Originally Posted by Mayonnaise
It is simply not practical to flood our streets with bicycles while it remains vital to society that people and goods get where they're going with the speed, efficiency and comparative safety that motor vehicles provide.
C.R. Green, Albany Park
Efficiency? Efficiency?
Too bad any give newspaper wouldn't take the time to publish the math, but here's a bit of math on efficiency.
Lets say C.R. Green's car gets 20mpg city, a generous notch above the national average.
87 octane (what most people put in the tank) is 31 thousand kilocalories.
that works out to 1550 kilocalories per mile. that means to go 2 miles, CR has to burn enough energy to feed a very athletic person for a day.
for a 160-170lb person, cycling ranges from 7.8 to 15.6 kilocalories a minute depending on speed and hills.
lets say they do 15 miles of a commute, twice a day at about 15mph, burning about 12 kcals a minute.
30miles/15mph = 2 hours = 120 minutes = 1440 kcals round trip
1440kcals/30miles = 48 kcals per mile.
That works out to CR using something like 32 times as much energy to go a given mile.
Others have discussed the increased temporal efficiency. as for safety, I believe
Effective Cycling outlines city-cyclocommuters as the safest bunch in the cycling community. (when you ride through the gauntlet every day, you sorta get used to it)
now I do think I spend more time working on my bike per mile than I would on a car, but what's a few hours of wrenching per week among friends?