Tanya Snyder
Recent Posts
US Senate Committee Moves to Eliminate TIGER Program in Next Transpo Bill
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The Republican-controlled Senate is poised to eliminate the TIGER program, one of the few sources of federal funds that cities can access directly to improve streets and transit. While the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s outline for its portion of a six-year bill was a marginal improvement on the status quo, the Commerce Committee’s […]
How to Undermine Transit: Surround it with Sprawl
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New Jersey is the most population-dense state in the country, and many residents get to work via one of its several transit systems. But too many of New Jersey’s transit stations are surrounded by single-family housing, severely limiting the number of people — especially low-income people — with convenient, walkable access to transit. Some entire […]
Scott Walker’s Own Party Rejects His Milwaukee Highway Boondoggle
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Governor Scott Walker might be too busy campaigning for president to care, but the Wisconsin legislature handed him a rebuke last week, rejecting his plans for debt-fueled highway expansion. The Republican-controlled legislature’s Joint Finance Committee trimmed about 35 percent off Walker’s proposed $1.3 billion in borrowing for highways. If approved by the Assembly and Senate […]
Can a New Way to Measure Streets Help Advocates Tame Speeding?
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You’ve heard of sensors that can count cars or bikes. Tools like that can help transportation planners make smarter decisions about where bike infrastructure is needed, for example. A new digital tool called Placemeter aims to measure streets at a much more fine-grained level, analyzing a variety of different aspects of movement in an urban environment. […]
Senate Committee Passes DRIVE Act Unanimously After Some Tinkering
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Given the bipartisan gushing that accompanied the release of the DRIVE Act on Tuesday, it came as no surprise that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed the bill unanimously yesterday, with more gushing for good measure. None of the 30-odd amendments offered for the DRIVE Act passed, but the committee leadership did accept […]
Inhofe’s DRIVE Act — Not as Big a Disaster as You Might Think
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No, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s new six-year bill, obnoxiously named the DRIVE Act (Developing a Reliable and Innovative Vision for the Economy) [PDF], won’t usher in a more enlightened era of federal transportation policy. But neither would it be a significant step backward. And with the realization setting in that further extensions […]
Playable Cities Are Livable Cities
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Play is so important to kids’ physical, mental, and social development that the United Nations considers it a human right. But not all cities fulfill these rights equally. What the nonprofit KaBOOM! calls a playful or playable city, others might call simply a kid-friendly city. While suburbs get most of the glory for having space […]
Brace Yourself: Here Comes Another Attack on Bike/Ped Funding
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If petty Congressional attacks on bike/ped funding were a drinking game, you’d be drunk by now. And now two House Republicans want to pour you another shot. Reps. Sam Johnson (TX) and Vicky Hartzler (MO) have introduced a bill to eliminate the Transportation Alternatives Program, the largest source of federal funding for biking and walking […]
The Top 100 Neighborhoods for Bicycle Commuting Have a 21% Mode Share
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City rankings of bike-friendliness — while fabulous click-bait for their purveyors — obscure dramatic differences among neighborhoods. Los Angeles doesn’t appear on any cycling top 10 lists, but the area to the north and west of the University of Southern California has a 20 percent bicycle mode share. The city of Miami Beach is no […]