Melissa Krull
Melissa Krull reports on how transportation, tourism and local infrastructure intersect with everyday life, with a focus on how costs, access and policy decisions affect people and businesses. She covers stories that connect fuel prices, road travel and community services to broader economic and quality-of-life questions, rather than treating automobile topics as purely technical or consumer-focused.
Transportation costs and tourism impact
Krull regularly examines how fuel prices and travel costs shape tourism and leisure activity, using on-the-ground reporting to capture the perspective of travelers and local businesses.
In her coverage of whether fuel prices are impacting tourism, she explores how gasoline costs factor into family trip planning, regional visitor numbers and the health of local attractions and hospitality businesses. She tends to frame automobile-related issues through their downstream effects on tourism-dependent communities, highlighting both economic pressures and the resilience strategies people adopt.
Workforce and service access around mobility
Beyond travel and tourism, Krull reports on how transportation realities affect access to essential services, with recurring attention to workforce gaps and rural or regional mobility. Recent work includes coverage of bus driver shortages at New York school districts, where she focuses on how staffing shortfalls translate into route changes, longer rides for students and operational strain for districts. She also reports on expansions in rural healthcare networks, tying in transportation distance and road travel as practical barriers or enablers of care. Across these stories, automobile use, road conditions and travel time are treated as core elements of whether services actually reach the people they are intended to serve.
Community infrastructure and local policy decisions
Krull’s reporting frequently situates transportation and automobile use within broader community infrastructure and policy debates.
Her work on local rezoning decisions shows how changes to land use and development rules can alter traffic patterns, accessibility and the character of neighborhoods. She covers municipal and regional decision-making through the lived impact on residents, asking what new development means for congestion, parking, pedestrian safety and the way people move through their communities.
This emphasis on local policy connects her automobile coverage to zoning, planning and public investment rather than isolating it as a consumer beat.
Human-centered, field-driven reporting
Across assignments, Krull works as a multimedia reporter who spends time in the field with the people affected by transportation and infrastructure issues.
Her stories are built around direct interviews with drivers, business owners, parents, patients and local officials, supported by clear descriptions of the settings where they live and work. She balances individual anecdotes with concise explanations of the relevant systems - tourism economies, school transportation networks, healthcare service regions - so that automobile topics are always anchored in a wider context. The through-line in her work is a practical, human-centered lens on how travel by car, bus or other road transport shapes access, opportunity and daily routines.
4 more automobile journalists.
Aarian Marshall
Aarian Marshall is a staff writer at WIRED who stands out for covering how cars, software, and policy collide. She writes on transportation systems and cities, from the auto industry to broader mobility systems. Before WIRED, she reported on cities and urban policy for The Atlantic’s CityLab. Her beat runs from electric vehicles, fuel prices, tariffs, and car-buying decisions to autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, and software-defined cars. She reports with a systems view, linking policy shifts, technical failures, and urban life to what happens on streets, in repair shops, and at the pump.
Abby Smith
Abby Smith’s most distinctive work combines motorsports coverage with live digital and radio reporting. She is Digital Director at KRDO13 and covers the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, including race updates, weather shifts, breaking developments and ways to follow the action. Her beat also includes automotive news, crime, public safety, politics, city government and community life. Notable work includes coverage of homicide arrests, a major drug bust, a presidential address about the war with Iran, a family’s effort to bring Stephen Hubbard home, a state governor candidate and a city security ordinance. She also reports on fitness, school spirit and station staff. Smith writes in a concise, factual style shaped by investigative documentary experience. She turns live events, official announcements and daily developments into clear coverage across digital and radio platforms.
Adele Peters
Adele Peters covers climate solutions and other structural problems as design and policy questions, focusing on what can work in practice. She is a senior writer at Fast Company, where she reports on energy, transportation, housing, materials, agriculture, corporate sustainability, and social impact. Her stories examine climate technologies, grid resilience, electric vehicles, renewable energy, modular construction, homelessness, affordable housing, compostable materials, regenerative agriculture, and ecosystem restoration. She looks at whether projects can scale, their real-world constraints, and their measurable effects. She interviews political and philanthropic leaders, startup founders, and climate tech entrepreneurs, anchoring stories in what is being built and tested. She has written more than 3,000 stories and contributed to Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and State of Housing Design 2023.
Adrian Leung
Adrian Leung writes engineering-led coverage of Chinese electric vehicles and performance cars for CarNewsChina. He focuses on new energy vehicles, battery systems, powertrains, electric platforms, high-end domestic brands, and track-ready models, and he explains technical details in plain language for non-specialist readers. His reporting treats new models as hardware and systems stories, with precise figures on range, battery capacity, chassis layout, motor outputs, weight, and acceleration. He also covers the Chinese auto industry’s finances and technology roadmap, including sector profits, vehicle volumes, and solid-state battery timelines. His background in Electrical and Computer Engineering shows in the way he writes about vehicle electronics and battery management.