[Closed] Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)

“If you build it - they will come”. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that first class infrastructure leads to increased and maintained use. We need this in our UK towns and cities.

Wasn't this posted last year as well? Not that it makes it less relevant, of course.

In essence it boils down to "because Canada isn't actually very serious about biking, or indeed anything that isn't big V8s".

I've seen this one before, it probably was posted here.

Its a handy one to bookmark for all the "UK Weather" naysayers that think that somehow we are uniquely unable to adopt cycling in this country.

Finland is quite flat though. And Helsinki, despite being cold, doesn't tend to have gales, wild wind or much rain.

And it's cold enough to be dry, which means rideable, rather than slippy slush.

Yes, the snow has plenty of grip. Most of Finland is also quite flat or with minimal hills. In Cardiff for example the eastern half of the residential areas is protected from town by a big hill, which half of us would have to get over and this puts a lot of people off. Plus the road network is badly laid out, whereas much of Helsinki was planned in the post-war period with wide roads, big pavements that you can cycle on too.

I'm in Calgary where it's currently -26C (-41 windchill) and there's a Frostbite warning in effect. I'm a keen cyclist but that's just too cold. If something does go wrong then a minor problem becomes major fast at those temps. My commute is ~20 minutes in summer but you could easily double that in winter and that's not including the time spent getting dressed / undressed.

The cycle paths are priority 1 cleared after snowfall (which generates much frothing as you can imagine from the V8 owners) so I could ride most of the way from my home to office on cleared, separate pathways. It's just grim riding in the cold and dark basically.

Also we have freeze / thaws so there quickly becomes sheet ice and even with studs the risk of falling and breaking bones is not worth it IMHO.

The Not Just Bikes videos are pretty good in general though. The ones on how North American Suburban development is a massive Ponzi scheme ring very true.

Comparison to 'Canada' is a bit pointless. It's so big and has so many climates. It would not be possible to maintain a hard snowpack path in many places, including southern Ontario, where he's apparently from. Too many freeze thaw/freezing rain events. Northern Ontario you could. So it's not a question of cold, it's weather. The West Coast is like the UK in the winter until you get up into the mountains which have great winter biking.

He's also wrong about the cold. It's true that London and Toronto don't get 'that' cold but other places regularly get far colder than you'd want to be biking in.

Also the V8 thing is more US than Canada. Fuel is more expensive than the US, not as bad as the UK though. Until recently, the best selling vehicle was the Honda Civic. They buy way more and smaller cars than their southern neighbours. They are buying a disturbingly large number of massive pick-up trucks now apparently, for no good reason

i lived in the yukon. there cycle commuting in winter was possible because it rarely got above freezing.

i now live in lower mainland bc. it rains like nothing i’ve ever seen, then freezes, then snows, then thaws, then freezes. winter cycling is pretty awful. to be honest lower mainland bc is pretty awful all around. it’s like living in the SE England without the access to better countries (assuming they’d let you in).

We only get about 3 days of "surprise! snow" a year, so the likelihood of snow ploughs is about as high as the likelihood of an increase in useable separated cycle paths.

"They are buying a disturbingly large number of massive pick-up trucks now apparently, for no good reason". This also seems to be true and I just don't get it if I'm honest. You're looking at upwards of $150+ to fill the tank of one of those and parking them is epic as well.

Got to admit when I went to Finland a couple of years ago I went on a guided Fat Bike tour.
The snow was too deep and soft to ride on, only place the tour went was following roads and paths. At -17 it was damn cold.
Wasn’t that much fun to be honest. I was in Ruka, was quite hilly. The snow out in the wooded areas was about 75cm deep.