Walking consumes more gasoline than driving(ideas.4brad.com)
ideas.4brad.com
Walking consumes more gasoline than driving
http://ideas.4brad.com/holy-cow-walking-consumes-more-gasoline-driving
38 comments
The reasoning isn't dissuading me, it's the cost of living in urban cores (for property) while facing a high probability of my wife or child getting raped or mugged that does.
That, combined with tax incentives for owning property, means I have finally given up my walkable neighborhoods and have embraced the carbon powered lifestyle. A few years ago I'd be the last person who would say that, I protested against highway expansion and pushed for bicycle infrastructure. Now I've given it all up, have moved out into the weeds, and pay the carbon lords prodigious amounts of cash.
If you want walkable, you have to give up nearly everything else and you better love spending all your time in that walkable little neighborhood. I couldn't do it, there's nowhere in a dirty city I want to be badly enough to give up everything else for.
That, combined with tax incentives for owning property, means I have finally given up my walkable neighborhoods and have embraced the carbon powered lifestyle. A few years ago I'd be the last person who would say that, I protested against highway expansion and pushed for bicycle infrastructure. Now I've given it all up, have moved out into the weeds, and pay the carbon lords prodigious amounts of cash.
If you want walkable, you have to give up nearly everything else and you better love spending all your time in that walkable little neighborhood. I couldn't do it, there's nowhere in a dirty city I want to be badly enough to give up everything else for.
Sounds like your problem isn't with walkable neighborhoods either, more the last 60 years or so of urban policy.
America has barely built any walkable neighborhoods since WWII, and in the post-WWII era we left most of the existing ones to rot. Now that such neighborhoods are desirable again, the ones that have survived as pleasant neighborhoods, especially in cities with strong economies, have become hideously expensive. (A lot are still pretty affordable in the Midwest.)
Your individual life choices are reasonable, but they're not an indictment of walkable neighborhoods in general so much as the last 60 years of American urban policy. Of course, suburbs have a broad spectrum, from pre-WWII railroad suburbs where downtown-bound commuters ride transit and kids walk to school, to the Sun Belt's utterly unwalkable sprawling hellscapes. The Milwaukee suburb I grew up in looks an awful lot like expensive central Portland neighborhoods, except it's a lot cheaper and transit is less well-used because downtown Milwaukee isn't doing all that well.
America has barely built any walkable neighborhoods since WWII, and in the post-WWII era we left most of the existing ones to rot. Now that such neighborhoods are desirable again, the ones that have survived as pleasant neighborhoods, especially in cities with strong economies, have become hideously expensive. (A lot are still pretty affordable in the Midwest.)
Your individual life choices are reasonable, but they're not an indictment of walkable neighborhoods in general so much as the last 60 years of American urban policy. Of course, suburbs have a broad spectrum, from pre-WWII railroad suburbs where downtown-bound commuters ride transit and kids walk to school, to the Sun Belt's utterly unwalkable sprawling hellscapes. The Milwaukee suburb I grew up in looks an awful lot like expensive central Portland neighborhoods, except it's a lot cheaper and transit is less well-used because downtown Milwaukee isn't doing all that well.
I had an immediate reaction in the back of my mind to the words 'high probability' and was halfway ready to formulate a comment questioning it when I promptly remembered having someone try to mug me on two separate occasions growing up.. The things one can forget..
It sounds like your only conception of what a walkable city could possibly be is New York City circa the 1980s. Even New York isn't like that anymore, and various European cities offer a wide range of examples too.
Keep in mind that fatal car accidents still far outweigh homicides and that sexual assault - whether you are in suburbs or the cities - are far more likely to be perpetrated by acquaintances than strangers lurking in alleys.
Fair enough. The point I was really going for was that affordable housing in high-density cores typically mean that you're in a "gentrifying" if not outright hostile neighborhood. When I had a child I quickly decided I wanted to let him play outside - and I can't teach a toddler the difference between a junkie and a postman.
> a high probability of my wife or child getting raped or mugged that does
I believe you mean 'higher' as in it's still a pretty low actual probability. Though, this is often a mis-perception from a more effective* media and more informed public versus a more classic spoken word of current events in smaller cities.
*a media based on fear mongering to encourage ratings and viewership.
Then there's the article last week that 40% of women don't fee
I believe you mean 'higher' as in it's still a pretty low actual probability. Though, this is often a mis-perception from a more effective* media and more informed public versus a more classic spoken word of current events in smaller cities.
*a media based on fear mongering to encourage ratings and viewership.
Then there's the article last week that 40% of women don't fee
> a high probability of my wife or child getting raped or mugged that does
I believe you mean 'higher' as in it's still a pretty low actual probability. Though, this is often a mis-perception from a more effective* media and more informed public versus a more classic spoken word of current events in smaller cities.
*a media based on fear mongering to encourage ratings and viewership.
Then there's the article last week that 40% of U.S. women don't feel safe walking their neighborhood streets at night.
I believe you mean 'higher' as in it's still a pretty low actual probability. Though, this is often a mis-perception from a more effective* media and more informed public versus a more classic spoken word of current events in smaller cities.
*a media based on fear mongering to encourage ratings and viewership.
Then there's the article last week that 40% of U.S. women don't feel safe walking their neighborhood streets at night.
I didn't give the article a super-close read, but it seems to assume that people eat proportionately to how much they walk/exercise. Looking around, that seems unlikely to be the case.
It also assumes that walkers and drivers cover the same distance. I don't think that's remotely true. For example I know people who think nothing of driving ten or more miles in order to buy groceries from the trendy grocery store (often, ironically enough, a Whole Foods) instead of the one that's less than a mile from home. Same for bars and restaurants.
I don't see how that's relevant. If it were true that driving is more energy efficient than walking, then if all you cared about was energy efficiency, you'd prefer to drive the shorter distance, assuming the result holds even when driving short distances (which it very well may). (Though the author of the article is suggesting instead that you may want to somehow increase the energy efficiency of walking by more efficiently producing food.)
You might prefer to drive the shorter distance, but that's not a realistic option. Car-centric infrastructure tends to take up a lot of space. The wide multi-lane streets and seas of parking lots you get in communities where driving is the primary mode of transportation massively increase the amount of land area needed to provide the same amount of services, which in turn greatly increases the actual distance being covered. Last time I lived in the 'burbs, the nearest grocery store was 5 miles away, and accessible only by roads with speed limits of 45mph+. Walking or riding a bike to buy a loaf of bread simply wasn't an option.
Whereas part of the reason why it's common for people to not own cars (or own fewer than one car per adult household member) in more walkable communities is that it's simply not practical - cars take up a lot of space that can't be used for other things, and making a community dense enough to permit easy walkability doesn't leave a lot of space left over the swaths of 200 square feet that it takes to temporarily store a car that isn't currently being driven. So the laws of supply and demand place those spaces at a premium.
Whereas part of the reason why it's common for people to not own cars (or own fewer than one car per adult household member) in more walkable communities is that it's simply not practical - cars take up a lot of space that can't be used for other things, and making a community dense enough to permit easy walkability doesn't leave a lot of space left over the swaths of 200 square feet that it takes to temporarily store a car that isn't currently being driven. So the laws of supply and demand place those spaces at a premium.
At the very least it seems to me like the average value is roughly balanced. Anecdotally, people seem to change their eating/exercising habits more frequently than they undergo dramatic shifts in their weight.
In the long run, you can expect your net calorie balance to be zero - you'll lose or gain weight until your BMR equals your net calories. Based on that, and using [1], a 5'10", 25-year-old male weighing 150 pounds would have a BMR of ~1720. If they add 250 calories (approximately 1 snickers bar) per day, they would initially gain about 2 pounds per month and asymptotically approach their new, heavier weight (~190 pounds, >40 pounds more!). If instead they added 250 calories per day worth of exercise without compensating with more food, the opposite would happen, and they'd eventually lose 40 pounds.
It's not like you never see this sort of thing, but it seems to me like most people tend to maintain a pretty stable weight, which makes me think that on average we have some natural inertia when it comes to weight loss or gain.
1. http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/
In the long run, you can expect your net calorie balance to be zero - you'll lose or gain weight until your BMR equals your net calories. Based on that, and using [1], a 5'10", 25-year-old male weighing 150 pounds would have a BMR of ~1720. If they add 250 calories (approximately 1 snickers bar) per day, they would initially gain about 2 pounds per month and asymptotically approach their new, heavier weight (~190 pounds, >40 pounds more!). If instead they added 250 calories per day worth of exercise without compensating with more food, the opposite would happen, and they'd eventually lose 40 pounds.
It's not like you never see this sort of thing, but it seems to me like most people tend to maintain a pretty stable weight, which makes me think that on average we have some natural inertia when it comes to weight loss or gain.
1. http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/
"[P]eople who eat the average diet that they can’t claim their human-powered travel as good for the planet — just good for them."
Unless they were going to do comparable exercise anyway. Biking to work is unequivocally a win over driving to work and after an hour on a stationary bike.
Unless they were going to do comparable exercise anyway. Biking to work is unequivocally a win over driving to work and after an hour on a stationary bike.
Not to mention the fact that this conclusion makes no sense when you consider the fact that one's appetite (and the associated gasoline use of the required food) doesn't increase 1:1 with how many extra calories one burned. This assumes no changes at all in how efficiently your body uses energy and how much energy your body stores on it (in the form of fat).
If people walk regularly they get health benefits. To be accurate this should take into account the energy savings from avoiding healthcare costs. E.g., how much gasoline goes into building an additional hospital, pills, etc?
Transit systems, on average, are only mildly greener than cars. City buses, in fact, use the same energy per passenger mile as typical cars. Light rail is sometimes 2 and rarely even 3 times better than cars, but in some cities like San Jose, it uses almost twice as much energy per actual passenger than passenger cars do..
This would be true if buses and light rail all ran on gasoline, but many don't. In Vancouver, the light rail system is entirely electric, as are about 1/3 of the buses.
This would be true if buses and light rail all ran on gasoline, but many don't. In Vancouver, the light rail system is entirely electric, as are about 1/3 of the buses.
Electrical cars/buses may be less green than gas vehicles since electricity may come from a very "dirty" source. For example in the US more than 1/3 of the energy comes from coal power plants, which surely have caused more cancer deaths than all nuclear accidents put together [citation needed]
It certainly depends on where you are. In Seattle, we get 90% of our power from hydroelectric, and almost all of the remaining 10% from either nuclear or wind. I wonder what the comparison between cities with electric transportation services and without, and their respective power supplies would show.
True. In Vancouver we're almost 100% hydroelectric.
Does congestion account for this quote at all? If we double the amount of bus usage we half the amount of cars, and people spend less time in stop and go traffic (which is the most inefficient use of gasoline…right?).
Is that a full car or a single driver in one?
Headline seems to be contradicted by the article. If we get the equivalent of 42mpg walking -- and we assume that people are walking downtown in large cities where there is a lot of traffic -- that's far better gas mileage than a car gets. (It can take 10 minutes to go 1 mile in a car downtown.)
Although maybe if you ate a diet of 100% beef and only walked along highways going 55mph walking would be less efficient...
Although maybe if you ate a diet of 100% beef and only walked along highways going 55mph walking would be less efficient...
Dubious reasoning there, but I think the headline is based on the next paragraph, which explains that a Prius gets better than 42 mpg, and 2 or more people in a normal car that gets better than 21 mpg alone gets better than 42 passenger-miles per gallon.
The capital investment to produce the car uses energy--so no, I highly doubt this math. The cow is a capital investment like the car (ie, and energy sink that makes other things happen with less energy). If the cow alows you to not buy a car, you are doing better off perhaps?
The appropriate analysis is to look at the entire investment in the car-infrasctucture-industrial complex:
Roads
Gas Stations
Auto supply stores
Tool makers
Auto Companies
Auto Parts Suppliers
Shipping Industry that transports the cars
etc.
The appropriate analysis is to look at the entire investment in the car-infrasctucture-industrial complex:
Roads
Gas Stations
Auto supply stores
Tool makers
Auto Companies
Auto Parts Suppliers
Shipping Industry that transports the cars
etc.
I think it is legitimate to consider the incremental impacts of the choices we make, the starting line for those choices is what exists today.
Trying to do it within a clear context is a good idea though.
Trying to do it within a clear context is a good idea though.
Even at this low level, the analysis is false. Walking consumes no gas. This is why you cannot arbitrarily pick an incongruent levels of abstraction. The entire premis of gas_equivalent_calories is flawed, then, unless we take steps to apply it correctly.
The physical act of walking, itself, consumes no gas, sure.
That's not the point. The point is to be mindful of where the calories you're burning came from. And if you're in the developed world, with industrial agriculture, then your food is almost certainly steeped in petrochemicals.
That's not the point. The point is to be mindful of where the calories you're burning came from. And if you're in the developed world, with industrial agriculture, then your food is almost certainly steeped in petrochemicals.
food is almost certainly steeped in petrochemicals.
So is automobile production. So the analysis is flawed.
Which is fine, but it's also false once corrected for capital intesity (and depreciation).
So the result is lame. It is not counter-intuitive or even...interesting. But YMMV.
So is automobile production. So the analysis is flawed.
Which is fine, but it's also false once corrected for capital intesity (and depreciation).
So the result is lame. It is not counter-intuitive or even...interesting. But YMMV.
[deleted]
A better title didn't really present itself, so I just used what was there.
The article is anyway more about considering the energy use of agriculture than it is about trying to win the comparison.
The article is anyway more about considering the energy use of agriculture than it is about trying to win the comparison.
I think this doesn't take into account that most people have surplus calories that would otherwise turn into fat.
Three miles of walking does not burn an extra 220 calories.
> We eat, on average about 2700 Calories/day in the USA
Does anyone have a reliable cite for this please? It feels a bit high. Does it include children and old people?
Does anyone have a reliable cite for this please? It feels a bit high. Does it include children and old people?
http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/average-calorie-intake-human...
2800 is the high end of the scale. 2500 would be an average for males.
2800 is the high end of the scale. 2500 would be an average for males.
That's a cite for what people should eat.
I am asking for a cite to support the statement "we eat on average 2700 calories per day".
That link has some self reported studies, and also explains the problems with those studies (very few people know how much they eat).
It also meantions that women eat less calories than men - about 2,000.
I am asking for a cite to support the statement "we eat on average 2700 calories per day".
That link has some self reported studies, and also explains the problems with those studies (very few people know how much they eat).
It also meantions that women eat less calories than men - about 2,000.
People travel smaller distances in neighborhoods and cities designed around walking, biking, and mass transit (in the US, mostly pre-WWII neighborhoods) than in places designed around cars, because roads and parking lots require huge amounts of land, and high-speed automobile travel also enables people to live on larger plots of land. Don't let this kind of reasoning dissuade you from living in, and supporting the construction of, walkable neighborhoods.