Good Magazine published this fun comparison of fuel per passenger required to travel 560 km (350 mi) by various modes of transportation, including the fuel used to create the food that fuels the walker and the cyclist.The winner? The cyclist at 912 miles per gallon, or 0.26 L/100 km.
The cruise ship at the top of the chart gets a rather sad 0.009 mpg. So if cram more than 101,133 passengers on the ship and don't feed any of them, you may be able to can match the efficiency of a bicycle (ignoring how the mass of all those people would reduce the fuel efficiency of the ship).
It appears to only refer to fuel economy.
ReplyDeleteThe same graph with greenhouse impact efficiency would have to take into account the effect of upper atmosphere release from planes (~2.7), which would make a plane about 12.7*(CO2 factor) - similar to the sedan with only the driver.
Also, David Suzuki has a similar graph (for greenhouse impact), showing that short haul flights have a higher impact per distance - I'm not sure how that's worked out.