7 ms·
Walking a mile is 3x more expensive than driving, from a fuel perspective
- rezashirazian 10y agoThe data also ignores the fact that walking leads to a healthier lifestyle which means living longer, which is more costly than not living longer.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoYes, and one should also account for the reduced tax burden of dying younger.
- jogjayr 10y agoBut then you also have to account for the reduced earning potential due to dying younger :P
- Nullabillity 10y agoNot really. If you die at 70 rather than 90 then your total earnings were probably pretty much the same.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoIn Australia those additional 20 years on the current full rate pension for a single person represent an additional AU$454,428.00 of income[1]. 1. The full rate includes the supplements for a total of $873.90 per fortnight for a single person as per https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelink/age-pension https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelin...
- jogjayr 10y agoNot necessarily. If returns from your retirement savings exceed your outgoings then you're maintaining net positive income till the day you die. Granted as things stand, this case would not represent the majority of people.
- socialist_coder 10y agoThis should not really be very surprising as walking is not very efficient. You should be comparing driving to cycling, as both are wheeled forms of transportation. Cycling is up to 5x more efficient than walking (https://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/humanpower1.html https://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/humanpower1.html) So, if you compare driving to cycling, cycling wins hands down. And, this is with the artificially low cost of fossil fuels. If fossil fuels properly factored in all the environmental damage, cycling's efficiency advantage would be even higher.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago> Cycling is up to 5x more efficient than walking "Up to" doesn't mean much. Biking is explicitly considered in the original piece: > Surprisingly, from a pure energy perspective (using the methodology mentioned above), biking, walking, and running are the three most expensive types of transportation listed
- seiferteric 10y agoDoes it consider the health benefits and therefore reduced medical costs we would have if more people walked/biked?
- Nullabillity 10y agoThose people will probably more than make up for those costs later in life.
- mrob 10y ago"Up to" is reasonable because it varies so much. Energy efficiency of cycling depends strongly on aerodynamics. A fully faired recumbent like you see in the human powered vehicle record attempts will do much better than a normal upright bicycle, probably better than 5x walking. Skin-tight clothing vs. normal clothing makes a big difference. Even shaving legs makes a very small but measurable difference. And because drag increases with the square of the air speed, aerodynamics is more important when you're riding fast. This contributes to the wasted energy on hills too, because you descend much faster than you ascend. For these reasons it doesn't make much sense to talk about exact figures for energy efficiency of cycling without specifying what type of bicycle, what clothing, what weather conditions, what terrain, what braking technique, how much the rider weighs, their riding position, how fast they're riding, etc. The tires and the drivechain make a noticeable difference too.
- knowtheory 10y agoExcept your food expenditures are a sunk cost, and you can't replace them with fuel expenditures. This is literally comparing apples and gasoline.
- adt2bt 10y agoNot exactly. If you were on a maintenance diet and started biking to work, but didn't replace those calories, you'd eventually waste away. Your body's signals for how hungry you are will not exactly, but still fairly closely, match the calories you burn picking up your new biking habit.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoYour food expenditures vary with the amount of work you do, no different than your car's fuel expenditures. They are most certainly not a sunk cost for this purpose.
- incongruity 10y agoBut the argument could be made that the average American runs a calorie surplus so some percentage of the food/fuel cost could be deducted, for Americans, at least, no?
- thaumasiotes 10y agoNo, not unless you take full control of their diet (they'd probably object to that). People respond to extra work by eating more. > But the argument could be made that the average American runs a calorie surplus It really can't; running a calorie surplus would result in constant weight gain. What you actually see is extreme weight stability.
- incongruity 10y agoI guess the issue is surplus relative to what - recommended daily calorie intake vs. the calories required to maintain excess weight. My point was the former, yours seems to be the latter.
- astazangasta 10y agoHow about the cost of manufacturing a car, which has a cost in fuel? Also, most of the cost of food is labor for its preparation. You're paying for a lot more than just calories. Food is not made to be energy dense like gasoline, it's made to be tasty and nutritious.
- martin_henk 10y agoExactly... If you would include the manufacturing/r&d/transport, walking probably would be the most efficient way if looking at just one mile
- philfrasty 10y agoInteresting thought. So going to the gym is literally burning your money. Will quit in the morning. Thanks
- iconjack 10y agoWhy put it off until tomorrow? Quit now.
- philfrasty 10y agoYou are absolutely right. No excuses!
- frankus 10y agoThe math on walking, at least, seems little off: 210 calories per hour divided by 2.5 miles per hour is 84 calories per mile, which is about 23.5¢ per mile. Also the cost of driving should really use the average fleet fuel economy of a country together with the fuel price in that country. That works out to a hair under 10¢ per mile for 2014 fuel economy and today's gas prices. The takeaways remain the same, though: Human-powered transportation isn't especially efficient (unless you're burning calories you would have eaten anyway), and driving is subsidized up the wazoo in the US.
- dietrichepp 10y agoI think the math should also include cost of auto infrastructure, vehicle deprecation, and the reduced health care costs if you walk.
- dietrichepp 10y agoI think the math should also include cost of auto infrastructure, vehicle deprecation, and the reduced health care costs if you walk.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- aji 10y agopeople who drive probably aren't going to eat less because they're walking less. also, walking (to me) isn't just about saving money, it's about good habits and contributing less to traffic and pollution edit: people travel farther distances in cars than on foot, usually. nobody would replace a 20 mile commute by car with 20 miles of walking.
- dpark 10y agoI don't think the intent is to convince you to drive. It's just an interesting way to slice the data.
- chillwaves 10y agoNot so interesting because they compare food (with highly variable cost and reason for consumption) to fuel. Going by the cheapest calories available, the way you would to fill your car with the most economical gasoline, walking is cheaper. (source is the article)
- makmanalp 10y agoand exercise!
- loeg 10y agoI eat a lot more running 30 miles per week than zero. And I drive, sometimes. :-)
- api_or_ipa 10y agoNot all fuel consumption is the same. Gasoline is way under-priced in the US when traffic, pollution and road construction costs are factored in. On the other hand, high quality, sustainably farmed produce is overpriced, most significantly from sustained subsidies for corn and the associated increase in the cost of arable land.
- barrkel 10y agoThere is also the cost of getting the food to you. Often the most efficiently produced food will be produced some distance from you and a surprisingly large fraction of the cost will be shipping.
- incongruity 10y agoIt would definitely be interesting to see the carbon footprint per mile of all of these options...
- fovc 10y agoCO2 emissions alone add ~$0.50/gal or ~25% if you had to capture all that carbon. [1] Can't find a great all-encompassing source, but e.g.: http://www.c2es.org/publications/cost-us-forest-based-carbon-sequestration http://www.c2es.org/publications/cost-us-forest-based-carbon... says $30-90 per ton [2] Burning as is about 9kg CO2 per gal. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11
- schoen 10y agoI've seen a number of people wearing versions of this shirt: https://www.missionbicycle.com/store/home/gift/53-miles-burrito https://www.missionbicycle.com/store/home/gift/53-miles-burr... Although if Wikipedia's energy figure is right, that's a 2279 kcal burrito (which you could probably find somewhere in San Francisco, but...).
- dietrichepp 10y agoOh, burritos can easily get into the 2000+ kcal range. Burritos from Chipotle get well into the 1000–2000 kcal range without even trying.
- schoen 10y agoI tried the calculator at https://chipotle.com/nutrition-calculator https://chipotle.com/nutrition-calculator and added the highest-calorie individual meat (steak), rice (white rice), beans (black beans), salsa (chili-corn), sour cream, cheese, and guacamole, and still got only 1365 kcal. While adding every single topping does reach 2425 kcal, one would have to order 4 kinds of meat, tofu, 2 kinds of rice, 2 kinds of beans, fajitas, 4 kinds of salsa, sour cream, cheese, guacamole, and lettuce. I would think that should count as "trying"! :-)
- dietrichepp 10y agoHere's some better data: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/17/upshot/what-do-people-actually-order-at-chipotle.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/17/upshot/what-do... You can see that 2000 kcal is in the 98th percentile, but the 1000+ kcal range is very common.
- maxerickson 10y agoA missed opportunity there to have larger sizes with lower mileage.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kqr2 10y agoIt's also interesting to consider this calculation from a carbon emission perspective. From Climate impacts of biking vs. driving : http://www.keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog/climate-impacts-of-biking-vs-driving http://www.keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog/climate-impacts-of-bi... If you eat a lot of meat and bike, you could potentially have a bigger carbon footprint than a very fuel efficient vehicle.
- adt2bt 10y agoThat's what I hoped this article was about when I saw the headline. I was disappointed it was only about the $ cost of food and not the externalities. Thanks for sharing. It's interesting to see though that a biking paleo dieter is still 2x as efficient from a passenger-mile standpoint as a roughly average 25 mpg vehicle, and the average US diet is still better than a double occupancy Prius.
- dllthomas 10y ago... assuming the biking does not displace other exercise.
- galdosdi 10y agoThis is a really important point. For many people, bike commuting is partly a way to avoid having to schedule an extra hour a day dedicated solely for exercise, so the calories are indeed "free"
- frankus 10y agoAnother data point: a light electric vehicle (ebike, boosted board, etc.) is about 1-2¢ per mile (~100-200 Watt-hours per mile at 10¢ per kilowatt-hour).
- frankus 10y agoOops, I was off a little (https://www.electricbike.com/watt-hours/ https://www.electricbike.com/watt-hours/), but what's an order of magnitude between friends? That should be ~20 Wh per mile, so 0.2¢ per mile with some of the pricier electricity in the US.
- morgante 10y agoOf course, this assumes that you're perfectly fit already and that every calorie burned translates into additional consumption. For the vast majority of Americans, that assumption is incorrect. From personal experience, it's actually the opposite: I eat less on the days where I go for a long walk.
- revelation 10y agoThis is a good point, petrol is clearly way too cheap. (We have of course long improved on bicycles. An ultra aero lowracer recumbent can get 30mph on 120W, covering the 100k for a mere 1kWh at average 25% efficiency)
- Gustomaximus 10y agoThis analysis should take the additional calories it takes to walk vs sit to represent a fair cost of walking. Or add the cost of calories for sitting should be included in the driving option as these are part of the process.
- gonvaled 10y agoSure, but since driving is faster, and sitting consumes less calories than moving, the additional calories will be little.
- madengr 10y agoWhich is more efficient; a diesel running vegetable oil, or a human?
- honkhonkpants 10y agoThis analysis makes the same mistake that innumerable other analysts have made before: that going a mile is something worth doing. If you stipulate that everything is a mile apart, then you're guaranteed to get this outcome. The point of walking is that if you throw out the cars then everything is much closer together, and then you don't have to walk a mile. If I start from the Ferry Building in San Francisco and walk a mile up Sacramento street, I'll pass thousands of establishments of all kinds. If I start at the Ponte Vecchio in Florence and walk a mile I will pass literally every single thing there is in the old city. In a walkable city you'd never need to walk a mile, so finding out what is the most energy efficient mode of going a mile is relatively pointless. What you actually need to know is the most energy efficient form of building, not the of transport.
- smadge 10y agoI agree! "Driving a mile is infinitely more expensive than staying where you are, from a fuel perspective"
- vixen99 10y agoSo the infinite universe is no big deal then?
- prodigal_erik 10y agoHow many Ethiopian restaurants, improv theaters, and dueling piano bars did you pass? A lot of niche interests can't sustain themselves at all with only a small fraction of a small population.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoWell you got me on the piano bars but as far as Ethiopian food goes there are dozens in my relatively walkable city and I just spot-checked the first car-choked blasted expanse that came to mind (Phoenix) and there are only five in a much larger metro area. If I was an Ethiopian restaurant owner would I prefer a restaurant in a dense neighborhood with five families living in apartments right on top of me, or would I prefer to be in a strip mall at the corner of an American suburb with nobody in walking distance and only a few hundred families within a mile? I know which one I'd want.
- rch 10y ago> it’s anywhere from 33-400% more expensive to drive The article's conclusion including ownership cost fits my intuition pretty well.
- whoByFire 10y agoI'm really surprised at the comparison of motorbikes to cars. I don't own a motorbike, but my impression was that compared to cars the fuel costs are trivial. This data suggests a cost reduction of only ~25%. Was it dumb of me to expect a cost reduction of >75%?
- honkhonkpants 10y agoCars are a lot more efficient than they were a few years ago, and motorcycles have gone the other way. You can still get a motorcycle that gets 60 MPG or better, but the mainstream has decided to use their thermodynamic budgets to build engines with very high specific power and hold the line around 40 MPG or even less. Nobody should buy a motorcycle imagining that they have lower operating costs. Aside from fuel, motorcycles have high budgets for tires, engine maintenance (due to the aforementioned appetite for high specific power, and relative lack of scale in their manufacturing), insurance, likelihood of theft or other total casualty, need to continuously refresh your riding apparel on approximately 5 year basis, expensive consumable items like drive chains and sprockets, and so on and so forth. Also there is generally a lack of miles over which to amortize the time-denominated costs like insurance.
- analog31 10y agoInteresting. I think the article would benefit from a graph of the raw data, i.e., calories per mile, in addition to dollars per mile. I actually wouldn't mind paying more for food, in return for the pleasure of walking or biking. At the same time, walking and biking are not an option for a lot of trips, depending on distance and cargo. Since my daily bike commute is 8 miles round trip, it's a pretty inexpensive pleasure.
- fpgaminer 10y agoThe article touches on this, but doesn't directly address it: whether they're using gross calories or net calories. Gross is the total calories you burn during that mile. Net is how many additional calories you are burning as a result of walking versus being sedentary. Glancing at the wikipedia article which the author uses doesn't clarify this, nor does Wikipedia's citation. I didn't check the citation's citation. Clearly we want net calories. Average humans burn ~100 kcal per hour doing their normal activities during the day, so that could potential change the figure from 210 kcal per hour walking, to 110.
- mobiuscog 10y agoThis can't be mentioned enough, because otherwise the travelling by car would have to include the 'human' fuel element as well.
- spotman 10y agoThis is a good thought exercise, but kind of comes across like a random equation looking for an explanation rather than interesting observation in search of an explanation. I can't imagine the person driving doesn't spend as much or more than the person walking on food. If we are saying that this small amount of money VS drinking oil is where the line is crossed, then are we not all comfortably well past this zone anyways? So another way of saying this is listening to music is most efficient if you listen to a pre recorded song or you whisper only.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoWhy has nobody mentioned opportunity cost? There's a huge opportunity cost of not being able to travel as fast and far as a car lets you. You can't* get an Uber or bum a ride from a friend to your mother's house in the middle of nowhere on Christmas morning. There's few parts of the country where walking/biking year round is feasible. *at a reasonable price point.
- cafard 10y agoIs this an autonomous car, deadheading? If not, you should consider the resting calorie consumption of the passenger. On a highway, that is indeed negligible; but a crosstown trip in Washington, DC, used to take me about six minutes per mile. The article on travel efficiency shows that a walking person requires about 210 calories per hour at 4 km, about 2.5 miles/hour, call it 85 calories/mile. For an American consuming 2500 calories/day, a given hour requires about 104 calories: divide that by 2.5, reckon 41 calories in the time it takes to walk a mile. Now the cost of walking over resting is about 42 calories, and we have walking down about where he has biking. Please correct me, for it's likely that I have missed something here.
- dTal 10y agoGood catch! Not to mention that the calorie consumption of someone driving a car is likely significantly more than someone idly daydreaming, both from the physical activity of steering, braking, shifting etc and possibly also from the focus required.