Tanya Snyder

Happy Bike to Work Week, everybody! It's a great time to give a gentle nudge to someone who you think would benefit from biking. In that vein, personal trainer and fitness coach Stephanie Averkamp of San Diego posted this infographic to her personal health website. She says she especially hopes to convince overweight and obese people to bike more.

In a recent study out of Seattle, researchers Erica Wygonik and Anne Goodchild found that having groceries delivered by truck can cut mileage by up to 85 or 95 percent compared to driving a car. "It's like a bus for groceries," Goodchild told NPR. "Overwhelmingly, it's more efficient to be sharing a vehicle, even if it's a little larger."

When we saw that Washington's news-traffic-weather radio station, WTOP, was holding a "Commuter Idle" contest for the worst commute in the DC area -- and rewarding it with $1,000 in gas money -- we couldn't resist. We went looking for the best "Commuter Idyll" -- the trips to work that made people happy, got them fresh air, helped them fit exercise into their day, gave them some extra time to sleep or read, and brought them to work more clear-headed and ready to tackle the day. And Streetsblog readers had lots of great stories to share of ditching long car commutes for transit, biking, or walking. We shared some of them yesterday.

Some of you have some fabulous commutes. Rather than watch the stress-filled minutes and hours tick by stuck in traffic, you go outside, get exercise, and connect with your community.

For many troops who have served in U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combat is just one of many dangers they face. Upon returning home, they have higher rates of suicide, homelessness, and mental illness. Now we can add another threat to the list:  Car crashes.

Deaths from motor vehicle crashes rose 5.3 percent in 2012, according to new numbers from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [PDF]. It's the first time since 2005 that fatalities have gone up. Vehicle miles traveled only rose 0.3 percent last year.

The Partnership for Sustainable Communities has had a rough couple of years. The program got zeroed out of the 2012 budget, and the 2013 budget is just a carbon copy of 2012. But they’re looking to make a comeback.

Before I became your editor here at Streetsblog Capitol Hill, I was a reporter for WTOP, the DC area’s “most-listened-to” radio station. Its traffic reports “on the 8s” helped feed my ire toward auto-centrism – they wasted one out of every 10 minutes of airtime on an unintelligible litany of route numbers and exits. Meanwhile, I only got 35 seconds for actual news stories.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy called for a federal transit funding plan. Two years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson took baby steps toward starting that program, but Johnson’s true transportation legacy was signing the bill that created the Department of Transportation, bringing all modes under one roof.

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx just accepted President Obama’s nomination to be the next transportation secretary.