101 reasons to love cycling in London #20 - bikes are the most efficient means of transportation in the world

All means of transportation need fuel to propel them from A to B - whether it be jet fuel in aeroplanes, petrol in cars, or bananas (or more often in my case; cakes) in cyclists and walkers.

Of course these days we are all too aware of the pitfalls of using too much petrol or coal or finite sources of fuel - it's become, if you like, a very modern affliction.  Which is why it is all the more surprising that the humble bicycle comes out on top when it comes to efficiency of fuel - it's more efficient even than just walking.

Fuel expended by mode of transport, KJ per KM per passenger:

 

I don't point this out because I think it's some great green stick we should use to beat and berate other transport users with, but to point out how much sense cycling makes when you weigh up the options.

Getting around town more efficiently, on one of the greatest inventions ever made by man?  It's reason number 20 to love cycling in London!

The above graphs were created by me using data collected here.

101 reasons to love cycling in London #15 - not killing off those old brain cells...

This week's reason to love cycling in London comes from blogger The Bronze Bombshell in Georgia, USA.  She came across a couple of studies that show cycling is better than driving a car at keeping those valuable ever-diminishing grey cells of ours sharp - if like me you're convinced most mornings that you have early-onset Alzheimer’s, this is really something!

She found a study (via Anna at Cycling is Good For You) that shows that "Cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood." ie. exercise keeps your brain sharp.  The other study she found showed that exposure to unleaded fuel can encourage aggression and anxiety, and furthermore that the changes happening in the brain as a consequence of this exposure can be described as 'damage'.  No thanks....

In a seperate study traffic-sourced air pollution has been observed to reduce the I.Q of children - we'll come back to this later...

Lots of people I know believe that cycling through a big city like London must be like a perpetual battle through the smog of a hundred and one engines, but I rarely find this is the case - most of my route is on quiet back roads and where I do cycle on a main road (High Holborn, which, incidentally has some of the worst air pollution in the UK) being out in the open and breathing fresh rather than recycled air is enough to keep me feeling free.  That master of cycle advocacy discourse Mikael Colville-Anderson of Copenhagenize first alerted me to a study which showed that air quality inside a car is much, much worse than outside of it.

Keeping mentally alert whilst pootling along on your push bike?  It's reason number 15 to love cycling in London!

Raising your kid's I.Q by getting them to ride a bike? Call it reason 15 and a half ;)

P.S  I'm well aware that there's a couple of inches of snow on most people's doorsteps at the moment and that cycling might be the last thing they'd consider doing right now - that's why I've included so many links in this post - reading about cycling is a close second best for brain-warming!

101 reasons to love cycling in London #13 - you reduce congestion

Transport for London believes that there are half a million bicycle journeys in Greater London every single day.  This figure includes people cycling to school, popping down the shops, riding for pleasure or cycling to work and back again.  By cycling, and therefore taking up little more road space than our own actual mass, we are helping to massively reduce congestion on London's already crowded transport system.  Half a million everyday and ordinary cyclists are equivalent to:


297 Central Line Underground trains at full capacity at 1680 passengers per train - that's 8 carriages with a maximum capacity of 210 each - all the seats, plus an 'official allowance' of 4 people standing per square metre as I understand it (a quiet afternoon then). (Hansard )


6250 of London's newest double decker buses, with a maximum capacity of 80 each (and remember, you're always guaranteed a seat on your bike!) 


If we all took to driving cars as single occupants instead - taking as an example Britain's most popular car the Ford Focus at 4.48 metres long - there would be a new 2240 kilometre long traffic jam on our great city's streets (or 1391 miles if you prefer)

42 folded Brompton bicycles in one standard parking space

Furthermore we've already touched on the issues that result from carbon-based vehicles such as emissions, noise pollution, and having to pay the congestion charge.


Helping to make London a more sustainable and grid-lock-free city?  It's reason number 13 to love cycling in London!

101 reasons to love cycling in London #7 - the sound of silence

I challenge anyone who finds what I am about to say odd or in anyway outlandish, to walk or cycle the length of Old Street between the Old Street roundabout and Shoreditch at peak rush hour on a Monday morning, and then assess again what I say here:

We should love cycling in London because, as a machine, bicyles are the most silent of all for transporting us around the city.  I love the idea that we can propel ourselves down broad city streets with nothing but the whirr and hum of gears and tyres on tarmac.  Anyone who has been on a mass participation cycling event on roads that have been closed to other vehicles will vouch for the fact that they are almost eerily quiet.

Automobiles, of course, are a different matter all together - each internal combustion engine makes noise - each tonne of car pressed onto the road makes surface sounds.  One engine makes a row - a hundred make a cacophony.

Now, recent studies are helping us to understand the impact of this noise on our lives within urban environments more.  Traffic noise, it seems, is so bad for us that it does, in fact, kill.  It contributes to stress, high blood pressure, to coronary disease, and prolongued exposure can lead to tinitus.

All this aside, there is something joyeous about the quiet progress of a bicycle - and, perhaps more importantly, that progress is not to the detriment of others.  Who ever heard of a bike making you deaf, or worse?
 
The quiet, almost silent sound of a bicycle is the sound of good health all round - yet another reason to love cycling in London.

101 reasons to love cycling in London #6 - zero emissions!

Regardless of whether you believe in climate change or not (and frankly, I see no sane reason why you wouldn't) I think everyone agrees that the release of toxic particles such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere can't be a good thing.  One of the great joys of cycling is, of course, the fact that it is emissions free (which is why, of course, we don't pay 'road tax' - these days it's called vehicle emissions tax and if you ride a bike, or drive an electric car, you don't have to pay it either - honest!) Whilst of course there are a certain amount of carbon emissions released in the construction and delivery of your bicycle these are minimal in comparrison to the emissions for the production and delivery of a car. 
And the emissions for driving 5 miles to work and back for the working year in an average family size car? (I'm going here for the UK's favourite car, the Ford Focus, a 3 door 1.6ltr manual, in silver, naturally) 


You'd emit 157 grams of carbon per k/m.


10 miles = 16.09km
16.09kms x 227 working days in a year = 3652.43kms per annum
3652.43kms x 157grams of CO2 per km =
573431.51 grams of CO2 (or half a tonne)


That is to say, your little Ford Focus would emit half it's own weight in CO2 every year - just to drive 5 miles to work and back.


Your bike?  ZERO!  Is this a reason to love cycling in London?  With our city great capital having some of the very worst air pollution in Europe , I like to think so.