Climate and infrastructure is what keeping me from using a bike for non recreational purposes. Continuous bike lanes, driver culture where bicycles are treated as equal on the road and temperatures that don't hit 40c.
Climate is one of those excuses that are only made by those with no experience. In countries where biking is popular people drive in all climate conditions without much problems, snow, wind, rain, heat.
That's a common cop-out. It's too hot, it's too cold, it's too windy, it's too hilly, etc., ad nauseam. The evidence tells a different story: where high quality, continuous bike infrastructure exists, you have a high rate of cycling regardless of climate, geography, demographics or whatever.
Bikes work in some cities, and I'm a big fan of bikes in general. Especially in the US, it would benefit a lot of people to get a bit of daily exercise.
However, I can't imagine riding a bike to work on where I live. First, it's too dangerous. The modern age of cell phones is very different that the days when I grew up when parents allowed kids to ride their bikes in the street to school every day. Distracted drivers now seem to mow down bicyclists regularly.
Furthermore, the cities I've lived in have weather too extreme to ride in:
Buffalo -- on average it snows during 6 months of the year, around 90+ inches/year (242cm/year).
Boston -- very cold four months of the year. I recall 30 consecutive days with a high below freezing. It also has high winter wind speeds (some days as high as 14mph (23km/hr) in December) and rainfall.
Dallas -- averages 97 days per year with a high over 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius)
Houston -- averages 99 days per year with a high over 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius) and very humid. Its also 637.4 square miles (1,651 km^2) in size making it very likely that one will have a long sweaty commute.
Austin -- averages 108 days per year with a high over 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius)
Detroit -- one block from home I was beaten off of my bike by an organized gang of bicycle thieves that took my bike and were never caught. The weather isn't concussive to bike riding either.
There are cities in the US that have better weather. I enjoyed walking to school the year I lived in Marin County in California.
The climate isn't a big deal, finland has the climate for biking too, it's mostly about having the infrastructure and maintaining it.
If cold was a problem, cars wouldn't work either because they'd be unable to handle snow. However, we maintain our car infrastructure and plow the roads
Yes, it's amazing how bike advocates view the world as a homogenous place.
Where I live it's 90 degrees or higher, and humid in the summer, and can be sub-zero in the winter. It's also quite hilly -- flat and level riding is the exception. I'm not riding a bike any substantial distance in those conditions, regardless of paths or lanes.
If that's the video I'm thinking of, it's referencing Finland, where people bike all year because the bicycle infrastructure is well maintained.
Try driving in -20 on unmaintained roads, and you'll find the same thing as your current statement about biking. The temperature is largely unrelated to the infrastructure's useability
I've lived very few places with public transport, and often what was in place was poor. Winter exists and biking infrastructure simply doesn't exist in ways meaningful enough to ride a bike, if you are lucky enough to live close enough to do that.
I would love to see how bike enthusiasts will deal with climate conditions like that: +35..+40°C in summer, -15°C and snow in winter. No sarcasm, genuinely curious.
That’s not a very attractive option for those of us here in the north. Being buried in snow, slush, and ice for six months of the year makes biking very unattractive.
I take your point(s) that the argument cant be "Everyone just use bikes and trains". That's obviously not practical but to be fair it's not what is being suggested either.
But in relation to the point you made about bad or cold weather being a factor for bikes being an impractical mode of transport. Please take a few minutes to consider the points and examples provided in this video (1).
TLDW: There is a town in Finland (Oulu) where cycling is a primary mode of transport (over a fifth of of all trips are by bike and 77% of people cycle occasionally) even in winter when it gets down to -20 Celsius.
Weather is always spouted as a reason for not investing in bike infrastructure which is really annoying because that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. It's the lack of safe and adequate bike infrastructure that stops people from cycling. Anyway, I thought it was worth adding that point of nuance to the discussion.
Cycling in 25F temperatures is one thing; cycling in -40(F or C) temperatures is another thing entirely. I completely object to the idea that cycling in -40 is feasible for the vast majority of the population. -40 isn't that abnormal in places like Minnesota or Edmonton.
Bikes are also exposed to the elements and easily stolen. Yes someone will chime in saying they are perfectly fine cycling in freezing winter or muggy summer weather, but that’s not going to do any favors in convincing most people to embrace cycling as their primary means of transportation.
Not to mention the far more significant problem of bicycling in winter climates, which renders a bicycle (at best) somewhat unsafe for many months of the year. Typically, I would end up with some snow and snowy slush on me if I tried biking in the winter, not to mention very cold limbs.
Heat and rain are bigger barriers to bicycles than cold. You could make a case for ice, but you can address that at the infrastructure level. You can make a case for hills, but again, infrastructure (namely, minimizing grade and going around whenever possible). It's a lot easier to wear a coat than it is to wear an air conditioner; if Tw > 30, you are risking heat stroke by pedaling. California, except the far southeast, has generally cooler and much drier summers than most of the United States.
Also, it's +2 in Umeå right now, which is warmer than I thought.
I live in Texas, where we had 43+ consecutive days of weather over 40C this summer.
I actually don't think the weather is even the limiting factor here in Texas. It's that it's literally unsafe to ride a bike on the vast majority of streets here under fear of serious injury or death.
I bike thousands of miles a year. I love it. I also don't want to bike to grocery stores and restaurants. Sweaty in the summer, and we get -30F in the winter and our city tends to be very windy with wind chills down to -60F.
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