31–40 of 97 posts
I'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...).
This 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 properl…
> Cycling is up to 5x more efficient than walking "Up to" doesn't mean much. Biking is explicitly considered in the original piece: > Surprisingly, from a pure energy perspective (using the methodology mentioned above), biking, walking, and running are the three most expensive types of transportation listed
Except your food expenditures are a sunk cost, and you can't replace them with fuel expenditures. This is literally comparing apples and gasoline.
Your food expenditures vary with the amount of work you do, no different than your car's fuel expenditures. They are most certainly not a sunk cost for this purpose.
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.
Yes, and one should also account for the reduced tax burden of dying younger.
Except your food expenditures are a sunk cost, and you can't replace them with fuel expenditures. This is literally comparing apples and gasoline.
Not all fuel consumption is the same. Gasoline is way under-priced in the US when traffic, pollution and road construction costs are factored in. On the other hand, high quality, sustainably farmed produce is overpriced, most significantly from sustained subsidies for corn and the associated increase in the cost of arable land.
There is also the cost of getting the food to you. Often the most efficiently produced food will be produced some distance from you and a surprisingly large fraction of the cost will be shipping.
The 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: H…
This 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 properl…
> Cycling is up to 5x more efficient than walking "Up to" doesn't mean much. Biking is explicitly considered in the original piece: > Surprisingly, from a pure energy perspective (using the methodology mentioned above), biking, walking, and running are the three most expensive types of transportation listed
For these reasons it doesn't make much sense to talk about exact figures for energy efficiency of cycling without specifying what type of bicycle, what clothing, what weather conditions, what terrain, what braking technique, how much the rider weighs, their riding position, how fast they're riding, etc. The tires and the drivechain make a noticeable difference too.