Can Seattle's 12-foot wide interurban trail full of 20 MPH electric bicycles move as many people as Freeway 167 full of 60 MPH cars?
Doesn't seem likely. Cars are faster. Freeway lanes are bigger. I gave myself about ten minutes to answer this ridiculous question before heading downtown before the implications blew my mind and I sat down to finish this article.
To beat 167, the interurban trail (full of bikes) has to beat an astronomically high 1775 cars per hour per lane... times 6 lanes* Those cars are all moving at an unbelievable 60 miles per hour. In the 1760s, around when the bicycle was invented, scientists were not even sure a human body could even survive such incredible speeds!
Aha! A challenge! The interurban bike route will take you from Auburn to Renton. (A relatively straight shot for both 167 and the interurban.)
Won't your commute take 3 times as long at 20 miles per hour? Or will it? (An athlete in good shape can get an e-bike up to 35 on flat ground) interurban trail can accommodate... 3 lanes that flex when you use them. You can zip around pedestrians, constrict your space usage at will, slow and speed up, turn off any time to stop and rest... No lanes, no enforcement required (I've never seen a cop or speed trap on the interurban trail), and common sense prevails.
In case you aren't a rider, bikes typically "draft" closely behind other to reduce wind resistance. Bicycles have much shorter stopping distances than cars and motorcycles and better forward visibility. So... at 10 feet per bike, that's two bikes per carlength. This is an estimation from my own experience. Bikes stop on a dime, even at full speed because you plus a bike weighs less than 1 tenth of a Mini Cooper, therefore less inertia. Ten feet is more than enough as a comfortable distance for your personal space, even at full speed.
At freeway speed, you're travelling 4.4 carlengths per second. Multiply by two seconds (reccommended tailing distance at speed) plus 1 carlength (for the car) and you get 9.8 carlengths or 1 car at speed or 196 feet per car.
That's a 3920 square foot footprint.
1 car lane is 12 feet wide, same as the interurban trail. I've allowed four feet per bicycle lane.*
Allowing 10 feet per bicycle gives us a 40 square foot footprint for the bike. That would be very impressive if that were a tenth. It's not. It's about one hundredth. 40 square feet versus almost 4000. Check it out. Are you starting to see some possibilities?
Let's see how this plays out:
A free way moves about 1775 cars per hour per lane.* 167 is 6 car lanes wide and can move 1775 cars per hour per lane for a total of 10,650 drivers per hour.
Interurban trail could move 11587 people per hour per lane and is is 3 bicycle lanes wide for a total of 34,790 people per hour.
1775 cars per hour per lane or a total of 10,650 people per hour.
11597 per hour per lane or a total of 34,790 people per hour.
[Coincidently that's the entire population of Auburn every hour.]
The interurban trail could move over three times as times as many people per hour into downtown Seattle as Highway 167.
Even if your car goes 3 times as fast (which it does), it cannot ever compete with the mega-capacity of the superefficient interurban trail.
So what can you take away from this?
A 4-foot wide bicycle lane can move over six and a half times as many people per hour as a 12 foot wide FREEWAY lane. The solution to the energy crisis and congestion in the cities, high fuel prices, increasing obesity, diabetes, and especially those high downtown parking prices is more bicycle lanes for 20 mph hybrid electric bikes.
Highway 167 is over 72 feet of car lanes wide plus megolithic shoulders, dividers, collision zones, rhino horns, onramps, offramps, speeding tickets, etc. The interurban trail's shoulders are made of grass and blackberry bushes where cute little bunnies live.
Transportation comprises 28% of total U.S. energy use.*** So hop on an electric bike two or three a week, save the world and cut YOUR OWN transportation costs in half.
The math has spoken. The choice is yours. If half the people who drive to work rode an electric bike to work instead just twice a week it would solve the climate crisis and the energy crisis in one fell swoop. The peddle/electric bike may be the most important innovation of our generation.
P.S. The health benefits are only twice as impressive as the efficiency, so never mind. Especially don't go looking up the truth about cardiovascular benefits OVER EVERY OTHER FORM OF TRANSPORTATION EVER DEVISED (including non-electric bicycles) because I don't want you to blow your mind.
(These calculations and this post were created in 15 minutes -- oops. 20 minutes now. with a Comcast Broadband connection using Microsoft Windows XP calculator, XP notepad, and Microsoft Internet Explorer running on a $500 computer.)
Sources:
* www.mcpts.com/textonly.htm
** http://www.johnforester.com/Articles/Facilities/BikelaneGuides.htm
***http://www.aceee.org/transportation/transoverview.htm
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