Tanya Snyder

The most significant part of the fiscal cliff deal for transportation was the bump that some transit riders got in the form of a commuter tax break that's now on par with what drivers get. There are two more minor elements in the bill for transportation -- both of them random enough to fit into the Washington Post's list of "weird" provisions in the deal -- but Congress punted on the bigger questions for another two months.

Happy Holidays, Streetsblog readers! I hope this missive finds you stuffed silly with sugar cookies.

We're getting ready to enjoy a holiday staycation filled with cookie parties, home projects, and baby presents with packaging that's way more fun than the gift itself. We wish you, dear reader, the happiest of holidays and most auspicious of new years.

Senate titan Daniel Inouye passed away Monday at 88. The Hawaii senator was the longest-serving member in the chamber at the time he died.

Matt Yglesias made an excellent point about NIMBYs over at Slate yesterday. Writing about opposition to multifamily residential construction in the tony neighborhood near Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, Yglesias wondered how much value residents really place on keeping the area a "single-family residential community."

Oahu, Hawaii should be the ideal place to walk for transportation, but it has the nation’s highest pedestrian fatality rate for senior citizens – more than twice the next-highest state. So the state enacted a Complete Streets policy in 2009, seeking to “reasonably accommodate” everyone -- “pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, motorists, and persons of all ages and abilities” -- on public roadways.

Walk Score came out with its bikeability rankings in the spring, but they were only at the citywide level. If you wanted to plug in your address and come up with a custom rating for your own address, like you can with Walk Score, the system wasn't quite ready. That all changes today. Using an algorithm that takes into account factors including bike infrastructure, topography, and the number of cyclists on the streets, Walk Score has released "Bike Scores" for addresses in 25 American cities and 11 Canadian cities.

Fiscal Cliff Deal Suddenly Doesn’t Seem So Impossible (WaPo) Conservatives Freak Out About Post-Sandy Transpo Spending (National Review, Heritage) Why Telework Bombed Among Federal Employees (Federal Times) Train Travel Makes a Comeback (MSN Money) Alaska Won’t Destroy Nature Refuge to Reduce Paralyzing 3-Minute Congestion Delays (ADN) Crowd-Sourced Transpo Apps Make Transit Riders Happy, Encourage Distracted Driving … Continued

In June, the House of Representatives voted to ban U.S. DOT from even studying the viability of switching from the gas tax to a vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) fee. But the tide may be turning: The sponsor of the amendment, Rep. Chip Cravaack, has been ousted from Congress, the amendment itself is on the skids, and a new bill would actually require the government to study the VMT option.