In the convivial range. All six balances hold. Position 50 of 100.
- Biological degradation Holds Does this tool damage the living world, or the body, faster than either can recover? Holds: the tool does not cause this problem.
- Radical monopoly Holds Can people still meet the need another way, without this tool? Holds: the tool does not cause this problem.
- Overprogramming Holds Does using this tool require training or certification that people cannot give each other? Holds: the tool does not cause this problem.
- Polarization Holds Does this tool move power or advantage to a few, at others’ cost? Holds: the tool does not cause this problem.
- Obsolescence Holds Does this tool force people to replace what still works? Holds: the tool does not cause this problem.
- Frustration Holds Does this tool give back less than it takes, counting everything it takes? Holds: the tool does not cause this problem.
What it does
Moves a person, and a modest load, three or four times faster than walking, for about a fifth of the energy walking takes over the same distance (Illich’s figures). It runs on food and needs nothing more than a passable path.
Where it stops
At human speed and human range. It extends what a body can already do without making walking impossible or claiming the street for itself, and it doesn’t need a dedicated network to be useful. It never reaches the point Illich called a radical monopoly, where everyone is forced to use it.
How easily you can stop using it
Repairs need common parts and simple hand tools, and community bike shops teach them. Leaving costs nothing: you can walk, and nothing in your life has been rebuilt around the bicycle.
What is scored
- The unit: The ordinary pedal bicycle, owned and ridden by one person. Left out: electric bicycles, bike-share schemes, and the roads it shares with cars. The danger of riding among cars is scored in the car’s record.
- The job it is tested against: Moving a person and a modest load faster than walking. It does this reliably.
- Where and when: Illich’s figures of 1974 and current European figures for emissions. It applies anywhere there is a passable path. All six balances are assessed.
The bicycle is Ivan Illich’s model of a convivial tool: one that extends what a person can do without making them depend on a system they don’t control. He made the case most directly in Energy and Equity (1974), and the evidence since has mostly strengthened it.
The most efficient machine
In Energy and Equity, Illich noted that a person on a bicycle travels three or four times faster than on foot while spending, by his figures, about a fifth of the energy per distance. On that measure, he argued, a cyclist is more efficient than any machine or any animal. The bicycle also asks little of the city around it: by his count, eighteen bikes can park in the space of one car.
Effective speed
Illich’s best-known calculation counts all the time a car costs, not just the time spent driving it. That includes hours in traffic and looking for parking, and hours at work earning the money for payments, fuel, insurance, tolls, and tickets. His model American spent more than 1,600 hours a year this way to cover 7,500 miles: “less than five miles per hour” (Energy and Equity, “Speed-Stunned Imagination”), or about walking pace.
Later researchers named this effective speed. Paul Tranter’s work comparing cities found that once the time spent earning the money is counted, cyclists riding at ordinary speeds can match or beat the effective speed of drivers.
Faster roads, slower trips
The car’s speed has also been falling on its own terms. In the US National Household Travel Survey, the average private-vehicle commute ran at about 35 mph in 1995. By 2017 it had fallen to 25–27 mph, depending on how the survey’s change of method is adjusted for. The trips themselves barely grew, staying at about 12 miles; they just took longer, rising from about 20 minutes to 25. In metropolitan areas of three million people or more, the average commute across all modes ran at 20–22 mph.
Data table
| Year | Speed (mph) |
|---|---|
| 1977 | 37.5 |
| 1983 | 27.8 |
| 1990 | 31.5 |
| 1995 | 35.2 |
| 2001 | 32.3 |
| 2009 | 28.9 |
| 2017 | 25.2 (original) / 27.1 (adjusted) |
In the densest cities the figures are lower still. TomTom’s 2025 Traffic Index puts New York’s average driving speed at under 12 mph, and under 10 mph at rush hour.
More road, more traffic
Building more road doesn’t fix this. Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner found that in US cities, driving on interstate highways grows in proportion to the lane-kilometres built. New capacity fills with new traffic: existing residents drive more, commercial traffic grows, and people move to where the roads are. Their conclusion was that adding roads, or public transit, is unlikely to relieve congestion.
The six balances
Scored as set out in How to evaluate tools. The bicycle reliably does its job, so it starts in the convivial range.
- Biological degradation: 0. Making a bicycle emits about 96 kg of CO2-equivalent, and riding one about 21 g per kilometre over its life, most of that the rider’s food (European Cyclists’ Federation figures, as reported by BikePortland).
- Radical monopoly: 0. It never makes walking impossible, and nobody has to own one.
- Overprogramming: 0. Riding and repair are learned by doing, and community bike shops teach both.
- Polarization: 0. It is cheap, and one person’s riding takes nothing from anyone else.
- Obsolescence: 0. A fifty-year-old bicycle still runs on common parts. Makers do change component standards often; see the open questions.
- Frustration: 0. It gives back more than it asks. The danger of riding among cars belongs to the car’s record.
Where the threshold falls
In the convivial range, at 50, the centre: all six balances hold.
Illich called this pattern counterproductivity: past a certain threshold, a tool starts to defeat its own purpose. For transport he put the threshold at a specific speed. Once vehicles went faster than about 15 mph (roughly 24 km/h; Energy and Equity, “The Energy Crisis”), he argued, equity declined and both time and space grew scarce: “Beyond a critical speed, no one can save time without forcing another to lose it” (“Net Transfer of Life-time”). Cars cross the line when a city is rebuilt around them. He called that condition a radical monopoly (the section “The Radical Monopoly of Industry”): getting around without the tool becomes hard or impossible, so everyone must use it, and pay for it.
The bicycle stays below the line; Illich built his threshold around it, arguing that free people must travel “at the speed of a bicycle” (“The Energy Crisis”). In his terms it makes its rider faster without forcing anyone else to lose time, and it never makes walking impossible. That is why all six balances hold.
Open questions
- Should obsolescence score 1? Component makers change parts standards often, which can make a sound frame hard to keep running. That would move this record to 53.
- Illich’s effective-speed calculation is fifty years old. What does it give with today’s ownership costs and today’s urban speeds?
- Illich’s 15 mph figure dates from 1973, and he offered it on what he called limited information. The mechanism behind it can be tested now: do faster transport systems save people time, or do trips just get longer?
- Do e-bikes stay below the threshold, or start to cross it?
- Most of the figures here are American. How do Canadian cities compare?
Sources
- BikePortland. “New study compares bicycling’s CO2 emissions to other modes.” December 12, 2011. https://bikeportland.org/2011/12/12/new-study-compares-bicyclings-co2-emissions-to-other-modes-63536.
- Duranton, Gilles, and Matthew A Turner. “The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities.” American Economic Review 101, no. 6 (2011): 2616–2652. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.6.2616.
- Illich, Ivan. Energy and Equity. London: Calder & Boyars, 1974. https://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1973_energy_equity.html.
- Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. https://archive.org/details/illich-conviviality.
- McGuckin, N., and A. Fucci. Summary of Travel Trends: 2017 National Household Travel Survey. FHWA-PL-18-019. Washington, DC: Federal Highway Administration, 2018. https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/68751.
- TomTom. “New York Traffic Report.” TomTom Traffic Index 2025. Accessed October 4, 2026. https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/new-york-traffic/.
- “TomTom Traffic Index 2025 Shows U.S. Congestion Climbing.” Work Truck, January 21, 2026. https://www.worktruckonline.com/news/tomtom-traffic-index-2025-shows-us-congestion-climbing.
- Tranter, Paul. “Not So Fast! How Car Commuting Is Taking Your Time.” Eco-Business. Accessed October 4, 2026. https://www.eco-business.com/opinion/not-so-fast-how-car-commuting-is-taking-your-time-by-paul-tranter/.
- Tranter, Paul Joseph. “Speed Kills: The Complex Links Between Transport, Lack of Time and Urban Health.” Journal of Urban Health 87, no. 2 (2010): 155–166. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-009-9433-9.