There are some places maintaining respectable bike shares even in winter. Surprisingly (or not), these include many Scandinavian locations.
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| via Citilab |
Copenhagen shows almost the same bike modal share in winter. Umea (Sweden) is even more impressive because despite its 130 snow days a year it preserves a 24% bike commute.
Apparently, it is not the cold that has the biggest impact on riding decisions. Take Perälä’s own Oulu, Finland, which endures more than 100 days of snowfall a year. During winter, cycling levels are relatively steady even as temperatures range from 0 degrees Celsius to 20-below
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| Take Perälä via Citilab |
The main factor to influence winter cycling rates are the strength of a city’s bike network (ideally made up of protected bike lanes) and how well it maintains this network during the cold and snowy months (ideally as a top priority). For example, Copenhagen salts bike lanes before it snows then makes clearing them afterwards a priority, even ahead of clearing the general roadways for car traffic.
This is why they can be proud of presenting maps such as the next one, where it can be seen on the left a map of all the on-street bicycle infrastructure, and on the
right the a map of the bicycle infrastructure that is cleared of snow
before the roads are even considered. (I personally believe that maps are the opposite as described in the legend since there are more prioritized cycle tracks in winter than streets with cycle tracks. Nevertheless, impressive.)
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| via Copenhagenize |
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