Social effects of motorized transport - Ivan Illich
http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~ira/illich/facts/social_effects.html http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/%7Eira/illich/facts/social_effects.html
Social effects of motorized transport
Ivan Illich gives a set of very interesting facts and figures when he discusses his concept of convivial transport:
* *The United States puts between 25 and 45 per cent of its total
energy* (depending upon how one calculates this) *into vehicles*:
to make them, run them, and clear a right of way for them when
they roll, when they fly, and when they park. For the sole purpose
of transporting people, 250 million Americans allocate more fuel
than is used by 1.3 billion Chinese and Indians for all purposes.
* The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to
his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling.
He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on
it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for
gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of
his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources
for it. And this figure does not take into account the time
consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in
hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching
automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to
improve the quality of the next buy.
* The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: *less
than five miles per hour*. In countries deprived of a
transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking
wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 per cent
of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 per cent.
What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic
in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for
the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high
doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the
transportation industry.
* Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He
carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by
expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more
efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his
weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen,
less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man
settled the world and made its history. At this rate peasant
societies spend less than 5 per cent and nomads less than 8 per
cent of their respective social time budgets outside the home or
the encampment.
* Man on a *bicycle *can go three or four times faster than the
pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He
carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an
expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect
transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of
locomotion. *Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency
of not only all machines but all other animals as well.*
* Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also
cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his
durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American
devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public
utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of
an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even
less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two
systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary
only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far
from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as
they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has
extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot
walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.
* The bicycle also uses little space. Eighteen bikes can be parked
in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the
space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a
given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by
using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move
them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on
bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows
people to go from door to door without walking. The cyclist can
reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new
locations from which he is barred.
* Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up
significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time. They can
spend fewer hours on each mile and still travel more miles in a
year. They can get the benefit of technological breakthroughs
without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy, or space of
others. They become masters of their own movements without
blocking those of their fellows. Their new tool creates only those
demands which it can also satisfy. Every increase in motorized
speed creates new demands on space and time. The use of the
bicycle is self-limiting. It allows people to create a new
relationship between their life-space and their life-time, between
their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying
their inherited balance. The advantages of modern self-powered
traffic are obvious, and ignored. That better traffic runs faster
is asserted, but never proved. Before they ask people to pay for
it, those who propose acceleration should try to display the
evidence for their claim.
[from: Energy and Equity http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/%7Eira/illich/texts/energy_and_equity/. In Ivan Illich: /Toward a History of Needs/. New York: Pantheon, 1978.]
- I wonder what these statistics are today.
Rich Points rich@richpoints.com wrote: http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~ira/illich/facts/social_effects.html Social effects of motorized transport
Ivan Illich gives a set of very interesting facts and figures when he discusses his concept of convivial transport:
The United States puts between 25 and 45 per cent of its total energy (depending upon how one calculates this) into vehicles: to make them, run them, and clear a right of way for them when they roll, when they fly, and when they park. For the sole purpose of transporting people, 250 million Americans allocate more fuel than is used by 1.3 billion Chinese and Indians for all purposes.
The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy.
The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 per cent of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 per cent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry.
Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen, less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man settled the world and made its history. At this rate peasant societies spend less than 5 per cent and nomads less than 8 per cent of their respective social time budgets outside the home or the encampment.
Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.
Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.
The bicycle also uses little space. Eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows people to go from door to door without walking. The cyclist can reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new locations from which he is barred.
Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time. They can spend fewer hours on each mile and still travel more miles in a year. They can get the benefit of technological breakthroughs without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy, or space of others. They become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows. Their new tool creates only those demands which it can also satisfy. Every increase in motorized speed creates new demands on space and time. The use of the bicycle is self-limiting. It allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their life-time, between their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying their inherited balance. The advantages of modern self-powered traffic are obvious, and ignored. That better traffic runs faster is asserted, but never proved. Before they ask people to pay for it, those who propose
acceleration should try to display the evidence for their claim.
[from: Energy and Equity. In Ivan Illich: Toward a History of Needs. New York: Pantheon, 1978.]
PLease, someone should make a report, some one should take Illich's cause. I adhere to it. I am trying and so can anyone of you.
On Feb 18, 2008 11:09 AM, Bruce Lien bikedadlien@yahoo.com wrote:
- I wonder what these statistics are today.
*Rich Points rich@richpoints.com* wrote:
http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~ira/illich/facts/social_effects.htmlhttp://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/%7Eira/illich/facts/social_effects.html Social effects of motorized transport
Ivan Illich gives a set of very interesting facts and figures when he discusses his concept of convivial transport:
- *The United States puts between 25 and 45 per cent of its total
energy* (depending upon how one calculates this) *into vehicles*: to make them, run them, and clear a right of way for them when they roll, when they fly, and when they park. For the sole purpose of transporting people, 250 million Americans allocate more fuel than is used by 1.3 billion Chinese and Indians for all purposes.
- The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to
his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy.
- The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: *less
than five miles per hour*. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 per cent of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 per cent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry.
- Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He
carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen, less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man settled the world and made its history. At this rate peasant societies spend less than 5 per cent and nomads less than 8 per cent of their respective social time budgets outside the home or the encampment.
- Man on a *bicycle *can go three or four times faster than the
pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. *Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.*
- Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also
cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.
- The bicycle also uses little space. Eighteen bikes can be parked
in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows people to go from door to door without walking. The cyclist can reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new locations from which he is barred.
- Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up
significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time. They can spend fewer hours on each mile and still travel more miles in a year. They can get the benefit of technological breakthroughs without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy, or space of others. They become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows. Their new tool creates only those demands which it can also satisfy. Every increase in motorized speed creates new demands on space and time. The use of the bicycle is self-limiting. It allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their life-time, between their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying their inherited balance. The advantages of modern self-powered traffic are obvious, and ignored. That better traffic runs faster is asserted, but never proved. Before they ask people to pay for it, those who propose acceleration should try to display the evidence for their claim.
[from: Energy and Equityhttp://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/%7Eira/illich/texts/energy_and_equity/. In Ivan Illich: *Toward a History of Needs*. New York: Pantheon, 1978.]
-- Rich Points Community Cycles Director http://CommunityCycles.org Rich@CommunityCycles.org 720-565-6019
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I remember reading a memorial for Ivan Illich in Utne reader. It did not mention his bicycle advocacy. Thanks Bruce.
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:44:28 -0500 From: vous.je@gmail.com To: thethinktank@bikecollectives.org Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Social effects of motorized transport - Ivan Illich
PLease, someone should make a report, some one should take Illich's cause. I adhere to it. I am trying and so can anyone of you.
On Feb 18, 2008 11:09 AM, Bruce Lien bikedadlien@yahoo.com wrote:
- I wonder what these statistics are today.
Rich Points rich@richpoints.com wrote: http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~ira/illich/facts/social_effects.html Social effects of motorized transport Ivan Illich gives a set of very interesting facts and figures when he discusses his concept of convivial transport: The United States puts between 25 and 45 per cent of its total energy (depending upon how one calculates this) into vehicles: to make them, run them, and clear a right of way for them when they roll, when they fly, and when they park. For the sole purpose of transporting people, 250 million Americans allocate more fuel than is used by 1.3 billion Chinese and Indians for all purposes. The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 per cent of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 per cent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry. Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen, less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man settled the world and made its history. At this rate peasant societies spend less than 5 per cent and nomads less than 8 per cent of their respective social time budgets outside the home or the encampment. Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it. The bicycle also uses little space. Eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows people to go from door to door without walking. The cyclist can reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new locations from which he is barred. Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time. They can spend fewer hours on each mile and still travel more miles in a year. They can get the benefit of technological breakthroughs without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy, or space of others. They become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows. Their new tool creates only those demands which it can also satisfy. Every increase in motorized speed creates new demands on space and time. The use of the bicycle is self-limiting. It allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their life-time, between their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying their inherited balance. The advantages of modern self-powered traffic are obvious, and ignored. That better traffic runs faster is asserted, but never proved. Before they ask people to pay for it, those who propose acceleration should try to display the evidence for their claim. [from: Energy and Equity. In Ivan Illich: Toward a History of Needs. New York: Pantheon, 1978.] -- Rich Points Community Cycles Director http://CommunityCycles.org Rich@CommunityCycles.org
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participants (4)
-
Bruce Lien -
CLINTON BIGGS -
Geoffrey B -
Rich Points