On top of other issues, most of Europe also enjoys a 4-season year - meaning that a bike or scooter is safely and comfortably usable around half of a year, definitely not more.
Please send a note to the Dutch (and the Germans, the Danish, the French, the Belgians, …) to tell them to stop riding their bicycles in the midst of winter.
In the past five years there was one day when I couldn't cycle to work due to black ice covering most of the roads, and even that resolved itself in the afternoon. Snow just means you need a bit more dexterity than usual.
As for comfort; proper clothing means you are pretty much comfortable most of the time.
The ultimate irony of the point attempted to be made is that people don't drive when ice or snow cover on the road (or suck at it, take undue risks, fail to, and ram into curbs/cars/people).
Many people don't though (look at how attendance rates plummet at schools and businesses on heavy snow days), and of those who do drive anyway, the accident rate is highly elevated.
I cannot relate to what you write at all. In all my years in school, I did not witness a single day of attendance drop due to weather (the only weather-related exception was for the early years of elementary school, when you could choose not to go outside during breaks if the temperature was low enough, but that was rarely the case here near the coast).
What's more, in bad weather people (who have the option to choose between public transportation and their own vehicles) tend to choose cars more often because public transit has a habit of becoming increasingly unreliable, especially due to winter conditions, even though such conditions can be reasonably expected for 6 months a year.
I grew in a mountain pass area where there (used to, times change...) be heavy snow 2 to 4 months per year, and learned to drive there. Now I live in a city where snow happens regularly but much less and typically goes away in a couple of days, and when there's snow there's much less people on the roads, and for those who are, only a fraction know how to handle it, or even have proper winter tyres even though temperatures dive below the freezing point every year. People routinely flat out skip work on such days because "snow", which coming from where I grew up, is unfathomable unless you got a meter of snow overnight. On the occasional trip to Paris I've witnessed a couple events where emergency services are scrambling to bring water, food, and clothes to people gridlocked for hours (it was winter and many couldn't be arsed to take even a jacket, oblivious to their environment, living in their air-conditioned bubbles from house to covered parking lot to car to workplace); the entirety of the city streets was in deadlock because of a couple of millimetres of snow (obviously {rail,sub}way was unaffected). Pure madness.
Where are you from? Where I'm from, schools would be closed during heavy snowfall, so attendance would necessarily drop to zero. That's kind of necessary in a place where snowfall doesn't happen often enough for it to make sense to invest in a whole fleet of snow-clearing vehicles. It would take days to clear the streets from a heavy snowfall, but snowfalls like that happened less than once a year.
A few years back I took a trip to Sapporo over the New Year's holiday. It snowed ~3 inches per day the entire week I was there. I consider myself pretty comfortable with cold weather (I went up there so the girl I knew could teach me to snowboard). I'll be damned if I ever agree to give up a private auto in favor of biking in that sort of weather. I didn't even like her FWD Kei car, and wished I was in an AWD Lancer Evolution or Subaru WRX instead.
I live in the southwest of Germany, 500km from the coast as the crow flies. I cycle-commute year-round, around 5km each way. It's no problem if you have a good rain jacket and rain pants, and a down jacket, gloves and a hat (that fits below a helmet) against the cold in winter.
I live in an European city 60 degrees northern latitude, and the bicycle season is more like 9 months out of the year. That can be extended to 10-11 months with a bit of clothing/gear and bicycling the whole year is not impossible either (but most people who do have a separate winter bike).
I used to do 15+15 km bike ride to work and back almost every day for 9 months out of the year. Sadly I can't do that any more as I moved farther away from work.
There might be days of bad weather where other means of transportation is more convenient, but that's the case all year around.
For motorcycles/scooters the season is shorter because you can't get (affordable) insurance.
That's very subjective, quite a lot of people do that year round in a lot of European cities. Certainly it's viable in southern Europe where it rarely snows.
Even here in Minneapolis many people ride their bikes all year round, with fewer riding when it is extremely cold or snowy, but coming back out when it warms up just a little.
What’s interesting to me about Minneapolis and other northern cities where there are a lot of cyclists is that they very often have far more people riding to commute or do other practical tasks than any number of other cities with much milder climates. In the American south, where you never see snow, commuter cyclists are practically nonexistent. Obviously there is a climate challenge of a different sort, but not insurmountable ones and not all year round.
Citation needed, I know. There’s a relevant article about this phenomenon out there somewhere, if I can find it I’ll post a link.
Heat is way worse than cold. Many people can't do harder physical activities once it's around 30 degrees Celsius and/or humid because they would pass out (me included, when it's over 28, I just drive everywhere because I can't stand it outside). The idea that someone in their full health would force me to bike onto the steep hill where I live (and 18 km away from my workplace) is extremely unsettling to me. Public transport is not an option - it takes 50 minutes that way (while just 12 min by car) and the buses and trams are constantly overcrowded, late (or don't arrive at all) - and you definitely can't transport a server (or groceries for a 5-member family) that way.
Riding on the rare occasions there's snow on the ground in London is great. Assuming you can avoid snow in your chain (which causes it to skip the sprockets), the roads are empty - no cars, no busses, it's lovely.
You've got it bass-ackwards: biking becomes more difficult the closer you are to the equator. You can always add insulation to protect from cold, but you can't go much further than a singlet+shorts in case of heat.
Cities in the Nordic countries have bike paths that are kept clear of snow and are used for commuting year-round. People know that there is a way to dress to be comfortable cycling even when winter comes.
That really depends on the level of comfort you want to have when riding a bike. A lot of people do still use a
bike in winter (through I can't recommend it), through
even if you don't do so, using it for 5/8 of a year is quite doable.
I ride all year round in edmonton, I don't understand what the superstitions are against riding in winter. It's like walking, just a bit windier and you can't put your hands in your pockets. I'll take -20c over rain any day. The only thing I don't like doing in cold weather is being still. So long as I'm moving I'm fine.
You can't ride on ice and snow unless you have fancy bike and tires.
You will sweat unless you only drive plane roads.
Wind and snow make it much harder to ride.
Most people will just give up on riding in winter the first time they try it.
I've commuting year round for close to two decades, you don't need a fancy bike. You don't need fancy tires. For 90% of my winter commuting I'm on wet or dry pavement, in the coldest major city in North America. Four years ago the city began promoting winter commuting, along with a commitment to keep the bike paths clear, and the number of winter bicycle commuters has doubled annually. Enough of them are overweight middle aged ladies, the last type of person you'd suspect to be a hardcore winter commuter, but that's because it isn't actually hardcore. The barriers are psychological, there's a very easy learning curve to overcome, and it comes quite naturally if you just maintain a cycling through the fall. It's also a cure for seasonal affective disorder/cabin fever.
I ride a fixed gear In winter, with the same tires I use in summer. A lot of people are on mountain bikes. Some people are on fatbikes, but that's overkill for basic commuting.
I'd take some cold weather commuting over summer commutes here in the Midwest US... Those 100 degree days with 95% humidity are a killer unless you have a shower at work.
I ride a motorcycle year long in Paris, it's definitely not comfortable during the harshest winter days but with proper gear it's definitely doable. Spring and Autumn is fine, you just need waterproof gear for rainy days. At lower speeds and with exercise keeping you warm riding a bicycle is probably even less of an issue.
Sure, on rainy or super cold days it's not like it's as comfortable as a car but you'd have to pay me to drive a car around Paris or any big european city at rush hour.
Here's a fact: Pontevedra and the area surrounding is famous in Spain for really rainy winters and springs. Pontevedra city is facing directly to the sea.
Around here (this site I mean), the majority opinion doesn't find any problem at all with sleet and snow and cycling.
The odd thing about this is how the biking paths around here (a city 60N) still remain relatively empty for a long time in the winter. It almost confuses me, but not really :-)
> Around here (this site I mean), the majority opinion doesn't find any problem at all with sleet and snow and cycling.
I know. I expected to get this kind of responses. It shows how little empathy this site has for other (older, overworked, with 3 kids, pregnant, ...) people that are just a little different than they are.
The people that don't just aren't typical HN users. There is a very limited subset of people biking during the other half of the year and that's what I'm talking about - the world isn't only composed of young healthy people that don't carry anything and/or anyone and don't drive long distances and don't live in a hilly region and don't have to wear suit/dress to work (or have showers at work).
Saying "countries" is funny. It's varying wildly within a country, even a small one. E.g. my home city of Hradec Králové is built on a completely flat area with mild weather, so of course everyone bikes almost the whole year, but Prague is built on a series of steep hills and enjoys rougher weather, so while you see people biking here, most people don't.
Your post is how I can tell you've never been to Copenhagen during the winter. Bicycles are used year-round no matter the weather. There's a saying here that roughly translates to "there's no bad weather, only improper clothing".
I'm definitely not wrong, I'm just living in the other half of Europe. And that's my point - there is the other half, you can't do blanket statements like "cars should be banned". Cars need an update, but motorized 4-wheel individual transport has its place, maybe not in your city, but definitely in mine.
Biking in autumn is perfectly comfortable. You are just wearing more clothes (which you would wear anyway if you're outside). It's not like people never leave their houses in USA, right?
Biking in the winter is fine too, as long as there's no snow (and the snow is usually only 1-2 months, depending on the location).
And some people do drive in the winter too (but that is harder and most don't).
Actually biking in snow is fine too as long as there isn’t too much of it. The real problems are around the melting point when everything melts a little bit during the day and three freezes over the night and thus you have to bike on ice. This can be fixed by studded tires but most don’t bother. Main issue for me for biking in the winter is the cold. Not really a problem anymore as I moved to Helsinki where it rarely is cold enough to be a problem.
