I have tried repeatedly, and largely failed, to draw cyclists attention to the fact that stopping a bike wastes energy, in fact I've even been lampooned by a cyclist for being an idiot who can't see that if you're stationary you're not using any energy at all.
The point is that cyclists (and any other moving mass) have kinetic energy, and when you stop, the brakes waste that energy by converting it into heat. All that waste energy came from your leg muscles, so when you resume moving it has to be replaced by your legs too: stop more often, waste more energy.
So is that a lot? Well, a lot is a subjective term, but if you stop every 100m from 12mph that's roughly doubling your energy use.
Twice as much.
The corollary of all this is that cyclists will avoid stopping. They often aren't consciously aware that they're averse to stopping, and even less aware the reason why, but they are.
"Cyclists all jump red lights!"
My experience is that this is a lot more frequent in large cities, I've seen more RLJs in the time it takes to eat my breakfast at Bristol YHA, or walk up Deansgate in Manchester, than I have in a lifetime living in a provincial market town in East Anglia. This surprises me not at all. If I want to get out of the built up area and cycle free of traffic lights, I can be out of town in about 1.5m, under 10 minutes, but on the other hand, if I lived in central Manchester I wouldn't have the range to get out of the city at all, my entire cycling career would consist of stop-start riding. That would be enough to make me give up cycling altogether, never mind jump red lights.
"Cyclists weave in and out of the traffic!"
Stops for traffic queues can be a lot closer spaced than traffic lights, it's the same problem but more so.
"Cyclists campaign for cycle paths, and then they don't use them!"
Most cycle paths require that cyclists defer to the traffic at every side road, and in a built up area they are spaced about 100m apart, so if you build facilities that require cyclists to use double the amount of energy, either they won't use them, or they won't stop. Someone once suggested that this can all be solved by putting subways at every junction. Well, apart from the fact that doing so would consume the entire DoT budget for decades, climbing 3m out of a subway uses double the energy of getting moving again after a stop.
I don't have energy to waste, but I have the choice to cycle outside built up areas, and I avoid cycle paths like the plague when I don't. (I don't have any truck with motorists calling me lazy when they're the ones who can't be bothered parting their bum from a car seat)
I was stopped at a pelican crossing by a teenager who then proceeded to cycle over the crossing and carry on along the footpath on the other side of the road with a police car just behind me who completely ignored the situation
99% of the pedestrians killed whilst on the pavement are killed by motor vehicles, not cyclists.
In general, cyclists are responsible for just 2 road deaths a year, compared with 1700 killed by motor vehicles, so if the police were to have a blitz on enforcement against them they would never fix more than 0.13% of the problem, no matter how much money was spent.
So the police insist that chasing cyclists is a waste of taxpayer's money:
"Now for those who will no doubt be spitting out their finest percolated roasted bean brew at this moment screaming “what about the cyclists!” well…….statistical analysis shows they aren’t to blame, innocent in the majority of KSI collisions it would be a waste of our time, and thus public time and money to concentrate on cyclist behaviour. The figures speak for themselves…….driver’s don’t let your prejudices get in the way of the truth"
