Tanya Snyder

Perhaps it goes without saying, but when you’re advocating for something, it's not enough to make it happen – it has to succeed. If you get what you want and it’s a miserable failure, you’ve made matters far worse for your cause.

The Journal of Commerce reported yesterday that the House Transportation Committee chair, Rep. John Mica (R-FL), is “’pretty confident’ in the assurances he has received in talks with House leaders” that recent changes to House rules wouldn’t jeopardize Highway Trust Fund spending.

With gas prices at their highest level since October 2008, the American Public Transportation Association’s monthly Transit Savings Report estimates that transit riders save, on average, $9,656 a year.

Our hearts are with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords today as she struggles to recover from the brutal attack this weekend. By now you must have heard about Saturday’s shocking massacre in a Tucson supermarket parking lot, leaving six dead and 13 wounded. Among the wounded is the Tucson area Congresswoman, shot point-blank in the head and now fighting for her life.

The headlines have been apocalyptic.

You may have heard last week that a former Shell executive predicted that gas prices would reach five dollars a gallon by the end of next year. John Hofmeister is now the head of Citizens for Affordable Energy, which advocates for increased coal, gas, and oil production in the U.S. He’s also the author of … Continued

The new Congress has been sworn in and John Boehner has been elected Speaker of the House, 241-173. Nancy Pelosi has handed him the (strangely over-sized) gavel and he just took the oath of office. In his acceptance speech, he stressed fiscal discipline and spending cuts.

Slate has posted this map to illustrate the concentration of "food deserts," where large numbers of people don't have access to fresh food. The USDA considers households more than a mile from a supermarket and without access to a car to be in food deserts, often with only convenience-store junk food for nourishment. In 2009, the agency found 2.3 million of these households. Here, Slate shows the preponderance of those households in Appalachia and the Deep South, and on Indian reservations.

You’ve heard it a thousand times from the highway lobby: Roads pay for themselves through "user fees" -- a.k.a. gas taxes and tolls -- whereas transit is a drain on the taxpayer. They use this argument to push for new roads, instead of transit, as fiscally prudent investments.

Transportation advocates, from both the highway and transit lobbies, are up in arms about a proposed change to House rules governing transportation spending. It would jeopardize dedicated transportation funds by changing the rule requiring that a certain level of highway trust fund money be spent each year. According to a letter [PDF] sent to House leadership last week by 21 organizations including AASHTO, APTA, and the Chamber of Commerce: