We recently had some rough winter weather in Ontario and Quebec, with a snowstorm that dumped
a half metre (20 inches) of snow onto Ottawa in one day. Around that we also experienced a
pretty frigid cold snap, which involved waking up on quite a few days to temperatures approaching
-30 celsius (-22 fahrenheit) with the wind chill pushing the perceived temperature even lower.
This is the kind of winter weather that people bring up when they say bikes just can’t ever be
a serious mode of urban transport in Canada or the northern U.S. because “we have winter”. In
the aftermath of this snowstorm and cold snap, we want to explain why this still doesn’t make sense.
Obviously winter isn’t the most pleasant time of the year and most of us would rather
be sipping Pina Coladas on the beach in the Caribbean, but at the same time when winter
comes up as an argument against urban cycling and bike infrastructure we see a lot of…
strategic exaggerations. People actually talk as if snowstorms and deep freezes are most of
winter and winter is half the year but that’s just not accurate. Extreme weather stands out
in our memories for entirely understandable reasons but these memories don’t reflect the
average winter day. The recent snowstorm went into the record books as the fifth highest
one-day snowfall in recorded history in Ottawa. But even the more typical snowstorms that happen
every year don’t actually occur on very many days. Snow stays on the ground for three to four months,
but actual snowstorms can be measured in days or weeks. Ignoring flurries or light
snow and counting up all the days with at least moderate amounts of snowfall,
at least 5 centimetres or 2 inches, it adds up to about a week in Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg,
and Edmonton, two weeks in Ottawa and Montreal, and three weeks in famously snowy Quebec City.
The same applies to temperature. People point to extreme temperatures like -30 celsius
but even counting wind chill that’s no more than two or three weeks per year,
unless you live in famously cold Winnipeg, also known as Winterpeg. In relatively mild Toronto,
it’s just three days per year that see those temperatures, and it’s usually in the middle of
the night or early morning. With that said, snow and surface conditions arguably matter more than
cold for biking and similar outdoor activities. There were a lot more people skating the Rideau
Canal in the cold snap than during the snowstorm, especially before the plows came through. Our
experience moving from warmer Toronto to colder Montreal and Ottawa was just that it forced
us to get more serious about winter clothing. We bought better coats and gloves and started
spending more time getting dressed and putting on layers. It’s annoying and time-consuming to have
to do this before going outside but the actual experience once outside isn’t all that different,
as long as we stay outside for reasonable periods of time. We’ve never lived in Winnipeg but we
assume that people there are even better at preparing for and tolerating cold temperatures.
The second problem with using winter as an argument against urban cycling and bike
infrastructure is that the challenges of winter are not remotely specific to bikes.
Biking in a snowstorm can be difficult and dangerous, and you probably want to avoid
it if possible—but the same can be said for walking or driving, especially if you’re in
the 60% of Canadians outside of Quebec who choose not to use winter tires each year.
The recent snowstorm shut down highways and cancelled schools, vaccination clinics,
mail service, and when it hit the U.S. it cancelled about 4,200 flights.
[Police: We've got multiple transport trucks all struggling to get moving.
We've got heavy tows on scene trying to winch them out. Highway 401 eastbound all
lanes blocked. Unfortunately we've got one truck here that just got its front end ripped off.]
Remarkably, Ottawa’s troubled train seemed like the only mode of transport not affected.
That storm was an extreme case, but even in more typical snowy conditions it’s entirely
normal to see cars and buses stuck or spinning out on snowy roads, pedestrians struggling
through big snow banks, and drivers solemnly trying to dig out their cars and driveways.
We don’t think of how difficult winter is for cars or pedestrians because we’re just so used to it.
What also skews our perception is preparation and maintenance. We spend a lot of time and
money trying to make walking and especially driving practical in winter. Why can these
cars use this parking lot after a storm? It’s not because they do a great job driving through snow,
it’s because a plow pushed the snow to the side. Without plowing,
most cars are actually pretty helpless. When it comes to biking in the winter,
the weather of the day matters (including cold and especially snowfall), but the biggest factor
is infrastructure maintenance. Failing to plow and maintain bike lanes turns a few days or
weeks of disruption from storms each year into a few months of disruption waiting for the snow to
melt. That’s not a fundamental incompatibility between bikes and winter, it’s a policy choice.
If you live in a city that only has painted bike lanes then maybe you’ve never even
considered biking in the winter because painted lanes tend to turn into snow dumps,
but it doesn’t have to be that way. We saw this last year in Montreal and this year in
Ottawa—protected bike lanes and multi-use pathways encourage more dedicated maintenance from the city
and they’re less likely to end up as snow dumps for other plows. When we try to bike some place
in the winter, the biggest obstacle we face is that the network of available routes is decreased,
to the point that some destinations are difficult to reach at all. The single best thing a city can
do to allow more winter cycling is to extend its network of separated bike lanes that get dedicated
maintenance. It’s also good to have snow removal operations [like what happens in Montreal] where
snow is trucked to actual snow dumps instead of just rearranged in the street.
We actually had a good taste of ideal winter cycling conditions when Ottawa’s National Capital
Commission opened up part of a canal parkway to active transportation this winter. It’s a modest
two kilometres long and only open on the weekends, so it’s aimed more at recreation, but it’s hard to
bike down here and still think that bikes are somehow fundamentally incompatible with winter.
When given a wide and clear route without the threat of cars, biking in the winter actually
feels pretty care-free and accessible. This felt luxurious even compared to maintained bike lanes
or paths, which tend to shrink from leftover or fallen snow on the sides. This is a bigger
problem on two-way paths, because it can put you too close for comfort to oncoming cyclists.
This is one of the reasons we like Montreal’s REV on Saint-Denis so much; some cycling critics have
questioned the wide one-way lanes as excessive, but they’re especially useful in the winter.
In this video we’ve tried to provide a reality check on Canadian winter.
Cycling critics often talk as if winter is six months of constant snowstorms and deep freezes
but in reality a normal Canadian winter involves 3 to 4 months of snow on the ground with under a
month of more extreme weather, spread throughout the season. This harsh weather can be unpleasant
and disruptive but it’s a challenge for most forms of transport, even walking and driving,
but for those modes we don’t give as much thought to the disruption because we’re used to preparing
for and dealing with it. Take that away though and winter would be much more chaotic. A snowfall
that’s considered modest in a northern climate can cause complete traffic pandemonium and school
cancellations in a southern climate because they just aren’t used to that weather — their
cities don’t have many snow plows, no one at all has snow tires, and people aren’t used
to driving with any snow on the ground. With some exceptions, that basically corresponds
to our level of winter preparation for bikes in Canada, even though we have winter every year.
As a result, winter in Canada sees about 10% as many cyclists as summer, based on city bike
counters in Calgary and Ottawa. One simple reason to think there’s potential to develop more of
a culture of biking in the winter is to look at all the other things we do outside in the winter.
So many Canadians think you’re crazy to even look at your bike after October,
but they wouldn’t think twice about someone walking, jogging, skating, skiing, sledding,
or snowboarding in the same conditions. We already mentioned the Rideau Canal,
which attracts 20,000 people per day in the depths of winter to skate despite the cold and,
with the help of plows, despite the snow. Far from being considered an extreme sport
accessible only to dedicated enthusiasts, it’s a very popular family activity and half the kids can
skate circles around us. It’s the second biggest tourist attraction in Ottawa, after Parliament.
Another comparison is walking. Some bike counters in Calgary and Ottawa record pedestrians too
and they find that pedestrian traffic stays much stronger than cycling traffic through winter.
Apple mobility data, based on direction requests in Apple Maps, doesn’t include cycling but it does
also find that walking volumes stay pretty strong during the winter, only falling a bit
more than driving volumes. Canadians are not fundamentally unwilling or unable to brave
cold winter conditions without the protection of a car; the especially steep drop in cycling
through the winter has to be explained by other factors, whether routes becoming unavailable,
or concern about bike maintenance through the winter, or people just never considering biking
in the winter as something you can even do. That was the case for us until we moved to
a bike-friendly part of Montreal last year and saw how many people biked throughout the
winter. The numbers were modest compared to the summer but consistent enough that it was hard
not to notice that with good infrastructure and maintenance, winter cycling is in fact possible.
We mentioned that you probably want to avoid travelling in a snowstorm if possible,
whether you’re on a bike, in a car, or on foot, but obviously some people don’t have the luxury
of staying home when the weather is bad and they have to prepare and make the best of it. People
who need to walk in the worst winter conditions dress in layers and get good winter boots,
maybe with ice cleats. People who need to drive in the worst conditions prepare by
getting winter tires, preferring a four-wheel drive vehicle, and maybe getting tire chains.
When it’s especially cold, they plug in their vehicle overnight to
power the block heater to make sure their car can start in the morning.
Along these lines, there are lots of ways that cyclists can prepare to better handle cold or
bad surface conditions, from bar mitts to winter tires. We actually know someone who uses studded
tires to ride on the frozen Rideau Canal. With that said, you don’t have to go all-in with
preparation because winter cycling doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. It’s perfectly fine to bike on
nicer days but drive if it’s too cold or take the train if there’s too much snow and ice that hasn’t
been cleared. The point of this video is not that anyone needs to bike every day of the year,
only that we need to get past the mental block we have where we assume that bikes are
fundamentally incompatible with winter. If you’re considering getting into winter biking yourself,
Montreal YouTuber Paige Saunders just released a good introduction
and we also really enjoy Calgary-based channel Shifter on winter cycling too.
Thanks for watching through to the end of the weather report. Don’t
forget to bike in the winter and subscribe. And as always,
a special thanks to our supporters on Patreon who help keep the bike lights on.