Bike commuting is up 60 percent since 2000, the Census shows, and people with low incomes are by far the biggest proportion […]
Remembering Jim Oberstar, Architect of Federal Bike Funding Programs
| | No Comments
Rep. Jim Oberstar died peacefully in his sleep early Saturday morning at the age of 79. He represented Minnesota’s 8th Congressional district for 18 terms, from 1975 to 2011. Oberstar served on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee the entire time, and as its chair for the last four years. He was known for his passion […]
Could the Strava App Provide the Biking and Walking Data Cities Crave?
| | No Comments
Strava may be making the leap from feel-good gadget for hard core exercise buffs to serious planning tool for cities looking to improve active transportation. Strava is a mobile app that runners and cyclists use to record their activities, track their progress, and see their stats and personal records. Its website shows a bunch of young, […]
Talking Headways Podcast: California Über Alles
| | No Comments
Welcome to our all-California, all-the-time episode of the Talking Headways podcast. We start with a statewide debate over whether $60,000+ Teslas should qualify for tax breaks — or whether any electric vehicles should get tax breaks. Then on to the conversation about how California’s cap-and-trade dollars should be spent. One proposal, from the State Senate […]
How the GROW AMERICA Act Could Modernize Federal Transportation Policy
| | No Comments
Yesterday, U.S. DOT did something it hadn’t done for a decade: submit a surface transportation authorization bill to Congress. And what a bill it is. The $302 billion, four-year GROW AMERICA Act has several major reforms that would shift federal policy in a more multi-modal direction. One big change that we’ve noted before is that […]
Obama Administration Sends Transportation Bill to Congress
| | No Comments
The Obama administration today sent Congress its proposal for a multi-year transportation bill, which it’s calling the GROW AMERICA Act. The bill, based on the budget proposal President Obama released two months ago, relies on corporate tax reform to raise $87 billion to fill the hole in the Highway Trust Fund. The four-year bill would cost $302 billion. […]