Frank Fisher argues that driver-only private cars turn out to be the most inefficient means of transport, especially when all the work of maintaining them and all the necessary infrastructure are taken into account.
Efficiency in any sense (time, energy or dollars) seems not to enter the minds
of our transport planners, let alone the minds of individual
commuters who make billions of transport decisions every day.
...
Twenty years ago, in one of his punchy little books called Energy and Equity, Ivan Illich pointed out that if one factors in the time spent parking, servicing, washing, and doing paperwork for our urban commuter car, its average speed over the 20,000 km per year that most of them do, drops well below the average speed attained in actual driving. In addition to this Illich pointed out that if we consider the time spent earning the money to pay for the car and its various parking, servicing and paperwork demands, the average speed declines again. If we now factor in the time taken to generate the infrastructure requirements of the car, such as road and street construction and maintenance services, police, EPA recognised environmental services, hospital, medical, legal, political, roadside repair, tow truck, ambulance and insurance services, almost all of which are currently debited to our social and bureaucratic resources, the average speed of the commuter car comes down to something our shoes would be ashamed of and the average commuter cyclist would have no trouble exceeding. ...
The myth of the efficient car
Mechanical engineers tell us that cars convert roughly 20% of the energy
available in petrol to motion. The average car is roughly 20 times
heavier than its driver, therefore its energy efficiency in moving
one person around comes down to 1%. Take into account the energy
costs of producing cars and the many elements of commuting
infrastructure already mentioned above, and the efficiency associated
with automobility declines much further. It is hard to imagine a more
extreme case of technological overkill, nor a better hidden one.
...
Technical heroics are unwarranted. Driver responsibility can trivialise the
heroic efforts of engineers to improve automobile’s mechanical
efficiency by just a few percent. For example, simply choosing an
existing small-engined car can improve the efficiency by which we
move ourselves by 100%, and putting a second person in that car can
add an additional 100%. Nicer still, both initiatives enhance the
efficiency of all the infrastructure I’ve mentioned. Finally,
there is the simple nineteenth century technology already in place:
the bicycle combined with the train. There is a lot going for
these two humble machines. Together they offer a level of
physical, social and environmental joy that can only be appreciated
by trying them.
Why don’t more people use bike/train? A factor is social
pressure. Frank tells the following anecdote in another of his
articles.
Friday evening was wet. About 10.30pm, as I was making my farewells, a
concerned fellow board-member asked ‘you’re not going home by
bike & train are you?’ For a few painful moments she searched
for another way to get my bike and me back home. In vain. I pulled on
my rain gear and along with two dozen spirited young people already
in the train, caught the 10.40pm back to the city. Needless to say I
arrived home, car-free, uninjured and punctually, having gone through
my two daily papers.
It comes down to ‘No one else is doing it, I’d get nothing but
raised eyebrows if I did it, so why do it?’ My job, at least, pays
me to think about it. But I admit, when I actually do it I am greeted
by raised eyebrows or worse.