Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 7:00AM | Joe Nickol Mikael Colville-Andersen talks about how the selling of fear keeps us in the only non-fear-regulated transportation market, the autombile.
Bicycling, Fear, Health, Public Safety, lifestyle, transportation Monday, August 8, 2011 at 7:00AM | Joe Nickol The American foodscape is changing. No longer able to access customers and connect them to good food through centralization, upstarts and entrepreneurs are ditching the pad site and expensive permanent digs in favor food trucks and carts.
And it's not just about hot dogs and brats.
Food Desert, Health, Localism, Pop Up Retail, choice, food Friday, February 25, 2011 at 8:25AM | Joe Nickol 
For the past 65 years we've been able to hide the true costs of our government-sponsored choice of transportation in a fashion that would either make Bear Stearns jealous or disgusted, depending on who you are I suppose.
Health, congestion, healthcare costs, traffic Education | Health & Wellness | Policy & Spending | Practice | Safety & Welfare | Solvency | Transportation | Urbanism Friday, February 11, 2011 at 8:00AM | Joe Nickol
Updated on Friday, March 25, 2011 at 12:00PM by
Joe Nickol
Daybreak, in South Jordan, Utah, is boldly proving the value of a child's walk. In a stark contrast to the 17% national average, 88% of Daybreak children walk to school. The cost and health savings are significant. Arne Duncan (Dept. of Ed), Shaun Donovan (HUD), Michelle Obama (Let's Move!), and Thomas Frieden (CDC) should get together and figure out where their common interests exist.
The average school district today spends roughly 5% of its operating budget on getting kids to school. This does not take into account the sunk costs of dedicating both on and off-site real estate to the parking, maneuvering, and loading/unloading of kids. School busses typically get 7 MPG at $3.50/gallon and are generally required whether the distance from school is a 1/4 mile or 4 miles. When school district budgets became pinched in the recession, many districts began to push out the minimum distance for providing transportation. As cities and school districts continue their return to solvency, busses may become a thing of the past.
Arne Duncan, Daybreak, Health, Obama, Obesity, School Bussing Sunday, January 23, 2011 at 4:51PM | Joe Nickol Health care reform has for too long focused on simply care and all but ignored the many factors that contribute to our burgeoning health crisis. To worsen matters, parallel efforts by our leadership continue to promote debilitating policies that further compromise our ability to reach a sustainable health care model. Doing so has led to a roundabout and contentious struggle to expand universal coverage for health care that is affordable, equitable, and of the highest quality. If we fail to acknowledge the systemic problems with our health management, we will continue to languish as a country that spends the second highest percentage of our GDP in a health care system that barely cracks the world’s top 50 in overall quality (both according to the WHO).
