Tanya Snyder

Sen. Jay Rockefeller is expected to announce later today that he won't run for re-election in 2014. The West Virginia Democrat will have served 30 years in the Senate. He chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, one of the four Senate committees – though probably the least of the four – that crafts the surface transportation authorization, with a focus on rail.

Any Women Among Possible U.S. DOT Picks? (If LaHood Leaves, That Is) (The Hill, WaPo) Why Settle For Parity? Eliminate the Parking Tax Benefit (Switchboard) TSTC Takes Stock of the Transpo News From 2012 And What’s In Store For 2013 New FTA Rules Will Better Link Transportation Policy With Housing (U.S. News) Amtrak Pushes Forward With Improvement … Continued

Here's the big news of the day: Autonomous cars are making a big splash at the Consumer Electronics Show right now. Audi is testing its self-driving cars on Nevada roads. Google's already done it in California. Toyota and Lexus are getting ready too.

A White House official yesterday named three Cabinet members who are staying on for Obama's second term and set off a firestorm of speculation about those he didn't name -- among them, Ray LaHood.

LaHood Isn’t on Unofficial List of Secretaries Returning For Second Term (JOC, The Hill) With Kerry and Hutchison Out of the Senate, Who Will Speak For the Infrastructure Bank? (Politico) Reason Comes Out With User-Pays Doctrine Just As McDonnell Nixes It in VA (Wonkette) So It Stands to Reason That Conservatives Don’t Quite Know What to … Continued

The 15,753 golf courses in the United States take up more space than half the state of New Jersey. And though they devour so much land, much of it in suburbia, the sport is foundering -- in part because of the enormous amount of time and distance it requires. Some real estate professionals and experts on aging have come together to suggest a solution both for the decline of the game and the land use problems posed by these massive courses: Build mixed-use development inside them.

Who will be looking out for the interests of transit riders in the 113th Congress? It’s easy to figure it out, said Cap’n Transit over the weekend: Just check whether they have an R or a D next to their names.

Report Recommends BRT For NYC As Hedge Against Future Storms (Transpo Nation) LA Targets Infrastructure Repair With New Property Tax Measure (LAT) How DC Came to Be the Undisputed King of U.S. Bike-Sharing (Slate) DC Wants It All: Transit, Bikes, Traffic Management and Road Widening (WaPo) More Noise Pollution, Please: How to Save Pedestrians From … Continued

It's well-established that density and mixed-use development reduce driving. Right? But strategies like those don’t work the same way everywhere, according to new research published in the Journal of Transport and Land Use. While in major cities, denser development is linked to lower rates of driving, researchers found that in smaller cities it might not have much effect at all. The research suggests that for smaller cities, a focus on reducing block sizes and improving street connectivity may be the most effective way to cut down on driving, though the authors caution that more research is needed to draw universal conclusions.

Perhaps Rep. John Mica's most remarkable legacy as chair of the House Transportation Committee is the single-minded focus he gave to attacking Amtrak. Under the guise of wanting it to succeed, Mica has repeatedly excoriated it as a "Soviet-style monopoly" and a waste of taxpayer dollars. He's tried to sell off its only profitable line, the Northeast Corridor, and made a mockery of every aspect of its operations, right down to food service. If there's anything he got more glee out of criticizing, it was the Transportation Security Administration.