Easy equation - make safe biking in the city and people will use it instead of driving if weather permits. It's such an easy equation to improve the quality of a city.
Reminds me of an old cycling adage (possibly predates modern cycling, not sure):
There's no such thing as poor weather, only poor clothing choices.
I hate to come across as a Nordic fetishist, but there are several cold northern cities known for their year-round cycling. Bike paths are plowed and/or heated. And people just layer up. Oulu, Finland comes to mind - paths are designed to drain well so sheets of ice don't form, plows are paid bonuses for clearing snow in a timely manner, etc. Winter ridership numbers in Oulu would put most/all American cities' summer numbers to shame.
I always found winter riding far preferable to the alternative: walking in the cold to a bus stop, standing there for 5-10 minutes, standing for 15 minutes in a lukewarm bus, then walking 5+ minutes in the cold...
...versus biking home, and being warm within 5 minutes, and having all my jacket zippers open by the time I get home in a total of 20 minutes, walking in the door toasty warm.
Half the problem is that most of the American populace considers itself experts on bicycling despite knowing fuck-all about it (never use the front brake! Tell your kids to ride against traffic for safety! You'll sweat to death biking to work in the summer! You'll freeze to death biking to work in the winter!) and the other half of the problem is that the American populace is incredibly bigoted towards anyone on foot or especially on a bicycle, and considers themselves road vigilantes whose duty is to punish the cyclist in front of them for every traffic violation supposedly committed by another cyclist that they witnessed at one time.
> There's no such thing as poor weather, only poor clothing choices.
Where I live the heat index is supposed to be 108F with almost no cloud coverage. Riding a bike a few miles in the middle of the day is definitely risking heat stroke. It is without a doubt poor weather for riding.
And yet bicycles are very popular in countries where it is incredibly hot and humid.
Bicycling is more efficient than walking; you're generating less heat to move at the same speed, or you can move faster for the same heat generation, generating more cooling breeze.
I've ridden in over 100 degree weather during a heat wave. I dressed in the lightest clothing I owned, and arrived barely sweating.
My coworkers demanded to know how I'd arrived not drenched in sweat; after all, just walking from the bus stop many of them had gotten soaked in sweat.
Simple: I planned an extra ten minutes for my commute, and barely pressed the pedals...
If you are in good condition and wearing light clothes, sunscreen, and drinking plenty of water, hot weather is not a problem for bicyclists. Admittedly it takes a bit of work to get there, though, and most people are not willing to put in the work.
Riding when the temperature is 42C is "uncomfortable", rather than "not a problem", if you're seriously road riding. I suppose it's only "not a problem" if you're slowly tooling around on a cruiser...
Part of being in good condition is knowing your limits. If it’s that hot out, you will want to leave a bit earlier and ride slower so you don’t overheat.
I find that biking (and more broadly, being outdoors) sucks during rainy winter days, but I live in a place with no snow and only humid, rainy winters. Also, having something waterproof to cover your head has a negative impact on your ability to see properly (even as a pedestrian).
I've been a few times to places where it snows in the winter (nothing extreme, NYC in February and Ottawa in January) and found that it is more tolerable for me to be outdoors (given proper clothing) during snow than during rainy winter days.
Poor weather is also hard on the drivetrain. It’s not just a matter of rider discomfort — riding in the wet is also just more expensive and more time-consuming, mile for mile. (I ride a few thousand miles per year, but mostly not in the rain and never in the snow.)
The wear issue is real, but for a commuter bike, I'm not sure it's that big a deal. Wipe down and relube the chain every few weeks and the drivetrain will still last thousands of miles or more. Especially if it's a less cutting edge 8/9 speed system, which tend to be way less finicky to wear and tuning than the latest 12 speed stuff (which is awesome, but needs a lot more maintenance). Bearings these days are pretty well sealed and short of submerging the bike, not really a wear item for most users.
Belt drivetrains (e.g. Gates Carbon Drive) + internally-geared hubs (e.g. Shimano Alfine) have basically solved that issue. They cost a bit more than chain-derailleur drivetrains but not significantly more.
There's also an efficiency loss, but for me the near elimination of maintenance costs and labor was worth it.
In over ten years of riding in all conditions including heavy snow with sand and salt, I have never done any maintenance on my belt drive system. I'm on my second belt.
There's almost no weather you can't bike in, just requires decent clothing and studs like parent mentions. In Calgary Alberta one year I commuted 50 km across the city each way with ebike for an entire year. With decent snow clearing, studded tires there was probably only ten days I didn't want to or couldn't take my bike.
Good point about the heat, that can indeed be dangerous if you’re not used to/trained to ride in those conditions. The same is. kt true for cold conditions where it’s really just clothing and tires.
What you can do in hot conditions is ride an ebike.
94F with humidity around 70% is a dew point of 83. Most scales will rate a dew point of above 70 as something like "miserable" or "intolerable".
The only outdoor activity I want to be doing when the dew point is 83 is called "going inside where there is AC". No I will not be riding an ebike around when the dew point is 83.
It’s just hot and humid, you’re not on Mars. Of course it’s more convenient to take the car, but it’s not dangerous to use an ebike in those situations.
Very unlikely you’re going to get heat stroke in 10 minutes or even 10 miles if it’s 94*F. Unpleasantly hot? Sure, I guess, though I ride through similar weather without problems (beyond sweat).
Sure. It's a funnel though. If you have no biking infrastructure some single digit percentage of people will bike regularly. If you have good biking infrastructure some likely multi digit percentage of people will bike regularly. If you have good biking infrastructure and the weather is bad you will likely have some digit percentage of people who will bike but less than those who will bike when the whether is nice.
I biked to work everyday in Chicago for years. Unless it rained or snowed. I thought the people who did that were crazy. The people who never biked to work thought I was crazy.
Bike paths / lanes in the US are typically not plowed reliably, or worse, street snow is plowed into the bike lanes. I can ride in rain short of a hurricane, I cannot ride through snow and on ice.
Where I live, local footpaths are cleared almost as fast as roads (local HOA/town management does it). The main mixed-use trail sometimes gets plowed, depends on the municipality and timing/availability (it's 50 miles long, almost straight, and spans 4+ counties/towns).
Bike lanes that are adjacent to roads are usually full of snow from the car lane. And intersection corners are usually 12+ inches of wet slush/ice water that catches and doesn't drain. So walking or riding in these areas is impossible. It sucks - I usually walk to work (1 mile from office) but can't in the snow because I can't cross major intersections without walking through that wet slush at the corners. Such poor design.
Having done it a few years in the Midwestern US my experience is the salt will rust the bicycle. And avoiding the salt is impossible until it is washed away in spring.
On one of our rare snowy winters, the underside of my cargo bike developed a serious case of rust. The front-wheel was constantly spraying a stream of salty sludge over the entire lower part of a bike.
A mudflap fixed the problem. Well, not the rust, but the spray.
Fortunately bikes are pretty sturdy and a bit of rust won't take them down. Mine is still doing fine over a decade later.
Salt sucks. It's better in my area (suburbs outside DC) since they switched to brining roads in advance of storms instead of dumping salt mix afterwards. And we have a horrible freeze/thaw cycle - below freezing overnight, low-30s daytime, so we get slick "black ice" if nothing is put down.
We have the same saying in Norwegian (where it rhymes, perhaps the English saying is translated?). Incidentally, people bike year round, and many have recently opted for electric bikes for commuting. Though I think this expression refers to rain and cold, where you can dress to be perfectly comfortable. Extreme heat is entirely different but not usually a problem in Scandinavia.
