My wife and I attended our first political caucus ever. There was a huge turnout, with a long line of cars trying to get into the Northfield Middle School for the Democratic Party caucuses. We had our 3-year old and our six-week old with us so could only stay long enough to cast a ballot for the presidential election. I cast mine for Barack Obama, as did about two-thirds of caucus-goers statewide.

The event would have gone much smoother if the caucuses had been spread over multiple sites rather than located at just one site. The transportation snafu shows that it’s very hard for everyone in a town to descend on one site at the same time using automobiles. Cars work well for transportation, except when a lot of people are trying to drive on the same road at the same time.

I won’t add much to the oceans of political commentary that are already out there, except to hope that Obama can be the nominee for the Democrats. I admire Hillary Clinton’s tenacity, but I’m not much for political dynasties, and I fear she would have a harder time winning in November. One observation: if Obama lost to Clinton in rural areas, is it because rural America is not ready to support a black candidate? Perhaps that’s not a fair assumption, but I suspect it may be true.

On the morning of my talk to the Northfield Rotary, the StarTribune published a story on a recent report by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and the Minnesota Department of Health: “Obesity and Future Health Care Costs: A Portrait of Two Minnesotas.” (Executive summary also available.) The report is a collaboration between Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Health, and the Minnesota State Demographer. It is based on research by Kenneth E. Thorpe, Ph.D., of Emory University.

According to the StarTribune article, these are the key findings of the report:

• If Minnesotans pack on the pounds at current rates, fewer than one fourth will be a healthy weight by 2020, according to projections in the study prepared by Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of health policy and management at Emory University in Atlanta.

• Treatment costs for overweight or obese people will be 61 percent more by 2020 than for people of healthy weight.

• Unless rates go down, health problems related to overweight and obesity will account for 31 percent of the increase in health care costs projected to occur by 2020.

• That would add $900 million a year to the health care tab for Minnesota by 2010 and $3.7 billion a year by 2020.

I was particularly struck by this question and the answer from the StarTribune article. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, January 31, I spoke to the Northfield Rotary Club about the Northfield Area Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation, on which I serve as chair. I began by explaining how I got involved in bike and pedestrian advocacy. I didn’t put it quite this way in the talk, but I’ve come to view my advocacy as really a coincidence resulting from the special character of the last two cities I’ve lived in: Davis, California, and my current city of residence, Northfield, Minnesota. Davis showed me what was possible for nonmotorized transportation in cities, while Northfield encouraged me with its potential and its people - people who agreed that Northfield could make important strides in healthier modes of transportation.

The bulk of my talk to Rotary addressed the reasons that communities should promote cycling and walking and the mission and goals of the task force. As far as the reasons for promoting nonmotorized transportation, I focused on energy issues and health issues, with more emphasis on the latter. Regarding energy, I displayed a slide showing the vastly different energy requirements for propelling a pedestrian or cyclist as compared to a person in a motor vehicle. Of course this is a function of the difference in the weight of the vehicles (or lack of vehicle) involved. Here are the examples of vehicle weights that I gave: Read the rest of this entry »