Tanya Snyder

DC the Most Walkable City? Depends What Counts As a City (ArchDaily) There’s So Much to Hate About Texas’ Prop 1 — Mostly the Things the Waco Trib Likes Best McAuliffe Administration Wisely Rethinking Virginia’s Road-Building Plans (Roanoke Times) Texas’ Gas Tax Only Covers Half of Transpo Costs, And That Will Keep Dropping (Standard-Times) Rich Donor Brings … Continued

Nine years after launching a program to measure the impact of bike and pedestrian investments in four communities, the Federal Highway Administration credits the program with increasing walking trips by nearly a quarter and biking trips by nearly half, while averting 85 million miles of driving since its inception.

You know the Senate is close to passing transportation legislation when someone introduces a hare-brained amendment to ban bike and pedestrian programs.

Last week, 371 mayors and other city leaders wrote a letter [PDF] to Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, in support of local control over transportation dollars for bike and pedestrian projects.

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 safer to go helmetless because drivers give you more space and a host of other reasons. Some recent hysteria around bike-share and head injuries fueled this fire. I'm not sure Jeff and I put that fire out with our discussion, but we at least tried to make some sense of it.

The push for a long-term transportation bill is slowly giving way to the reality of an utter lack of consensus around a funding mechanism. The chair of the Senate Finance Committee, which is charged with finding that consensus, indicated today that the job just isn’t possible right now. The Hill reports that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has a bill in the works for a short-term extension to keep MAP-21 alive and funded, at least, until the end of the year.

Yesterday, The Huffington Post ran this headline: “White House Appears More Open To A Gas Tax Hike.” Minutes later, The Hill published this one: “White House opposes gas tax hike to fix transportation funding.” So, which is it?

Incoming Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Nixes Gas Tax Plan As “a Democrat Idea” (Transport Topics) Obama Opposes Gas Tax Plan Too (The Hill) The LA Times Supports It, For What It’s Worth LA Mayor Nominates “Bike Hippie” Seleta Reynolds to Run City DOT (Streetsblog LA, Cyclelicious) NYC Mayor De Blasio Signs Vision Zero Bills, Says 25 MPH … Continued

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 them, and the line is already being held up as a model. It's not the fastest way between the two downtowns, but it might be the best way. Jeff and I discuss.

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 bus.