I've noticed that far too many people these days are laboring under the misconception that human-powered transportation is ideal, and that cities should be designed to be "walkable/bikeable" above all else. Here's why that's a bad idea:
1. Electric propulsion is more efficient.
https://www.ebikes.ca/documents/Ebike_Energy.pdf2. Human locomotion cannot be automated.
3. Human locomotion requires you to be healthy and uninjured. Good luck pedaling to the hospital or work when you're crippled.
4. Human muscles cannot do regenerative braking. This is related to point #1, but 1 would still be true without 4.
5. It's hard to get other things done, like reading and writing, when you are pedaling or walking.
6. You could put a pressurized velomobile in a vacuum tube and go quite fast on human power, but your acceleration is still power-limited. There's a reason we have elevators instead of making people walk up 50 flights of stairs every day.
What we should have instead is a combination of telepresence, automated passenger rail/prt and automated cargo rail to meet the bulk of our transportation needs within cities. Cities should be dense, but that doesn't imply that you should walk everywhere like some stupid farm animal. Exercise, when separated from transportation, should be done when and where needed without being dictated by where you need to go. What we don't need is more bike lanes shitting up roads and roads/rail to be sabotaged because why invest in infrastructure when you can tell everyone to "just walk everywhere lol".
