Tanya Snyder

The 47 members of the transportation bill conference committee have a lot on their plates: The Senate's MAP-21 bill includes many provisions Republicans don't like, the House slapped controversial "poison pills" onto its non-bill, and chair Barbara Boxer wants this all wrapped up in a few weeks.

This morning, a Minnesota Public Radio host asked me if the exurbs, whose growth rate flattened when the recession hit, are going to come back. Lots of people from far-distant suburbs like Blaine and Farmington called in, saying they like the way of life out there – they like having acres of trees buffering them from their nearest neighbor -- and people won’t want to stop living in communities like that.

The brilliant thing about car-sharing is that it leads people to drive less by providing access to cars. It allows people to give up their personal vehicles (along with the gas, maintenance, parking, and insurance costs they entail) without giving up the ability to use the car once in a while when necessary. It diminishes the need for parking spaces, since one vehicle can serve several households. And it makes people think harder about the trips they take, since each trip constitutes a higher cost than in a personal vehicle, which come with high upfront costs but low per-trip costs, encouraging more driving just to get your money's worth out of your investment.

The people behind Walk Score, the real estate rating service that goes by the slogan “Drive Less, Live More,” are out with a new rating system, based on hard data, that should prove useful to prospective city dwellers: Bike Score.

Everyone's trying to figure out why, after decades of consistent growth, the amount Americans drive is leveling off and even declining. The decline started during the recession, to be sure, but was more dramatic than in previous recessions. As the economy began to get back on its feet, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) just barely ticked upward -- and then fell again.

The first meeting of the transportation bill conference committee is today at 3:00. (To familiarize yourself with the participants, see Ben's reports on the House and Senate conferees.) We'll be live-blogging it, beginning to end.

Though many transportation reformers, economists and environmentalists would say that gas prices aren’t nearly high enough to disincentivize single-occupancy-vehicle use and to pay for the external harms, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill take it for granted that gas prices are too damn high. In fact, it's one of the very, very few things that they do agree on these days. And it's a message that resonates with their constituents, who are suffering under a sluggish economy.

If you ever doubted whether a small investment in biking and walking could have a large impact, here is your proof.