🔗 Not so fast! How car commuting is taking your time
This bookmark is very old and the link may no longer work. Try this archived link from the Internet Archive:
🗃️ https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://theconversation.edu.au/not-so-fast-how-car-commuting-is-taking-your-time-9682
Concept of effective speed in comparing between cars & bikes. A bike is much faster if all time costs taken into account
In modern cities, the equivalent of “winding up the spring” is the time spent at work earning the money to pay for all our transport costs. For pedestrians, this time is virtually nil. For cyclists it is minimal. For car drivers, the time spent earning the money to pay for all the costs of cars is usually much greater than the time spent driving. Get news that’s free, independent and based on evidence.
Motorists may think they are saving time with their cars when it takes 20 minutes to drive to work, compared to 30 or 40 minutes on a bicycle. However, motorists might be spending one or two hours per day (or more) earning the money to cover the cost of their cars, while cyclists spend only a few minutes per day earning the money to pay for their bicycles.
The concept of “effective speed” takes into account all the time costs of any mode of transport, not just the time spent travelling.