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1500 hours per year ...
The model... male spends more than 1500 hours per year on his car; driving or sitting in it, parking or searching for it; earning enough to pay for the vehicle, the tolls, the tyres, the insurance or the highway taxes. These four hours per day for gathering his resources for it do not include his transport-related dally-ing in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages, his sitting time before the TV to be sold a new model, or the time needed to earn or enjoy the travelling on his vacation. In terms of lifetime invested, the average (driver) attains four miles per hour. In countries without any transport industry, people walk at this rate wherever they want to go. Man, unaided by any tool, is quite efficient when he moves. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometre in 10 minutes by expending 0.75 calories, which makes him thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals, such as rats or oxen. He is still less efficient than horses or sturgeon. A century ago, however, the bicycle appeared. It lifted man's self-powered mobility into a new order, beyond which there can be no further progress. On flat ground he can travel faster than on foot and do so using only one-fifth of the calories he would have expended walking. He can now carry one gram of his weight over one kilometre expending only 0.15 calories. Equipped with a bicycle, man does better not only than any machine but also than any animal. Ivan Illich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich -- cfsmtb |
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#2
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1500 hours per year ...
cfsmtb wrote:
The model... male spends more than 1500 hours per year on his car; driving or sitting in it, parking or searching for it; earning enough to pay for the vehicle, the tolls, the tyres, the insurance or the highway taxes. These four hours per day for gathering his resources for it do not include his transport-related dally-ing in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages, his sitting time before the TV to be sold a new model, or the time needed to earn or enjoy the travelling on his vacation. In terms of lifetime invested, the average (driver) attains four miles per hour. In countries without any transport industry, people walk at this rate wherever they want to go. Man, unaided by any tool, is quite efficient when he moves. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometre in 10 minutes by expending 0.75 calories, which makes him thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals, such as rats or oxen. He is still less efficient than horses or sturgeon. A century ago, however, the bicycle appeared. It lifted man's self-powered mobility into a new order, beyond which there can be no further progress. On flat ground he can travel faster than on foot and do so using only one-fifth of the calories he would have expended walking. He can now carry one gram of his weight over one kilometre expending only 0.15 calories. Equipped with a bicycle, man does better not only than any machine but also than any animal. Ivan Illich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich Is this the same Ivan Illich that suggested a world wide speed limit of 25kph? That would slow me down too much on the bike. DeF. -- e-mail: d.farrow@your finger.murdoch.edu.au To reply, you'll have to remove your finger. |
#3
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1500 hours per year ...
flyingdutch wrote:
Go the Sturgeon! Mmm, caviar. -- e-mail: d.farrow@your finger.murdoch.edu.au To reply, you'll have to remove your finger. |
#4
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1500 hours per year ...
On Wed, 24 May 2006 15:54:53 +0800, DeF wrote:
Is this the same Ivan Illich that suggested a world wide speed limit of 25kph? That would slow me down too much on the bike. Kind of. He basically said that once people started going above 15mph (near enough to 25km/h) the pressure to be places quickly meant that you couldn't get there fast enough. So it's a bit of a catch-22. I guess you could make the analogy that if you want to average 5km/h faster on your bike you'll need to put far more time in to training than you'll gain by being faster (this ignores the fun aspect of riding a bike, and therefore of "training"). The original words are he http://reactor-core.org/energy-and-equity.html#chapter5 -- Dave Hughes | If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate -Steven Wright |
#5
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1500 hours per year ...
DeF wrote:
cfsmtb wrote: The model... male spends more than 1500 hours per year on his car; driving or sitting in it, parking or searching for it; earning enough to pay for the vehicle, the tolls, the tyres, the insurance or the highway taxes. These four hours per day for gathering his resources for it do not include his transport-related dally-ing in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages, his sitting time before the TV to be sold a new model, or the time needed to earn or enjoy the travelling on his vacation. In terms of lifetime invested, the average (driver) attains four miles per hour. In countries without any transport industry, people walk at this rate wherever they want to go. Man, unaided by any tool, is quite efficient when he moves. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometre in 10 minutes by expending 0.75 calories, which makes him thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals, such as rats or oxen. He is still less efficient than horses or sturgeon. A century ago, however, the bicycle appeared. It lifted man's self-powered mobility into a new order, beyond which there can be no further progress. On flat ground he can travel faster than on foot and do so using only one-fifth of the calories he would have expended walking. He can now carry one gram of his weight over one kilometre expending only 0.15 calories. Equipped with a bicycle, man does better not only than any machine but also than any animal. Ivan Illich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich Is this the same Ivan Illich that suggested a world wide speed limit of 25kph? That would slow me down too much on the bike. DeF. I first heard of Ivan Illich when I read his book "Deschooling Society", which I thought presented a useful view on education. Unfortunately, it seems he has not taken into account the additional heat energy lost from the human body when riding a bicycle at 6 km/hr. Apart from Brisbanites, most people wouldn't ride wearing an insulating suit. During and after physical activity our body temperature is higher than at rest, and we continue to use up extra energy for some time after we have reached the destination. This additional energy consumption can be higher than the mechanical energy expended. Which is my excuse for why I have just been eating about 2000 kilojoules worth of chocolate... Yum, Vince |
#6
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1500 hours per year ...
gplama wrote:
Which is only a fraction of the time he will spend catching public transport in Melbourne. waiting for it, paying for it, lining up for a ticket, renewing a monthly ticket made from paper that fails to validate after two days, trying to find enough change because some machines only take coins. being jammed up against other unhappy people in peak hour, being sneezed on and catching a flu, recovering from that flu. and that's just on the way to work!... Yay cars, yay bikes, boo the state of our PT. ditto for Sydney, in spades. -- beerwolf (remove numbers from email address) |
#7
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1500 hours per year ...
cfsmtb Wrote: The model... male spends more than 1500 hours per year on his car; driving or sitting in it, parking or searching for it; earning enough to pay for the vehicle, the tolls, the tyres, the insurance or the highway taxes. These four hours per day for gathering his resources for it do not include his transport-related dally-ing in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages, his sitting time before the TV to be sold a new model, or the time needed to earn or enjoy the travelling on his vacation. In terms of lifetime invested, the average (driver) attains four miles per hour. In countries without any transport industry, people walk at this rate wherever they want to go. Man, unaided by any tool, is quite efficient when he moves. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometre in 10 minutes by expending 0.75 calories, which makes him thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals, such as rats or oxen. He is still less efficient than horses or sturgeon. A century ago, however, the bicycle appeared. It lifted man's self-powered mobility into a new order, beyond which there can be no further progress. On flat ground he can travel faster than on foot and do so using only one-fifth of the calories he would have expended walking. He can now carry one gram of his weight over one kilometre expending only 0.15 calories. Equipped with a bicycle, man does better not only than any machine but also than any animal. Ivan Illich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich Where does the first paragraph come from? I found the rest of it. The gender specificity is odd, given that the whole notion has nothing to do with gender. To be honest, although I can see the point of what's being said in that excerpt, Ivan appears to be something of a tosser from what I read in the full text. -- Resound |
#8
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1500 hours per year ...
Resound Wrote: Where does the first paragraph come from? I found the rest of it. The gender specificity is odd, given that the whole notion has nothing to do with gender. To be honest, although I can see the point of what's being said in that excerpt, Ivan appears to be something of a tosser from what I read in the full text. Ivan's (was) one of those card-carrying intelligentsia folk, read the wiki entry. **wanders off muttering something about groupthink** -- cfsmtb |
#9
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1500 hours per year ...
cfsmtb Wrote: Ivan's (was) one of those card-carrying intelligentsia folk, read the wiki entry. **wanders off muttering something about groupthink** He sounds vaguely Chomskyesque only without Chomsky's actual knowledge of anything actually pertaining to the real world. And even Chomsky got waffly. -- Resound |
#10
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1500 hours per year ...
cfsmtb Wrote: The model... male spends more than 1500 hours per year on his car; driving or sitting in it, parking or searching for it; earning enough to pay for the vehicle, the tolls, the tyres, the insurance or the highway taxes. These four hours per day for gathering his resources for it do not include his transport-related dally-ing in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages, his sitting time before the TV to be sold a new model, or the time needed to earn or enjoy the travelling on his vacation. In terms of lifetime invested, the average (driver) attains four miles per hour. In countries without any transport industry, people walk at this rate wherever they want to go. Ivan Illich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich I came across another example of these concepts at http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/tdm/pub...ivespeeds.html A report by Paul J. Tranter School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, UNSW@ADFA, Canberra, ACT, Australia Commisioned by the Australian Greenhouse Office, Department of the Environment and Heritage, 2004 Abstract Formula One racing teams spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year so that their drivers can travel at very high speeds for a very short time. If these teams want to be competitive, they have no choice but to devote huge amounts of time and money to their cars. But is this strategy a sensible one when applied to everyday transport? Is it worth investing hundreds of hours per year to pay for a mode of transport that might save only half of that in travel time? We can help answer this question by considering the concept of 'effective speed', where speed is calculated on the basis of the total amount of time consumed by a particular mode of transport. Applying this concept of 'effective speed' provides some surprising results in the comparison of cars, bicycles and public transport I havent been thorough it all again recently but I recall some interesting comparisons RoryW -- Rory Williams |
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