MalekOct 18
Lalon Sander
"Humans aren’t very efficient movers—until you put us on a bicycle, when we become some of the most energy-efficient land travelers in the animal kingdom.": https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-human-on-a-bicycle-is-among-the-most-efficient-forms-of-travel-in-the/
Oct 18 at 5:11amWeb
Show threadWurzelmannOct 18
@lalonsander great post and wonderful alt text, thank you for your effort. 💜
Show threadHumanizeMobilityOct 18
@lalonsander This is beautiful! Loving it!
Show threadAxel van BergenOct 18
@lalonsander
The first sentence is all but supported by the diagram. I hatte nonsense like that.
Show threadMartin VogelOct 18
@lalonsander
I wonder where ships and trains were located, had they not been forgotten in the map.
Show threadShy GuyOct 18
@mardor @lalonsander Maybe the yellow dot on the far right, below "automobile", is a train or ship. Too bad there's no label!
Show threadJanneOct 18
@mardor @lalonsander put some mice on the train, wonderfully efficient
Show threadMartin VogelOct 18
@janvenetor
Chicken love commuting by train, too.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/nordrheinwestfalen/wdr-raetselhafte-aktion-huehner-in-s-bahn-entdeckt-100.html
Rätselhafte Aktion: Hühner in S-Bahn entdeckt

Unbekannte haben in einem Erste-Klasse-Abteil einer S-Bahn zwischen Essen und Köln Stroh verstreut und drei Hühner ausgesetzt.

tagesschau.de
Show threadPaul FuxjaegerOct 18
@lalonsander IMO it’s tricky to compare modes of locomotion that need infra with modes that don’t
Show threadtrusty falxter 🧠Oct 18
@cypherhippie @lalonsander Furthermore, if I interpret this correctly, the weight of vehicles seems to contribute to their calculated efficiency. Since the main purpose of vehicles is transportation, I believe that energy consumption should be divided by payload rather than mass.
Show threadWesDymOct 19

@flxtr That's one available angle of consideration, but in this case of comparison, I must disagree. What is a bee or walking human's 'payload', compared to the whole system?

I get what you're saying, and I get the point of it, but in this case, I think that creates an inherently unfair basis of comparison, because we can discretely distinguish a machine's 'payload' from the machine itself, but we can't do that for animals.

Show threadtrusty falxter 🧠Oct 19

@wesdym The bee or the human exist for themselves. The machine exists to transport stuff, humans, bees, whatever.

According to the graphic, you might think it's more energy efficient to drive by car than to walk. In fact, it is not because you are moving more than a ton, when your goal was to move only your body.

So yes you can calculate the efficiency by system mass, but what for? What insight would one gain from this?

Show threadWesDymOct 19
@cypherhippie That's true for rail (which by definition requires infrastructure), but not for others. Certain specific implementations -- such as what urban dwellers are used to seeing -- usually do, but they all have cousins that don't. No Land Rover or mountain bike requires a road, for example. As for off-road velomobiles, I don't know of specific examples, but I'm sure they're out there, or can be made.
Show threadPaul FuxjaegerOct 20

@wesdym I’m pretty sure the datapoint on velo is based on a perfect pavement structure - not on off-road tracks.

Steve Jobs was well known for telling that story - also omitting the infra difference.

Show threadWesDymOct 20
@cypherhippie ::shrug:: Okay
Show threadbusiness cultistOct 18
@lalonsander very cool graphic and comparison. The dang mice need some bikes, stat
Show threadMathias SchindlerOct 18
@lalonsander *laughs in Condor*
Show threadTom TomOct 18

@lalonsander funny but not really correct. According to the graph, human are pretty damn efficient.

(And btw I think human in train, especially long distance fast train, would be more efficient)

Show threadSchrottkatze (-> treehouse.systems)Oct 18
@lalonsander
i'd be interested in where trains are in that.
Show threadviqOct 18
@schrottkatze @lalonsander I've seen once table or graph with numbers, and trains are still much worse in that respect than bikes.
Show threadWesDymOct 19
@viq True. But for motorized transport of more than a bike or trike could carry, trains easily beat out every other common surface motor transport. That's why I almost always mention them when discussing transit. Over any distance longer than you'd comfortably commute by bike, a train wins every time, and if your goal is an energy-efficient society, rail must be a major component.
Show threadviqOct 19
@wesdym you'd need a hell of a lot of bikes to carry what a train can. But it still takes more energy to move it than this amount of bikes would have used.
Show threadWesDymOct 19

@viq I made exactly the qualification you're offering here in the comment you responded to.

I don't understand why some people seem to feel a need to argue just for the sake of arguing. Especially when the point they raise was already made by the person they're raising it too.

Show threadviqOct 19
@wesdym I guess I misunderstood or missed it, sorry.
Show threadlis  Oct 18
@schrottkatze @lalonsander considering a diesel locomotive which uses 6-20 g diesel per t·km; let's assume 10 for simplicity's sake. diesel has an energy density of 43 kJ/g, or about 10 kcal/g.

that would work out to 100 kcal/t·km, or 0.1 cal/g·km. so about the same order of magnitude as a human on a bike. possibly even lower. electric locomotives may be even more efficient.

that is, if you count energy per total mass moved. a bike typically has less than a quarter of the mass of the human riding it, but a train can weigh many times more than what it's transporting, especially if what it's transporting is humans. for instance, a crowded twindexx carriage might transport something like 250 people. assuming an average human+luggage weighs 100 kg, that's 25 t of payload in a >50 t carriage, plus maybe 75 t of locomotive…
Diesellokomotive – Wikipedia

Show threadWesDymOct 19

@lis Yep! Even 'inefficient' locomotives end up with a very high overall efficiency compared to any other motorized surface transport bigger than a bike or trike. Rail trainsport is just inherently very efficient, for the energy needed to move mass along a rail.

If you want a high-density, high-efficiency MASS-transit system, always consider what role rail could have in it.

Show threadDerPumu (he/him)Oct 18
@schrottkatze @lalonsander they might be near that unmarked yellow dot in the 100kt area
Show threadTwobiscuits🚴‍♂️ Oct 18
@lalonsander One of the yellow dots doesn't have a label!
Show threadX-tofOct 18
@twobiscuits @lalonsander one of the blue dots also misses a label.
Show threadBenjamin BraatzOct 18
@x_tof @twobiscuits @lalonsander On the linked website, they do have labels (at least on desktop): The bottom right orange dot is Jet Transport. The blue dot between Bee and Fruit Fly is Blowfly.
Show threadRaulOct 18
@lalonsander This also highlights how much more effective is walking at burning calories, compared to riding a bike for the same amount of time, at least when riding it effortlessly on flat ground. Of course you get a lot further away with the bicycle, but if you want to just burn more calories per unit of time, walking is a lot more effective in general.
Show threadJakob Thoböll - R.I.P. NatenomOct 18

@lalonsander
I like the close placement between #velomobile and #salmon. Streamlined geometry hits everything :D

#regel17 #velomobil #recumbent #cycling

Show threadWesDymOct 19
@jakob_thoboell I think the comparison here is more likely to impress biologists, because salmon are pretty much the paragon of swimmers. If you show a biologist that a salmon is only slightly better than a human on (in?) a velomobile, they know that means that that human beats nearly all other fish.
Show threadKalbuthOct 18
@lalonsander if you put the human on his bicycle in the middle of a forest, I guess its efficiency will suddenly go down heavily. The bicycle is efficient only under specific circumstances which require infrastructure not taken into account in these comparisons. The bicycle is super efficient compared to other man made transportation methods. I don't think it really is compared to animals when you take infrastructure into account.
Show threadWesDymOct 19

@kalbuth Depends very much on the bike. Any surface a human can walk across comfortably, a mountain bike will handle with no problem. A European racing bike with razor-sharp tires, not so much. This is also why armies don't use Minis, though a Mini will easily outrun any Jeep or Land Rover, and is far more efficient. The right tool for the job.

There are absolutely bicycles out there that can handle forest terrain; they're just not commonly seen on city streets.

Show threadKalbuthOct 19
@wesdym and I question the energy efficiency in these terrains. I'm quite certain the bike energy measures are not done with a mountain bike in forest bushes, but on nice lanes or asphalt roads with city bikes, if not racing ones.
Show threadGarrett SpeedOct 18
@lalonsander where's the walking swimming and flying champion the duck on this chart?
Show threadRaulOct 18

@lalonsander Something else is that the vertical axis is per km, so absolute distances. It would be interesting to see this worked out not for absolute distances, but for relative ones with respect to the animal's body length. That way smaller animals will most likely not end up plotted as a lot less efficient compared to larger ones that do travel kilometers instead of just meters or even cm at a time.

For context: I remember reading somewhere that the fastest land mammals are cheetas in absolute speed terms. But with respect to body size, cats are in fact faster. And the fastest mammal on land in terms of body size turns out to be a hare. (A bat wins the fastest mammal battles if you include flying.)

The record fastest land animal in terms of body size displacements per unit of time is in fact a tiny mite:
https://www.ibtimes.com/worlds-fastest-land-animal-has-new-name-meet-paratarsotomus-macropalpis-mite-made-speed-1577349

The World’s Fastest Land Animal Has A New Name: Meet Paratarsotomus Macropalpis, A Mite Made For Speed

Paratarsotomus macropalpis, a species of mite that’s endemic to Southern California, was recently found to be the world’s fastest land animal.

International Business Times
Show threadClickyMcTickerOct 18
@raulinbonn @lalonsander Who measures speed like that? Roads list kilometers per hour, not car lengths per hour. It’s a fun fact, but speed is measured in standardized units.
Show threadRaulOct 18
@ClickyMcTicker @lalonsander Biologists do. Same thing for strength of the animals not in terms of absolute weight they can lift, but relative to their body weights. Ants are therefore incredibly strong relatively speaking. And that's why the fastest land animal (in relative terms) is not the cheetah, but that tiny mite. In fact quite a few other smaller animals end up higher in the ranking than the cheetah, including cats.
Show threadWesDymOct 19
@ClickyMcTicker Both of these are fair examples. It depends what you hope to compare, and why. If you're filling a fuel tank, km/l is what you need to know, but that's only one way to measure efficiency. All methods have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on what knowledge you want to gain from it.
Show threadLMR 🇦🇹🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏴‍☠️Oct 18

@lalonsander *on a well-paved level road

this is comparing an all-terrain vehicle (legs) to something that only works on a road or path. apples and oranges

Show threadWesDymOct 19
@_r With bikes, it can vary a lot, based on design. A racing bike is bad offroad, but a hybrid will do just fine on most offroad surfaces you could walk on comfortably. And mountain bikes, of course, can handle just about anything.
Show threadLMR 🇦🇹🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏴‍☠️Oct 19

@wesdym ah but only if the human on top of the bike has proper experience. almost anyone can walk. not much fewer can ride a bicycle on level streets. but give me a mountain bike to climb a foresty mountain and I’d definitely end up hurting myself.

not to mention that legs will still be more efficient. after all, it’s a lot easier to run up a hill than to cycle up a hill, even at the same speed (assuming you don’t have enough momentum to clear the entire thing)

Show threadWesDymOct 19

@_r Nearly anyone can learn to ride a bike. I'm not sure what point you're hoping to make here. I mean, I could also point out that any toddler can out-run a baby, on any surface, because babies can't walk. It's true, but what point does it make?

What point are you hoping to make here, that advances this discussion in any useful direction, instead of just arguing for argument's sake?

Show threadLMR 🇦🇹🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏴‍☠️Oct 19
@wesdym reading comprehension. try the first paragraph again, this time slower
Show threadWesDymOct 19
@_r Grow up.
Show threadLMR 🇦🇹🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏴‍☠️Oct 19

@wesdym you’re the one who keeps arguing. and I see no point when you misread what I wrote.

since you don’t wanna do the 15s of work requried to reread, here’s what you missed: I said “not much fewer can ride a bicycle” - I assume you misread this as “much fewer can ride a bicycle” or something. easy mistake to make, but maybe admit that much at least. my entire point is that almost everyone can ride a city bike on even ground, but being a mountain biker requires training (and a certain physique too, now that I think of it)

and you just entirely ignored the second paragraph about it being harder to ride a bike up a hill than to push it.

all I did was explain my stance, and now you insult me? get your emotions under control please.

Show threadeverybody's favorite gay epileptic ringtailOct 18
@lalonsander the 3 unlabeled data points are annoying me more than i think they should 
Show threadLeonardo Ferreira FontenelleOct 18

@ida @lalonsander

Came here to say that, more or less

Show threadArlonOct 18
@lalonsander The kind of post the @infobeautiful would share 
Show threadmatOct 18

@lalonsander

How about the energetic cost of creating the road for this "human on bicycle" ?

Serious and real question.

Show threadBjörn ❄️ StarkimarmOct 18

@mrv

I don't think a MTB needs significantly more energy to drive on dirt than a normal bike on asphalt/concrete

@lalonsander

Show threadDam H.Oct 19
@Starkimarm @mrv @lalonsander even dirt single math is a maintained infrastructure too.
Show threadBjörn ❄️ StarkimarmOct 19
@Dam_ned @mrv @lalonsander
Yes, but that wasn't the point.
Show threadWesDymOct 19
@Starkimarm I never tried to measure it (and I'm not sure how I would have), but when I rode a bike with hybrid tires a lot, the difference seemed significant to me.
Show threadBjörn ❄️ StarkimarmOct 19
@wesdym
I think it depends what you call significant, but the above graph is in log scale.
Show threadClickyMcTickerOct 18
@mrv @lalonsander That’s a picture of an automobile road. Bicycles can ride just fine on dirt.
Show threadKevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦Oct 18

@mrv @lalonsander

1) It looks like your image is showing the construction process for an automobile road, not a bicycle trail

2) When it comes to bike lanes, which I think is what you're talking about, we only need those because of cars having seized and earmarked that space

3) In many places, the natural terrain is fine for riding without being modified. And when modifications do become needed, a dedicated bike trail requires far less effort to construct than a road for vehicles.

Show threadWesDymOct 19
@kboyd More to the point, a surfaced roadway for bicycles (including motor-assisted) requires a far shallower preparation, little or no reinforcement, and suffers less weight-caused distortion or damage (such as potholes) over the same time. So it uses less material and energy both initially and over time.
Show threadTrump & Epstein: Biz partners.Oct 18

@lalonsander
A human on a bicycle is not that much more efficient than a human on foot.

Compare that to a mouse on a motorcycle. 🤔 😉