We’ve had a complicated relationship with biking in the winter. Unlike some of our favourite channels on the topic, we’re not long-time winter cyclists ourselves. We only started getting into year-round cycling a few years ago. At first it was exciting, we were breaking a mental block that we didn’t realize we had. So you don’t need to stop biking when the weather gets cold and snow starts to fall? Why didn’t anyone tell us this before? Why is our culture so weird about this? But biking in the winter never really became something we did that often. We did it here and there, it was a fun novelty, but it never felt that natural and we still shifted to walking and transit for most of our winter transportation needs.
There are two angles i’d like to come at this with, one is systemic and the other is more individualistic. Systemically, bike infra isn’t given the same clearing priority as auto traffic, making it much harder to use your bike to get around. Convincing city council to invest in better infrastructure and maintenance is a good place to help getting as many people as possible on bikes when it gets cold out Individualistically, winter tires go a long way to overcome whatever your specific geography’s winter challenges are. Studded tires are great to combat icy conditions and wider tires can help float over slushy or snowy conditions But biking in the winter has a big mental block for a lot of people, even when they’re used to playing winter sports. The key, like anything outdoors in the winter is preparation; having the layers appropriate to the conditions seriously improves your comfort. In the same way you wouldn’t ski in a t shirt, you need to dress the part to bike in the winter