The Oil Drum

Today I read about plans to add bicycle garages to the new rail link with three new stations being built in Malmö Sweden to better utlize the Öresund bridge to Copenhagen. The proposal is for 3000(old station) + 4000(city center) + 1500(new area) bikes with room for bicycle repair shops. The fee for parking is not decided. Malmö has 271 000 people with a prognosis for about 281 000 in 2011 when the railwayline is to be complegted.

No additional food production needed, but instead a change to eating lower on the food chain.  The best diet for health and athletics is based on plants.  Below is a good discussion
of the benefits and myths involved:

http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/030900puathletesarepeopletoo.htm

And speaking specifically to cycling, carbohydrates are what is needed for endurance.  The differences in fatigue time is astounding - comparing a meaty diet Vs. a complex carb one (this is well references in a great book called "With the Grain" by a female author named Brown.  Unfortunately it is OOP and I'm not sure where the references are, and I'm too lazy to find them :)  Regardless, the link above applies to cycling too.

This came up in another recent thread.  I dropped this link then as well:

http://todd.cleverchimp.com/blog/?p=125

It might be that an electric bike beats some diets, but some diets beat an electric bike.

If the food is available, eating more, and burning more, is a closer match to our pre-agricultural roots:

The average daily energy expenditure, as physical activity, of Stone Age humans is estimated at approximately 5.2 MJ (1240 kcal) and their total caloric intake at approximately 12.1 MJ (2900 kcal) (Cordain et al., 1998). Their subsistence efficiency was thus approximately 2.25 kJ (kcal) acquired for each kilojoule (kilocalorie) expended in physical activity. In contrast, sedentary humans in contemporary affluent societies commonly consume perhaps 8.5 MJ (2030 kcal) with expenditure, as physical activity, of approximately 2.3 MJ (555 kcal) (Cordain et al., 1998), a subsistence efficiency of 3.66 to 1.

PDF article

Well you are really talking about an incremental caloric uptake. But the U.S. diet is typically excessive, calorie-wise, for the age/weight groups. So if anything, you might see a decrease in diabetes, lowering of blood pressure, lowering of colesterol, maybe an increase in joint pain, etc, IMHO. Those rickshaw folks a probably burned out with 12 hour days? This guy (Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology) has been doing it with no ill effects. I think currently he is in old town St. Louis.

Thanks, OldHippie!

I was out working all day -- just got back.  I worked on replacing a threshold of a door, did some tuckpointing, masonry crack sealing, and also put some insulative foam in places in an old house belonging to some clients a couple of miles away.

I hauled all the tools, including a ladder, and the mortar and other supplies -- plus lunch! -- on the trike.  It was a beautiful day!

Some very fine comments on the need to integrate transit and walking and biking.

Also good comments on diet and exercise!  I've read that some of the pedicabbers in India and other third world countries do not get an adequate diet, but also guess that other health concerns may enter in as well.

I do get plenty of food for fuel and nutrition.  I am more concerned about getting adequate food in a few years as peak oil meets so many other world-shaping trends -- climate change and a variety of resource shortages and shifts, along with resource wars and shifts in geopolitical power.

I hope to pedal my trike through it all.

I try to get back to post as much as possible -- but what great comments while I was out and about!  No laptop on my trike yet.

-- resting from a very full day!  -- Gary (Beggar)