Streetsblog

Introducing Streetsblog Capitol Hill

By Aaron Naparstek

11:55 AM EDT on June 9, 2009

We are excited to announce the official launch of Streetsblog Capitol Hill. With major transportation, climate and energy legislation coming before Congress in the next year or two we felt that it was critical to have a talented journalist down in Washington D.C. covering the issues on a daily basis. With the financial support of the Surdna Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund the Livable Streets Initiative has hired reporter Elana Schor to cover the federal beat for us. DC.Streetsblog.org (as it’s known to your web browser) will be her new home. Sarah Goodyear, editor of our national blog nework, and talented writers like Ryan Avent will be contributing to Streetsblog Capitol Hill as well.

Broadly speaking, we hope to do two things with this new edition of Streetsblog. First, we aim to make it a high-quality daily source for news and analysis of federal transportation policy and related issues. We want to create a blog that is a daily must-read for the advocates, lawmakers, Congressional staffers, urban planning practitioners, policy wonks and lobbyists who are working to shape the future of America’s transportation systems.

Our second goal for Streetsblog Capitol Hill is to help bring outsiders into the federal transportation policy-making process. For decades, transportation policy on Capitol Hill has mostly been an arcane, complex insiders game — a game that’s been played best by highway lobbyists. Streetsblog Capitol Hill will put locally-oriented livable streets advocates on the playing field and help them better understand the rules of the game. As the 293 bloggers who are now members of the Streetsblog Network make clear every day, a vibrant, grassroots movement for sustainable transport, smart growth and livable streets is active and growing increasingly powerful in cities and states nationwide. Streetsblog Capitol Hill will help connect these local activists to the important action taking place inside the Beltway.

The RSS feed for Streetsblog Capitol Hill can be found here.

Aaron Naparstek

Aaron Naparstek is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparstek's journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. He was also one of the original cast members of the "War on Cars" podcast. You can find more of his work on his website.

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