The data also ignores the fact that walking leads to a healthier lifestyle which means living longer, which is more costly than not living longer.
Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
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Re: Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
#12This should not really be very surprising as walking is not very efficient. You should be comparing driving to cycling, as both are wheeled forms of transportation. Cycling is up to 5x more efficient than walking (https://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/humanpower1.html)
So, if you compare driving to cycling, cycling wins hands down. And, this is with the artificially low cost of fossil fuels. If fossil fuels properly factored in all the environmental damage, cycling's efficiency advantage would be even higher.
Re: Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
#13Except your food expenditures are a sunk cost, and you can't replace them with fuel expenditures.
This is literally comparing apples and gasoline.
Re: Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
#14How about the cost of manufacturing a car, which has a cost in fuel? Also, most of the cost of food is labor for its preparation. You're paying for a lot more than just calories. Food is not made to be energy dense like gasoline, it's made to be tasty and nutritious.
Re: Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
#15Interesting thought. So going to the gym is literally burning your money. Will quit in the morning. Thanks
Re: Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
#16The math on walking, at least, seems little off: 210 calories per hour divided by 2.5 miles per hour is 84 calories per mile, which is about 23.5¢ per mile.
Also the cost of driving should really use the average fleet fuel economy of a country together with the fuel price in that country. That works out to a hair under 10¢ per mile for 2014 fuel economy and today's gas prices.
The takeaways remain the same, though: Human-powered transportation isn't especially efficient (unless you're burning calories you would have eaten anyway), and driving is subsidized up the wazoo in the US.
Re: Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
#17It's also interesting to consider this calculation from a carbon emission perspective. From Climate impacts of biking vs. driving : http://www.keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog/climate-impacts-of-bi... If you eat a lot of meat and bike, you could potentially have a bigger carbon footprint than a very fuel efficient vehicle.
That's what I hoped this article was about when I saw the headline. I was disappointed it was only about the $ cost of food and not the externalities.
Thanks for sharing. It's interesting to see though that a biking paleo dieter is still 2x as efficient from a passenger-mile standpoint as a roughly average 25 mpg vehicle, and the average US diet is still better than a double occupancy Prius.
Re: Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
#18I've seen a number of people wearing versions of this shirt: https://www.missionbicycle.com/store/home/gift/53-miles-burr... Although if Wikipedia's energy figure is right, that's a 2279 kcal burrito (which you could probably find somewhere in San Francisco, but...).
Oh, burritos can easily get into the 2000+ kcal range. Burritos from Chipotle get well into the 1000–2000 kcal range without even trying.
Re: Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
#19Another data point: a light electric vehicle (ebike, boosted board, etc.) is about 1-2¢ per mile (~100-200 Watt-hours per mile at 10¢ per kilowatt-hour).
Re: Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
#20Except your food expenditures are a sunk cost, and you can't replace them with fuel expenditures. This is literally comparing apples and gasoline.
Not exactly. If you were on a maintenance diet and started biking to work, but didn't replace those calories, you'd eventually waste away.
Your body's signals for how hungry you are will not exactly, but still fairly closely, match the calories you burn picking up your new biking habit.