Tanya Snyder

Last week, President Obama announced that amid Congressional dysfunction around transportation funding, he was taking action to foster infrastructure investment and economic growth. The Build America Investment Initiative will provide technical assistance to communities looking for guidance on how to leverage private dollars to build public works. But the initiative doesn’t actually provide any dollars itself.

Just as it seemed like a transportation extension was on the fast track to passage, a Tea Party senator from Utah is gumming up the works -- and the top Republican on the EPW Committee might have a plan to help him.

Yesterday, during the one-hour debate period over the House proposal to extend transportation funding through May 31, lawmaker after lawmaker stood up to condemn the bill. America needs a long-term transportation bill, they said. A short-term stopgap only creates more uncertainty.

All the buzz right now is about Arlington, Virginia -- the DC suburb has seen its population rise and its car traffic drop since the 1980s. How did they do it? It could be a lesson for Palo Alto, California, which is considering various growth proposals, including one that would invite greater density as long as it comes with no additional driving, carbon emissions, or water use.

Childless people, let me let you in on a little secret: Car seats are a huge pain in the ass. They're no big deal if you own a car, I guess, except for the fact that your kid probably squawks at the prospect of being immobilized in that iron maiden too long.

[Thursday] morning, the House Ways and Means Committee passed its plan to prop up the Highway Trust Fund -- which pays for transit and bike/ped infrastructure in addition to roads -- until May 2015. A few hours later, the Senate Finance Committee approved a plan of its own, with no deadline attached.

While a six-year Senate transportation bill languishes in partisan purgatory, the House Ways and Means Committee has proposed an eight-month patch that would backfill the Highway Trust Fund until May 31, 2015. That would punt the transportation bill debate until a new Congress takes over -- one that’s expected to have Republican majorities in both chambers.

Bicyclists, pacificists, and reasonable people everywhere are up in arms today about Courtland Milloy’s outrageous column, published last night on Washington Post’s website, in which he suggests drivers should go ahead and intentionally hit cyclists if they feel like it. By somehow casting people on bicycles as “bullies” and “terrorists” -- for reasons that never become clear -- Milloy sees fit to justify bullying and terrorizing the cyclists themselves.

Warning: The crazies are getting crazier.

Summer is finally here, but livable streets advocates already can’t wait for September to come. The biennial Pro Walk/Pro Bike/Pro Place conference is taking place in Pittsburgh, a city that's shedding its "Rust Belt" image and emerging as a leader in progressive street design with the help of a new mayor who’s committed to biking, walking, and public space.