🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <SLAGLE.92Jun8203710@sgi417.msd.lmsc.lockheed.com>, slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com (Mark Slagle) writes:
|> In article <1992Jun9.002842.29188@leland.Stanford.EDU>, gooch@leland.Stanford.EDU (Carl Gooch) writes:
|> 
|> > You seem to be neglecting either the time you would ordinarily spend 
|> > exercising (if you do) with accompanying shower & change time; or the 
|> > health benefits that you got while riding to work regularly which you
|> > no longer enjoy.  Add in reduced health insurance to go with your 
|> > improved fitness, reduced car insurance and upkeep costs due to lower
|> > mileage, and that 185 hours/year might not sound like such a bad 
|> > investment, even ignoring the environmental damage you wouldn't be
|> > causing.
|> 
|> While you are surely correct that there are unaccounted personal
|> health benefits of riding a bicycle, there is still a lot of
|> money to be traded off.  I doubt very much if you are going to
|> find a health insurance policy that gives you a break for riding
|> your bike to work.  In many cases we are talking about group
|> insurance plans, so your individual behavior is probably not
|> significant to the group rates while your lost time is.  Also,
|> even if we could show that there are long-term health benefits,
|> there are probably some offsetting negative health consequences
|> of commuting on a bicycle.  Most everybody I know who uses a bike
|> to commute has a litany of horror stories about injuries
|> resulting from the interaction of bicycles and cars.  Although
|> well designed bike lanes and paths can reduce this cost, we
|> should try to deal with a realistic appraisal of the present
|> situation for this calculation for now.

It's true that there are some possible negative side-effects of
riding a bicycle in traffic.  However, with the proper paranoia
on the part of the cyclist and a small amount of attention and
patience on the part of drivers, car-bike accidents are not really
all that common.  The last time I made contact with a car while
riding my bike was something like six years and more than 15000 miles
ago.

Mark, I'd like to apologize in advance if what I'm about to say sounds
like I'm going off on you, because that's not my intention.  

I'd like to address the myth that, as currently implemented, bike paths 
separate from roadways are the best transportation alternative for 
bicycles.  While I'll freely admit that there are many bike paths which 
provide the only useable connection between two areas (various bike 
bridges in the Palo Alto area come to mind, along with some sections of
bike path along 101 in Marin; I'm sure others exist locally as well),
there are two fundamental problems with bike paths.  

First, when a bike path and a street cross, there is considerable 
danger of collision.  If the bike path parallels the street and crosses
near a street intersection, drivers will be expecting pedestrians, but
not faster-moving cyclists.  If the bike path crosses a street in 
mid-block, cars will be moving quickly, and crossing on a bike will
have obvious hazards.  Factor in the usual amounts on inattentiveness
on the parts of cyclists and drivers alike, and either type of
on-grade crossing can be quite dangerous.  

Second, in case it's not obvious from the short list I made earlier, bike
paths are worse than public transit in connecting arbitrary points
A and B, although they may be indispensible for some choices of A and B.

My personal preference, and the apparent concensus when this is 
discussed on rec.bicycles periodically, is for wide, well-maintained
(including street sweeping) shoulders on streets.  If the powers-that-be
wish to expend a little paint and label these as bike lanes, that's
fine by me.  Middlefield Road (in south Palo Alto and Mountain View) and
Foothill Expressway are examples of streets which I feel have excellent
provisions for bicycles.  In instances where a street isn't wide enough
for a bike lane, but the prevailing speed of traffic is low enough for
cycling on that street to make sense from the peace-of-mind angle (Univ.
Ave. in downtown Palo Alto, for example), I just ride it.

My fear is that well-meaning people will try to restrict bicycles to
bike paths for our own good, when in fact the effect will be the
opposite.

|> The automobile insurance reduction with mileage is small also.
|> Many insurance companies will give you a better rate for low
|> mileage use and for a second car which you claim is not used
|> for commuting, but the cost reduction for a single car is not
|> all that great.  Keep in mind that, assuming the 185 hour figure
|> is correct (it seems like a reasonable magnitude), we must try
|> to justify an expenditure of about $2000 per year for a person
|> making only $20000 per year.  That's a lot of money.  You would
|> need to somehow wipe out the large part of your entire insurance
|> bill to cover that.

As I've said elsewhere, the insurance cost reductions I mentioned 
are unlikely to be as large as I'd implied.  That's what I get for
going off half-cocked.

|> As for your claim of environmental rectitude, your point raises
|> an interesting question, one about which I freely admit
|> considerable ignorance.  As difficult as it is, we can probably
|> come up with some sort of reasonable, quantitative estimate of
|> the environmental cost of using an automobile.  But if we want to
|> replace the use of a car with some person-powered vehicle, then
|> we need to start thinking about the environmental costs of
|> generating a given level of human power output.  Given that
|> people are notoriously inefficient converters of energy (anybody
|> have any numbers?), it seems possible that the net environmental
|> damage difference might well tip in favor of cars.  It seems
|> counter-intuitive, I suppose, and cars do their damage in a
|> particularly bad location.  Still, the growing, processing,
|> transporting, and selling of food products and the subsequent
|> disposal of the fecal and unusable remainder present very
|> significant environmental costs in addition to their well known
|> monetary costs.
|> 
|> So the question that I have is the following:
|> 
|> Can anybody come up with any kind of realistic estimate of the
|> comparable environmental and economic damage that would result
|> from a substitution of human for automotive power on the margin?
|> Can we really say that using a car to get to and from work is
|> really worse for the environment, all inputs and outputs
|> considered, than is riding a bicycle?

I too claim ignorance as to the answer to this question.  I will be
so bold, however, as to try to list some of the costs that one should
consider in trying to totally internalize all costs of both modes of
transportation.  Keep in mind that the cost for a particular trip can
depend as much on the trip itself as anything else.  Riding a bike two 
blocks to the grocery store to get food to host a barbecue for thirty 
people would probably not make a lot of sense.  On the other hand, making
the same ride to pick up a loaf of bread is not such a big deal.

Direct costs:
   Purchase price
   Fuel price (gas/diesel vs. additional food)
   Upkeep costs (tires/oil/tuneups/etc vs. tires/chains/etc)
   Insurance and registration (more of a car issue than a bike issue)
   Misc. costs (parking, tolls, traffic tickets, etc, for both sides; some
      bike clothing for many of us)
Indirect costs:
   Production:
      Depletion of resources (hard to put a value on this one, especially 
         since most of the mass of either can be recycled)
   Use:
      Emissions (exhaust gases/exhaust soot/worn-off tire rubber/bits of
         accident debris vs. small amounts of C02/tire rubber)  Most 
         importantly, how does one quantify the health and environmental
         effects of, for example, tons of sulfur, nitrogen, and carbon 
         oxides?
      Other waste (used oil/tires/batteries/coolant/etc vs used tires/
         chains/etc)  Again, a lot of this could probably be recycled.
      Waste and emissions produced in producing and transporting the
         vehicle, fuel, parts, etc.
      Health (accident safety vs. improved fitness)  Health effects from
         emissions are arbitrarily included with emissions.
      Time for transportation
      Perceived convenience (an extra shower, having to walk in from the
         parking lot at work, carrying people and stuff, etc)
   Disposal:
      Where do you put the carcasses, and does anyone melt them down for
         the metal?

I don't claim that this is a complete list, by any means.  

Perceived convenience is definitely on the side of cars, by concensus,
for most people and most trips.

For most trips longer than somewhere in the 5-8 mile range and some 
shorter than that, cars win on time.  For short trips with lots of 
traffic lights, cars very often lose.  Health, neglecting emissions-
related stuff, seems to me to be an open question.  I don't consider 
the accident risk in cycling to be that high, but many others do.  
Certainly the consequences of being on the losing end of a car-bike 
collision can be quite serious.

Aside from those three, it seems to me that bikes are ahead of cars all down
the line.  Whether that difference in cost, if internalized completely,
would be enough to convince anyone (never mind everyone) to drive less and
bike more is very much an open question also.
		
Carl
		
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Carl Gooch                       |        Why am I inside at a keyboard when 
gooch@leland.stanford.edu        |        I could be outside riding bike?
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