Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (But Finnish People Can)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

by evolve2k • 4 years ago

44 26 4 years ago

evolve2k• 4 years ago

The video has some great comments across North America and Europe, definitely worth a read over once you’ve watched the video.

LinuxBender• 4 years ago

This video aligns with my experience. The highways around me in the Western Rockies are plowed 24/7 in the long winter but the bike paths end up with 2+ feet of snow/ice on a warm day and upwards of 5 feet in blizzards/squalls and the snow trucks only make it worse. People ride their snowmobiles on the bike paths in the winter. Nobody rides their bike on the highway in the winter as cars/trucks rarely slow down and the wall of snow made by the snow trucks don't give the bicyclists anywhere to go.

xgkickt• 4 years ago

Can't even bike safely in the summer in my smallish city in Canada. No bike paths, with roads that keep getting wider with increased speeds, such that the city recommends riding on the sidewalk, and then you are supposed to dismount to cross the road every block. Cycling in Los Angeles where near misses were a daily occurrence felt safer.

brailsafe• 4 years ago

In some Canadian cities, no transportation method works very well in winter, not even moving to a more interesting urban area because there's sometimes no way to do that.

atdrummond• 4 years ago

I’ve seen people avidly biking in Yellow Knife in winter.

acchow3• 4 years ago

I love this YouTube channel. They did a series summarizing the findings from Strong Towns - US-style suburbia is fundamentally unsustainable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ...

systemvoltage2• 4 years ago

US-style suburbia is fundamentally unsustainable.

Why?

Personally, I'd like to live in American suburbia and backcountry. No crime, peaceful, plenty of resources and space, safe for kids, and cheaper than urban cesspool. Small towns are fine but they need good economy.

acchow3• 4 years ago

Watch the 7-part series and find out

IntelMiner• 4 years ago

That's exactly what the video series explains. Go watch it, it's excellent content

KennyBlanken• 4 years ago

"No crime"? Crime correlates to economic wealth, not population density. Plenty of non-urban areas in the US have astronomical crime rates due to poverty and substance abuse; plenty of cities are some of the safest areas you could possibly live in....and you benefit from fast police, EMS, and fire response times. In many rural areas, you're lucky if there's a cop within 20 miles of you and the firefighters have to drive to the fire station before they come out to put out what's left of your house.

In my city, you call the police or fire department and 3-4 minute response times if it's a life-threatening situation. Depending on the severity of a medical call, they may dispatch multiple ambulances to speed response time.

"Safe for kids"? In many cities kids take public transit to school and have access to everything within walking distance of their home. See note above about crime rate. Plenty of kids in rural areas can't leave their neighborhood, or even the end of their driveway, because there's a 50mph highway and everything is a 10-20 minute drive away.

"Cheaper"? There are costs beyond per-square-foot purchasing/leasing. In cities with good public transit and pedestrian infrastructure, you don't need a car. No financing costs, no depreciation, no fuel/maintenance/repair, no vehicle-related taxes, no parking, nothing (also, public transit is orders of magnitude safer per mile traveled.) If you live in an apartment, there's probably substantially less exterior surface area per square foot of living space due to shared walls/floors/ceilings so heating and cooling costs are lower. If you're in a condo association, maintenance and repair costs for the building are shared.

There are numerous studies showing people living in cities cost society less and have a lower carbon footprint.

legacynl• 4 years ago

The further apart you build each house the more asphalt, electricity cables, waterpipes, plumbing you need per house. The further you build these houses apart the more each house needs to pay in taxes to maintain it all.

Compounding that problem is that according to the linked videos local governments have been getting subsidies to expand and build more, while the maintenance isn't subsidised and has to come out of property taxes which in most cases don't cover the cost.

8bitsrule• 4 years ago

Canada: 10M sq.km. Pop. Density: 4.2/sq.km

Finland 0.338M sq.km. Pop. Density: 16.4/sq.km

Finns are packed in tighter, more cost effective.

How many kids outside of CA cities are gonna get their bikeways plowed whenever they have more than 4cm of snow?

But snowplows ignoring bike trails? Oh yeah.

tomjakubowski• 4 years ago

Because of how human populations are presently distributed, comparing population densities of two countries is really mostly comparing how much of each country's land is in truly depopulated swathes. Unless the countries you're comparing are, like, city-states, or oppositely they both lack urbanization, population density tells you very little about density as actually experienced by the inhabitants.

Think of average class size vs. median class at a university. The majority of students' class experiences are class sizes are smaller than average. The average is dominated by the rare classes which are huge.

Likewise, the vast majority (80%+) of Canadians and Finns live in cities or suburbs. These places are far denser than the national average, and occupy tiny portions of the total land area, in both countries. So to that 80% of the population, the density they live in is nothing like the national average.

https://ggwash.org/view/amp/65370

kumarsw• 4 years ago

I recall some figure that 90% of the Canadian population lives in a thin band extending a few hundred miles north of the US border. So average population density is very misleading.

Bakary• 4 years ago

What's the density of the Québec-Windsor corridor?

grecy2• 4 years ago

I biked to work everyday for 4 years in the Yukon. It gets fun after -40c/f.

But yes, I illegally road on the footpath in winter, being near the cars was certain death if you slipped on the ice. Actually Whitehorse has the highest rate of bike commuting in Canada, despite the cold & dark.

doubled112• 4 years ago

Does it get cold and stay cold up there? It must. -40 sounds pretty brisk.

Most of my winter cycling was in south western Ontario. My biggest issues were because it wouldn't stay cold. When it thaws, then gets cold again there's ice everywhere. It also seemed to cause all of the fluffy snow to turn into a crunchy layer of ice, which is much less comfortable to ride through and fall into.

grecy2• 4 years ago

I used to, but it changing now. My first couple of years it would stay below -30 for a few months. Now it gets up to +10C in the middle of Jan randomly.

I put studs into my tires and actually never slipped on ice once (though I sure have on foot...)

nicbou• 4 years ago

My Canadian home town is not even walkable in the winter. You can't plot a route from home to the mall because some parts have no sidewalks at all, and snowbanks force you into muddy snow and traffic.

I've attempted it and a concerned driver stopped to tell me how dangerous it was.

aaaaaaaaata• 4 years ago

Did they apologize at some point during the interaction?

egberts1• 4 years ago

Bullshit.

I biked everyday in the snow for I was THE newspaper boy in Ontario where the snow banks reaches 8’.

It was way cheaper than Ski-Doo Arctic Cat’s or Panther’s gas expense.

Took a Huffy frame, slapped a pair of knobby tires, some BMX handlebars, and strapped pedals; it was wild!

Although, it may have been the fact that I’m Finnish.

Never mind.

d13• 4 years ago

Me too. In Ontario, all winter, through the 80s to mid 90s.

ilrwbwrkhv• 4 years ago

Canada is notoriously mediocre in every aspect of government and life in general. So it is not a surprise that this is the case. Perhaps the worst out of all the developed countries.

Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (But Finnish People Can)

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