Tanya Snyder

After a long period of inaction on Capitol Hill, the wheels are beginning to turn again. Lawmakers introduced not one but two good transportation-related bills yesterday: one that aims to improve the safety of walking and biking and one that would establish a national infrastructure bank.

The official 2012 death toll is out for our nation's poorly-designed, auto-centric transportation system. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, traffic injuries on the nation's roadways claimed the lives of 33,561 people. The headline of the agency's press release, "NHTSA Data Confirms Traffic Fatalities Increased In 2012," is quickly walked back by the subhed, which attempts a silver lining: "Highway deaths over the past 5 years remain at historic lows."

A few years ago, the Center for Neighborhood Technology gave a wonderful gift to urbanists and planners: the Housing + Transportation Index. This simple calculation clarified and popularized a key concept: that transportation costs must be taken into account in any measurement of “affordability.”

Ray LaHood Makes Clear His Distracted Driving Crusade Left a Lot of Business Unfinished (HuffPo) Washington Governor Calls Legislature Back for Special Transportation Session (Land Line) How Hawaii Is Trying to Become More Pedestrian-Friendly (Skift) Businesses Seeking to Lure the “Creative Class” Push for Raleigh Area Transit (News & Observer) Seattle Transit Cuts Could Hurt … Continued

Law professor Frank H. Buckley seems to want to be the next Dororthy Rabinowitz. That is, he wants to gain notoriety by clinging to old and unsafe street designs while, simultaneously, shoring up the Wall Street Journal's reputation as a bastion of change-averse curmudgeons. Done and done.

New York Times Asks: Is It OK to Kill Cyclists? It’s Not Just Transit — Most Other Transpo Funding Measures Passed in Tuesday’s Elections (ARTBA) Obama Pushes for Infrastructure Improvement (NYT) Transpo Funding Bills Run Up Against End of Session in PA, WA (Mercury, Seattle Times) Michigan, Oklahoma Slow Down Transpo Spending Amid Funding Crunch (Daily … Continued

If you’ve ever looked deep into the abyss of partisan gridlock and anti-tax paranoia and wondered where the bottom was -- well, Seattle might be approaching it right now. Facing a massive budget gap -- caused largely by the antagonism and negligence of state legislators -- Metro Transit has announced a plan to cut spending 17 percent by eliminating 74 bus routes.

Yesterday was a relatively quiet election day for transportation-related ballot measures, but of the six transit initiatives that came before voters yesterday, five six passed, with a sixth seventh too close to call. That’s in line with last year’s 79 percent success rate -- 71 percent since 2000. When asked, voters overwhelmingly choose to raise their own taxes to improve public transportation.

Talking Points as DC Prepares to Debate the Height Limit (GGW) Washingtonian Profiles Planning Director Harriet Tregoning, “Change Agent” … Meanwhile, Tregoning’s Critics Held a Dance Party to Protest Her (Washington City Paper) How to Make Your Chamber of Commerce a Machine for Cycling Activism (Advocacy Advance) A Book on the History — And the … Continued

Behold, Streetsblog's brand-new podcast! In what we aim to turn into a recurring feature, Reconnecting America's Jeff Wood and I recently chatted about the week's news in livable streets, urbanism, and sustainable transportation. The topics are drawn from Jeff's excellent daily compendium of transportation and planning links, The Direct Transfer, and from stories we're tracking at Streetsblog Capitol Hill. It's a treat for me to get back to producing audio -- I was a radio reporter before joining Streetsblog.