The efficiency of cycling mobility

The bicycle is the most efficient vehicle over medium range distances up to 10Km. But what do we mean by efficiency?

Efficiencyis the ability to achieve goals. So, any commuting vehicle is effective, right? A car, a bus, a bicycle are effective transport modes.

Efficiency is the ability of using well/productive resources to achieve goals.

In this sense, let’s see what this image suggests to you. Which human-machine set seems most efficient to you?

The approximation in terms of mass in the human-bike hybrid is 90% human mass and only 10% vehicle mass.

If you take the car average, this ratio is completely reversed. A driver in a car represents approximately 10%, with 90% corresponding to the vehicle

Paradox is that we need a 1.5 ton vehicle to transport a person with an average weight of 70 kg as we usually use it as a one person vehicle.

The car has important functionality, but is very inefficient in terms of energy for daily commuting, short distances and few occupants.

Public transport becomes very efficient with maximum occupancy. For this reason, proper management of the supply / demand correlation is very important. Something very difficult due to the demand elasticity.

In efficiency, the bicycle is considered the perfect hybrid human-machine vehicle.

The car has taken up physical space and land use across the city, designed for traffic use. Combustion vehicles take up more than 60% of the urban space; although vehicles are parked 92% of the time, i.e. without use. The car takes away space for a more social use: leisure, commerce, games, sports, etc.

However, bicycles take up little space: a 2-meter-wide cycle lane has a capacity of at least 2,000 cyclists per hour, which corresponds to the number of cars in a 3.5-meter-wide traffic lane, according to the IDAE.

10/12 bicycles can be properly parked in the one car parking space. Much more with for example two storey high-density solutions.

The efficiency of cycling mobility

At this point we can only define the concept of Effectiveness as the ability to be efficientandeffective at the same time.

In other words, when we commute with any vehicle we are effective, and when we do it with as few resources as possible, we are efficient too.

Commuting by bicycle is effective and efficient. This is essentially the effectiveness of cycling mobility.

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