Thanks to our bikes and the years-and-years we've been living in the greatest city in the universe, we rarely find ourselves checking directions with a site like GoogleMaps or HopStop, but a two-week-old calorie counting feature on the latter—which works for bike rides as well as train rides—might make us change our tune. If fast food joints can have calorie counts, why can't our commutes?
Here in Gothamist HQ our multi-transfer subway commutes clock in anywhere from the 30 calorie range when coming to DUMBO from Ridgewood, Queens, to the 20s when training it from Williamsburg. At first we figured that most of that was from going up those York Street steps, but we were wrong. Though you can burn calories sitting as well as standing, HopStop doesn't take into account the amount of time you spend commuting or the stairs in stations, so the actual number of calories you burn may be higher. According to the site's community manager "the calculations are based on the minutes of walking involved in your route, the average walking speed of New Yorkers, and their average body size."
Meanwhile, the bicycle (and walking) calculations are pretty spot on and don't seem to discount any aspects of your commute. We often map/track our bike rides on our phones (Cyclemeter is sweet) and the projected calories burned listed on HopStop match up pretty much exactly with the average calorie counts that we see on our phones (averaging out to about 120 from Williamsburg to DUMBO, in case you were interested).
Excuse us now, we're going to figure out exactly how many stops early we should be getting off the train tonight if we want to load up on desserts at dinner.
