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
You Won’t Soon Forget These Photos of Ghost Bikes. That’s Exactly the Point.
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You’ve seen them, locked to signposts on the side of the road. Maybe you’ve helped install one. Maybe you’ve cried at the sight of them. Ghost bikes memorialize people who have been killed while riding bikes. The bikes don’t usually stay up for more than a few weeks or months before the city removes them […]
What, You Thought Congress Would Actually Pass a Transportation Bill?
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The enthusiasm among some lawmakers to finish a multi-year federal transportation bill seems to have fizzled over the long August recess. House Transportation Committee Chair Bill Shuster is already talking about another extension. In July, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell teamed up with Senator Barbara Boxer to craft a three-year transportation bill that bore more […]
Surgeon General’s Warning: Unwalkable Places Are Hazardous to Your Health
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Physical activity is essential to people’s health, but dangerous streets and spread-out, sprawling communities prevent Americans from getting enough of it, says the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy. Murthy issued a call to action this morning to highlight how walking — and building walkable places — can benefit a nation where chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and arthritis […]
Shoes Off, Laptops Out, All Aboard!
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Rail travel has many advantages over flying, like the view out the window, or arriving at a downtown location. Perhaps most importantly: You don’t have to get to the train station an hour early to go through security checkpoints like you do in airports. But last month’s attack on a Paris-bound train has amplified calls to beef up rail […]
Binge Watch This Video Series Profiling Unsung Bike Heroes
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From the creative minds of bike activist and filmmaker Joe Biel and feminist bike ‘zine writer Elly Blue comes a new project that I bet you’re going to love. Groundswell is a series of videos that spotlight grassroots bicycle activists who don’t normally get much glory. Eight videos have been completed — the one above is the first […]
“Share the Road” Signs Don’t Work
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Delaware got rid of its “Share the Road” signs about two years ago. Though the signs were designed to affirm cyclists’ rights to the road, they were widely misinterpreted — by both motorists and cyclists — as an exhortation to cyclists to stop “hogging” the road, or as a recommendation that drivers and cyclists share a lane (leading to tight squeezes and […]
The Appalling Rollback of Truck Safety Provisions in the DRIVE Act
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A battle is brewing over the Senate transportation bill’s approach to truck safety. Though large trucks are involved in crashes that kill nearly 4,000 people a year — a number that has grown by 17 percent over the past five years — the DRIVE Act actually rolls back what few protections exist. The bill would allow […]
Highway Safety Group Tells Pedestrians to Be Safe on Roads Built to Kill Them
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The Governors’ Highway Safety Association wants you to know it’s working really hard on pedestrian and bicycle safety. The coalition of state road safety agencies just put out another report in a series of well-intentioned but off-base attempts to draw attention to the issue. In Everyone Walks: Understanding and Addressing Pedestrian Safety, GHSA notes that pedestrian deaths have […]
Indianapolis Brings Street Life Downtown With a Flurry of Quick Changes
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Indianapolis is building public support for a major street redesign the same way DIYers and tactical urbanists do: by testing out temporary changes. Monument Circle, where the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument stands tall at 285 feet, is a downtown traffic circle and city park with a lot of potential, but with three lanes of traffic whirling around […]
Louisiana Raids Its Maintenance Fund to Pay for Road Expansions
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This year, Louisiana will raid $21.6 million from its road maintenance fund to pay for road projects, including some expansions, that have been on the books since 1989. The state will have to keep stealing from the fund for the next 27 years to pay for them. Voters approved a package of 16 road and bridge […]
People Won’t Ride the Tysons Corner Metro If They Can’t Walk to Stations
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A year after the Washington Metro opened the Silver Line in Northern Virginia, apartment rentals are booming and development is roaring ahead. But Martin Di Caro of WAMU reported Monday that the Metro itself isn’t meeting expectations: Only 17,000 riders board the Silver Line on a typical weekday, a figure that includes more than 9,100 […]
The Key Human Factors That Can Lead Any City to Transform Its Streets
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How did Portland get to be a national model for sustainable transportation and walkable development? Yes, Mayor Neil Goldschmidt stopped the Mount Hood Freeway from being built in 1974 and began negotiations that eventually led to the implementation of the urban growth boundary. But Goldschmidt didn’t do it alone. Grassroots activists from a group called […]