fatvegan

The model American puts in 1600 hours to get 12500 km: about 8 km per hour.

Energy and Equity

I always wondered about the economics of buying a car and paying for petrol. This book is from a while ago and rather gendered, but I like the fellow and his funny turn of phrase. And boy do I love ball bearings. Apparently the human walking is already one of the most efficient animals - less efficient than rats but. With a bicycle we are by far the most efficient movers. Except for possibly dingos....

Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man’s radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.