Tanya Snyder

If you still have to juggle multiple farecards for the various transit systems in your area -- or if urgent maintenance issues in the city core are going unattended while the suburbs get a shiny new station -- the problem might run deeper than the incompetence everyone is grumbling about. The root of it all might be embedded in the very structure of the agencies that govern your transit system.

Fracking Boom Has Turned Texas Highways Into the Nation’s Deadliest (NPR) Why New Jersey Spends 8 Times the National Average on Roads (USA Today) Texas Voters to Decide Whether to Spend Rainy Day Fund on Roads (KFOX14) Number 12 in the California HSR Chronicles: Commute Logistics (Atlantic) Boston’s Beacon Street Is Designed for Speed (Walking … Continued

Why don’t women bike as much as men? It’s a question that’s been getting a lot of press for the last three years or so since the explosion of Women Bike onto the national advocacy scene. Only about 24 percent of bikes on the street have women’s butts on them. What’s going on?

Special guest Damien Newton of Streetsblog LA joins Jeff and me on this episode to tell us all about the Los Angeles DOT's new strategic plan, which includes a Vision Zero goal: zero traffic deaths by 2025, a vision all of our cities should get behind. He walks us through the oddities of LA politics and the pitfalls that may await the plan, as well as one really good reason it could succeed. (Her name is Seleta Reynolds.)

High-occupancy vehicle lanes can help incentivize carpooling (and let solo drivers sit in punishing congestion). But too often, transportation agencies spend millions of dollars to widen the road to make carpool lanes, instead of simply designating existing lanes. To recoup some of the expense, the agencies also let drivers pay to use the new "high-occupancy/toll lane."

The Tolling Industry’s Take on the Administration’s Infrastructure Summit (HuffPo) Indiana Tries to Summon Political Courage to Tackle Transpo Funding Shortfall (WISH-TV) DC Metro Red Line to Close on Weekends in 2016 for Repairs (GGW) Jeff Speck: Ban the 12-Foot Traffic Lane! (CityLab) As More People Move to Downtowns, Transit Infrastructure Can’t Keep Up (Star) … Continued

Kaid Benfield's new blog post on density is getting a lot of buzz over at NRDC's Switchboard blog. Benfield, a planner/lawyer/professor/writer who co-founded both LEED's Neighborhood Development rating system and the Smart Growth America coalition, has some serious street cred when it comes to these matters. And on this one, he's with Danish architect Jan Gehl, who says wonderful places are built at human-scale density -- three to six stories.

NYT Editorial: U.S. DOT Is Taking Too Long to Require Trucker Training Even If the U.S. Opened High-Speed Rail Today, We’d Be 50 Years Behind Japan (Business Insider) Gov. Rick Snyder Says Transportation Is a Priority in Michigan’s Lame Duck (Crain’s) Utah’s Transit and Smart Growth Investments Have Paid Off in Shorter Commutes (AP) The Fault … Continued

Jeff is back from Rail~volution with all the highlights from the sessions he skipped because he was deep in conversation in the hallways. Isn't that what conferences are for? We discuss what we do and don't get out of these big meetings.

Four years ago, White Flint, a neighborhood of North Bethesda, Maryland, most known for its shopping mall, caught the attention of urbanists around the nation with a proposal to reimagine car-oriented suburban streets as a walkable, mixed-use, transit-oriented neighborhood. Montgomery County adopted a plan for the town that would narrow its wide arterial roadways and make them safe and accommodating for transit riders, bicyclists, and pedestrians. It was hailed as a model for other suburbs around the nation looking to become less sprawling and more walkable.