The interview with Prof. Rellim Van Otnorot continues. Part two.
FMPD: Ban the Bicycle?
OTNOROT: Ban it. Statistical and factual evidence indicates such a drastic path. The advocates of bicycles provide enough evidence for this themselves.
FMPD: They do?
OTNOROT: Yes they do. By simply lobbying for exclusive bicycle lanes they provide evidence support banning the bike. Understand one thing. Bicycles were only meant to be an interim step of human mobility.
As soon as the small motor evolved, it was mated to the bicycle. The technology of the motorcycle still exceeds the quality of any modern bicycle. Over the years motorcycle design substantially lowered the center of gravity closer to the roadway and broadened the width of tires to provide more stability. One of the most dangerous aspects of the bicycle has been its vehicular instability due to the very high center of gravity.
Bicycles only predated the motor car by only fifty years as a mechanical substitute for the horse in an urban environment. Its all in the timing. If the invention of the bicycle was today, the vehicle design would never be approved for use on the tax payer funded roadways. No question, these are unsafe vehicles.
Recumbent bicycles which do have a low center of gravity, are operationally uncomfortable and a paradox to the physical aspects of animal mobility. Where physical exertion is required the head should be comfortably level and vision unimpaired.
In the recumbent design, the head follows the body. I didn't like the knees bouncing up into my sightlines and my feet pumping up and down. Recumbent position during physical activity in the passive attitude diminishes the biological advantages of traditional animal evolution. All this counters all genetic evolution. In all animal design since the Cambrian epoch, where the body is close to the horizontal during the physical exertion of movement, head goes before asshole.
FMPD: Are you saying that bicycles aren't safe?
OTNOROT: No. The bicycle lobby points to this lack of safety.
FMPD: How do you mean?
OTNOROT: Carefully examine the issue of dedicated bicycle lanes. Its all how you interpret all the data and evidence usually provided all by the bicycle lobbyists themselves. The cyclists insist that they should have exclusive use of the public roadways in dedicated lanes.
They insist that they are the champions of society and the environment. When it is easily proven by their own statistics that the bicycle is actually far more inefficient per mile in the terms of fuel use, and hydro-carbon emissions than the automobile.
Now understand, that due to my studies, I believe that the hydro-fueled electric vehicle is the most efficient energy vehicle outside of the electric rail locomotive. But in the energy profiles conversion provided by the cyclists insist that their mode of transport is environmentally more sound. Humans are terrible energy converters compared with the mechanical reciprocating engine.
The classic court case for all this is found Scott vs. the Queen. Wayne Scott, an advocate of active transport, challenged Revenue Canada to allow bicycle couriers to receive equal treatment to contract motorized couriers. Contract car and truck couriers received a tax exemption related to the energy consumed in delivering cargo. The long and the short of it is that Scott won the court battle and Revenue Canada was compelled to let contract bicycle courier an energy cost exemption of about $11.00 or the daily cost of food in receipts.
The concept was called food as energy. And a very valid argument it is because bicycle couriers do eat more than most other people because their occupation requires food energy. Yet, where one carefully examine the energy cost profiles of gasoline powered vehicles versus the profiles of human powered vehicles (e.g. bicycles), gas engine power always proves far more efficient than the latter.
Cyclists always cite the emissions of gas motors. This is true, but when discussing that environmental aspect they never, ever, never, ever let the human powered energy cycle into the equation for equal scrutiny.
Their arguments in this fact and other facts are always dramatically one sided. Almost always no one has the gonads to challenge their contentions. Their planks should be contested. Its always their facts, and always a position of severe bias. Here is my contention. In the end result, human power vehicles probably produce more air pollution than the motor vehicle.
Human power needs food. Almost always that food is brought in by truck, ship or airplane from distant places. That extra food, that extra energy, already costs more. The calorie fuel cost of food exceeds the calorie benefit to the human powered vehicle.
And, one cannot use the total calorific nutritional benefit of the food intake. One must discount the fact that most of the food value is not absorbed by the body. Rather, most of the material is passed through the bowel. Cyclists, in their version of the universe seem to eat more but don't shit as much. In short, the cyclist's lobby expounds total crap.
Using the dollar value of energy illuminated by Scott vs. the Queen, a cyclist can safely move about 15kg per day over about 100km. These figures you must understand are estimates. Locations, routes and specific vehicles vary. Cyclists always exclude bicycles from the energy cost equations. Always remember that there is a fuel cost per dollar of food already in the equations. A courier driver can move 200kg(plus) over 200km per day at the same dollar/energy unit value.
Bicycles must move cargo and the operator/motor. The laws of physics demand energy versus weight to lift. Once you include all the energy cycles. Once the sources of energy are included, then one can see the inefficiency of human power. The ultimate fuel in the blood is glucose of some sort. Muscle cells burn oxygen in a oxidizing chemical reaction and that sugar burns to an energy unit to provide sufficient power.
Cyclists always state that they do not pollute the urban landscape. Horse feathers. Any oxidation of hydrocarbons regardless of the type of energy converter, produces carbon dioxide. And for cyclists their exhausts come out of two systems. Lung respiration expels carbon dioxide a global warming gas. Extra effort to move cargo delivers that much more carbon dioxide. Their digestive tracts expel all sorts of gases like all other animals. More food means more fart gas.
The energy cost per Kg is more expensive when delivered by the bicycle or any human powered vehicle.
FMPD: And this means!
OTNOROT: It means that as energy converters in transport movers bicycles are very poor. Bicycles require human power. Humans barely possess the power to move their own weight. The fuel consumption of human power exceeds the comparable gross fuel consumption of motor vehicles. The environmental damage in the real equation regarding mass per kilojoule is worse for human power vehicles than motor vehicles. Humans are enormously inefficient energy converters.
So banning the bike means less, not more pollution. Use all the calorie/power equations, not just those inadequate biased arguments provided by the bicycle lobby. To save the environment - Ban Bikes!
FMPD: In your version of the situation, there seems to be no significant energy or environmental savings to use the bicycle.
OTNOROT: Only with the movement of cargo. When a person moves only that person bicycles do fare better. There are savings, although cyclists need more energy food per kilometer, when the rider is compared to the driver.
End of part 2.
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