The Efficiency of the Bicycle

The most efficient transportation machine homo sapiens sapiens has ever built is the bicycle. It is the only transportation machine that is more effecient than walking. Modern trains can transport one person one mile using 210 KiloCalories. A bicycle can transport one person one mile using 20 KiloCalories, the energy in about one bite of a banana. A mid-sized car on the other hand can transport one person one mile using 3 times as much energy as a train, or 30 times as much energy as a bicycle. 99 percent of the energy delivered by the rider into the pedals is transmitted into the wheels. Only about 15 percent of the energy delivered from a car engine is transferred to the wheels.

Obviously, trains and cars can provide speed that a bicycle cannot provide. However, cars do many of the jobs that bicycles should be doing. Short distance trips to work or a store do not require a car. The problem is that infrastructure and economy of the U.S. is set up to promote cheap oil production and consumption, displayed here in the form of the personal car. Everything from the highways, extremely wide suburban roads, vast asphalt parking lots (all structures made with petroleum based materials) to the visual prominence of the garage in suburban houses, the sprawled layout of municipalities, and size of shopping carts supports cheap oil and cars and discourages pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Are there designated bike lanes in most of the U.S. cities and towns going from residential to commercial areas? (The new bike trail movement promotes recreational biking, not biking as a means of transport and utility.) Are there tax incentives for purchasing and maintaining bikes? Is the federal government giving billions of dollars a year in subsidies to bike manufacturers?

Sprawl and the automobile also have dangerous public health consequences. Residents of low-density communities are more likely to be the victims of automobile accidents and more likely to be obese. Obesity and car accidents have quickly become the leading causes of death in the U.S. Car accidents are the leading cause in the U.S. for people between the ages of 3 and 34, while health issues relating to obesity--largely heart disease and diabetes--rank in the top three for much of that age group and number one or two for people 35 and older.

Being a participant in a descent culture means utilizing bikes for transportation. Bikes are elegantly efficient machines that are almost independent of dirty energy, promoters of individual and community health, more dense human populations, narrower roads with slower, less dangerous traffic, and revegetated natural landscapes. In more dense communities, bikes with trailers can generate revenue by hauling resources, collecting trash, recyclables, and organics like the Pedal People of Northhampton, MA, and taxiing people. Bikes can also be used to generate pedal power, a small scale or domestic energy generation that could power small appliances or perform tasks--grinding, stirring, pumping--now done by electric machines manufactured with built-in obsolescence.