We often hear people argue that we need to build more car infrastructure: new highways,
wider roads, and more parking.
We get it, we’re drivers too.
In the summer months who doesn’t enjoy a nice drive through the countryside or to a
national park?
But there’s something that these people always seem to forget, which is that we live
in Canada and we have six months of snow, ice, and freezing temperatures every single
year.
This isn’t California or Florida or some other vacation climate where it’s easy to
drive year-round.
The number one argument against bike infrastructure you hear in Canada and other northern climates
is that “bikes aren’t practical here, we have winter”.
The script basically follows what we just said, except talking about cycling instead
of driving.
When we’ve covered this argument before, we focused on data and how people’s perceptions
of winter are exaggerated.
The snowstorms and deep freezes that stand out in our memory are real but they only cover
a few weeks of the year in most cities.
With proper infrastructure and maintenance (separated bike lanes or bike paths that get
the same care as roads), you can bike through much of winter without much difficulty in
the same way that you can walk, ski, sled, snowshoe, or snowboard on most winter days.
Unless maybe you live in Yellowknife, the idea that our “great Canadian winter”
requires six months of vehicular protection from the snow and cold is just plain wrong.
Recently we got more perspective on the winter cycling debate: we actually had to drive in
bad winter conditions a few different times.
All we can say is…
Really?
This is your wonderful winter-proof mode of transportation?
It keeps you warm, we’ll grant you that.
But driving in bad winter weather was a nightmare that we wouldn’t wish on anyone!
It’s terrifying driving when you can’t see the lane markings.
[Cars lined up in snow-filled ditches one after the other and no immediate help on the
way.
It appears the drivers could not tell what was road and what was shoulder.]
Sometimes there are tire tracks to follow but they can be deceptive and actually cross
the road markings.
Even when the whole surface is visible, it’s hard to fully trust the traction.
One striking deficiency of driving that really stood out to us, especially in more urban
contexts with cyclists and pedestrians around, is how you have so much less vision and maneuverability
when you’re operating a big metal box with blind spots compared to being on foot.
You often hear drivers describe pedestrians or cyclists they hit as “coming out of nowhere”
but it seems like people don’t appreciate just how much driving reduces your spatial
awareness.
Obviously this applies in the summer too but it makes winter driving particularly stressful
when there’s less traction and your control of your vehicle is reduced.
People will say that with experience we could get more comfortable and proficient with winter
driving and we’re sure that’s true, but the exact same thing applies to winter cycling!
The doubt and disbelief that so many Canadians have about the possibility of biking in the
winter — not just during rough weather but even on mundane winter days where it’s a
bearable five or ten degrees below freezing and the bike lanes are as clear as this — reflects
a lack of experience.
We were in the same position a few years ago before we moved to Montreal, saw a pretty
good network of protected bike lanes that actually get cleared and maintained in the
winter, and noticed just how many people rode year round.
Some of them even brave the snowstorms and deep freezes but like with driving it’s
understandable to try to avoid the worst weather if possible.
And while you can get more comfortable and proficient with winter driving, you can’t
get around the fact that driving in bad winter weather is demonstrably pretty dangerous.
Active precipitation — especially snowfall — has a major effect of making roads less
safe.
Active snowfall almost doubles the likelihood of car crashes and injuries.
One study found that even just driving in the rain — not even the snow — increases
the likelihood of a car crash to the same degree as having a 0.08 blood alcohol level,
the legal limit for intoxication in Canada and most of the U.S.
This is just the reality of bad weather with cars: An eight car pile-up.
A collision between three trucks that caught on fire.
12 sent to hospital after three pile-ups.
Bigger cities like Toronto see shocking numbers of crashes: 250, 500, even 1,000 collisions
after a particularly bad storm.
Bad winter weather is a challenge for other modes of transport too, whether walking, cycling,
or transit.
[Even big heavy TTC buses were getting stuck.
These ones on York Mills Road just east of Yonge Street…]
But none of them bring the same level of carnage and disruption that you get with multi-ton
personal vehicles traveling at high speeds and smashing into buildings, other road users,
and each other.
Cars are a unique headache in winter in so many other ways too.
Driving puts you on the hook for a lot more shoveling: digging out your buried car after
a snowstorm or clearing a whole driveway is a lot more effort than cleaning your stairs
and a walking path.
[This morning I woke up just like everyone else did, took a look outside.
Well, I’d better get out there with my shovel and get this stuff off my car.
Look, these are cars, just how much snow has accumulated.]
In a lot of cities, drivers have to deal with parking bans and moving their cars for snow
clearing.
[The most important thing is a place to move your car.
But he says they’ll still need streets cleared of cars before they can clear all that snow.
I recognize that some people don’t have options, so in a snow emergency that’s where
coordination becomes really important.]
In our city, failing to do so incurs the wrath of an ancient evil: the tow truck siren gods.
In this recent experience of winter driving, we encountered a bunch of smaller random annoyances
that just don’t exist if you get around by walking, cycling, and transit, like spending
time scraping ice off the windshield so that you can actually see.
[Cars pulling over in the underpass just to clean iced-up windshields.]
Finally, won’t somebody think of the cars!
There’s a reason Canadians with sports cars put them away for the winter — cars just
don’t last very long in slush and ice.
[Right now thousands of people are on the roads driving through the salty slush.
But have you ever wondered how much damage all that winter road salt can do to your car?
Experts say that major rust and corrosion can set in just four years after purchasing
a brand new car.
Can you believe that?]
Unlike the bike lane critics, we’re not going to use the harshest winter weather or
the other challenges and inconveniences of cars in winter to argue that cars should be
completely sidelined from cities.
Motor vehicles have their place.
[I wouldn’t get out but I have to check on my mom, she’s 86 and lives on her own.]
But driving in the winter is dangerous, unpleasant, and unpredictable enough that cities in northern
climates have yet another reason to stop making driving a basic necessity of life by default.
[It’s a day to improvise, says Tavia.
‘I’m skiing down my street.
I love it because I don’t have to drive right now.’
Yeah, woohoo if you don’t have to drive.
That’s a good thing.]
A resilient transportation system is one with options and redundancy.
We consider ourselves lucky to live in the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor, the only part
of Canada with semi-serious intercity train service, which has generally allowed us to
avoid having to drive between cities in the winter so far.
Trains aren’t immune to winter weather but they do generally handle it better than cars,
on top of having a much higher baseline level of safety.
We’re also lucky to have access to the wonderful Montreal Metro — underground metro systems
are the gold standard of winter resilience.
[“Il fait beau dans le métro.”
= “The weather’s nice in the metro.”]
For a different example of the importance of having options, the last city we lived
in, Ottawa, had a new light rail system whose fundamentals are actually pretty promising
but it’s also uniquely plagued with mechanical problems and outages.
When the train was down, we were thankful that Ottawa has a pretty good multi-use pathway
system that follows near the train and allowed us to replace some of our trips on light rail
with cycling.
Thanks for slipping through to the end of the video.
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