"Man on a bicycle can go
three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy
in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road
at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to
match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped
with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all
other animals as well. The bicycle lifted man’s auto-mobility into a new
order, beyond which progress is theoretically not possible."
"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."
From
the 1978 book "Energy and Equity by the late Austrian philosopher
and ‘maverick social critic’ Ivan Illich (1926 – 2002).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich
This is why there is so much hostilely to the bike by government and business. Imagine all the corporations and the billionaires they support, that would disappear if people cycle instead of used the car.
ReplyDeleteAnon comment received via email:
ReplyDelete"Depends whether you want to lose calories/weight doesn’t it."
I presume their referring to the health benefits of cycling. Why would someone not want to be fitter and healthier?