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Comment by Kjeldahl | Hacker News Reader

What the PR piece doesn't show is that during winter (4-6 months a year), very few ride bicycles around. In winter most people don't stay outside a lot, the weather is harsh (people do ski, but not inside the cities). They have installed play and outside work areas, which are mostly empty during winter, and require maintenance to get them in shape again for the next summer. A lot of shops are moving or closing down. Young people sporting bicycles in summer surely looks good. It doesn't look quite as good with 5-6 shopping bags with groceries for the kids. It's an interesting experiment for sure. Hopefully the single kids have enough money to keep the city thriving, because families are moving out to be able to have a car. Parents in Norway also spend a lot of time caring for their children, which includes driving them around to various activities. Most people who say raising kids in Norway without a car if fine usually haven't had any kids yet.

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> It doesn't look quite as good with 5-6 shopping bags with groceries for the kids.

Here in the Netherlands people seem to have no problems doing exactly that on a bike. Is Oslo any significantly different than, say, Amsterdam? Last week we had all sorts of harsh whether (sub-zero temps, heavy rain, snow) during my morning commute, which didn't seem to affect bike traffic one bit.

> Parents in Norway also spend a lot of time caring for their children

The subtext being if you are against cars you are a bad parent?

> which includes driving them around to various activities

No, parenting includes taking them to places, not driving.

In winter Oslo averages 10C lower high temperatures and an hour and half less sunlight than Amsterdam. Oslo is also less dense, and spread around both sides of a fjord.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=temperatures+in+oslo+v...

Oslo is 5 deg celsius colder in winter than Amsterdam. You sometimes have sub-0, for them it's a norm.

There is a big difference between 5C-10C and 0C (a Warsaw-native here, which is closer in terms of temperatures to Oslo)

Why would this be downvoted? Is absolutely correct. For example average sub zero temperatures mean that snow eventually turns to ice rather than melting.

I also live in Amsterdam, and while I bike to work every day my wife isn't as confident in the snow and when it snowed this past week took the tram.

On that day two full trams passed her stop before she was able to get on one. Something that otherwise never happens in the city.

So I think you've got a very different impression of how Amsterdammers stop cycling when there's a bit of snow. My own impression is that there's at least a 10x difference in the number of cyclists the day after some snow at rush hour compared to the same time of day on a weekday in the summer months when you can bike to work in a T-shirt.

Also, as someone from further up north than Oslo you may not be appreciating the logistical difference in cycling in the sort of snow they get up there v.s. what you get in Amsterdam. Most of the time when it snows in Amsterdam you've got 2-3 cm at most, no icing, and major cycle paths clear up down to the asphalt on at least the center-line by 8:30 at the latest.

None of which means you need a car. I cycled to work year round to work when I lived in Iceland, but it's definitely a very different challenge. You need studded tires, a mountain bike etc.

Semi-related: Because of a defective transformer some tram services had their frequency reduced in the morning. [1] This has been going on for the entire week and might explain why your wife couldn't get her tram.

[1] https://twitter.com/GVBnieuws/status/1087946558677635073

I doubt the climate in Netherlands is comparable. A week here and there with snow doesn't even compare. The pro car ban people mostly argue that if only the public transportation gets good enough, cars aren't needed. That remains to be seen IMHO. Until then I believe the shopping malls with parking outside the cities will grow bigger, families will be moving out, and eventually city centers will become less lively (like many places in the US, good for office space and lunch, dead in the evenings). Time will show. Regardless of this, I believe it is possible to have space for both bicycles and cars, although the people in charge of Oslo after the last election disagrees.

There is snow and ice on the ground continuously for about 6 months of the year. Rain in winter here is rare and when it does happen it is often undercooled i.e. it freezes on contact with the ground. The climate in Amsterdam is not even close to comparable. Cycling on ice is totally different to cycling on a couple of cm of fresh snow.

Oslo has very steep hills. I know people that climb 100's of meters per day during their cycle commute.

So yeah very different.

One thing I love about living on the south coast of England is that I can cycle to my train station all year round. All winter bar a one or two days midwinter when there is actually some real snow/ice. I don't even bother to put on my studded tires I have in my garage.

When I did live in Oslo I did put on those studded tires for the colder months. But that was only for the late autumn and spring when there might be ice but mostly bare tarmac.

The actual winter months was not suitable for cycling. Studded tires are fine on cleared roads with nice rink type thin ice on it. But on most roads especially the park roads I prefered to cycle on you could not see the tarmac. Cycling in the winter on a normal bike is a nightmare on these surfaces that are several layers of snow and ice refrozen many times leaving random deep grooves which forces your wheel to turn in all sorts of directions all the time. Add a foot or two of snow if the snow ploughers and gritters had not been there yet that morning. Exhausting and dangerous.

I'm even more afraid to drive a car on those surfaces to be honest.

> Last week we had all sorts of harsh whether (sub-zero temps, heavy rain, snow) during my morning commute, which didn't seem to affect bike traffic one bit.

I'd like to corroborate the sibling comment: this is not true. Although not in Amsterdam, elsewhere in the Netherlands I consistently park my bike in the same parking around the same time, and it usually fills up at about the same pace. Far fewer spaces were taken when I parked my bike during the harsh weather than there were usually.

Not true. Lots of people bike in Oslo during the winter. While the numbers are lower in winter, saying that very few do is plainly wrong. Cargo bikes as well as trailers for kids are popular among families with children, see them all over the place. The city bike system are testing winter bikes and so far it been a success. The changes that are being implement take time, but overall the last few years the city have made great strides.

Virtually no one bikes here in the winter.

As I said, definitely a lot of bikes in Munich in winter, but temperatures also rarely drop below -10°C or so (although there were some extremely exceptional winters in the last few years where it happened). Maybe that's different in Oslo.

Temperatures here are rarely under -5 but rarely above 0. The key is that they hover just below zero and the ice stays on the ground.

Ice is very different to snow to cycle on.

Does the city not put road grit onto the bike paths in Oslo? They certainly do in Munich.

They are not many bike paths. For example there are non on my commute.

Ah, that's the major difference then, I guess.

Road grid does little when there's several cm of snow on top of the ice. It's a very slippery combination.

During winter the sidewalks rarely get the snow removed. So unless there's dedicated bike lanes, which there are still rather few of, you'd have to bike in the middle of the road. Which, due to the topography, would mostly mean holding up the traffic big time.

Here are some news articles from last winter which contains some illustrative pictures: https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/m60VB0/Mer-sno-i-vente-pa... https://www.aftenposten.no/osloby/i/ka3kLj/Oslo-vinteren-har...

Of course it's not always that bad, but it's usually not a whole lot better either for most of the winter.

Yes, the difference seems to be that Munich has lots of bike paths.

They're building more here tho, so unless we get a shift in power next year (local elections), the situation should be much better in a few years time.

They've also said they'll focus keeping the bike roads clear during winter, currently a big issue for myself.

Between this and the property tax I can't see the current local government holding onto power.

Eyeballing some monthly graphs on [1] it seems to be 5-15% of peak traffic, I would call that few. Also, the city bikes don't operate during winter, which I can completely understand

[1] http://www.eco-public.com/ParcPublic/?id=3936#

I don't know about Oslo, but in Munich, where winters are full of snow, plenty of bikes are still around. I certainly continued commuting to work that way, and it definitely wasn't "young people sporting bicycles in summer" for me, it was just my regular means of transportation, totally unsporty.

Many more bikes out in summer, yes, but, well, many more people outside in summer in general.

As for groceries: Supermarkets are pretty well distributed in Munich's residential areas (which I don't think includes the city center, by the way), often so close that taking your car might take you longer.

The goal of most "anti-car" (most aren't really anti-car, just anti-cars in the city) people is not just to create pedestrian zones, but also to change land-use patterns so that it doesn't feel as necessary to drive everywhere.

This is absolutely implementation-specific. American cities tried similar transit/pedestrian malls but failed. It is my belief that with good governance and infrastructure, cities can adapt to a car-free lifestyle, even in places with extreme winter.

For example, in snowy and hilly Montreal an entire underground shopping mall exists, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal) allowing for transit commuters to walk around (or rather, under) the city center comfortably even in the dead of winter. Even if those commuters took their cars into the office that day, they still benefit from this infrastructure, because it potentially reduces the need for additional car trips (if you're just grabbing a quick bite to eat or a few groceries).

> It doesn't look quite as good with 5-6 shopping bags with groceries for the kids

Kiwi is literally everywhere, in Oslo it's not going to be more than like two blocks to go grocery shopping.

> Most people who say raising kids in Norway without a car if fine usually haven't had any kids yet

Neither me or any of my school mates had access to cars growing up in the 90s, pretty sure kids these days can walk also. In the country-side I'd kinda agree with your points but in the city, especially Oslo everything is super accessible.

Most people I know here in Sweden do their grocery shopping online, that's significantly reducing the car use. I used to drive 15 min x 2 several times a week for groceries, now it's not even once a week.

I empathize with driving kids to activities though, most of my car use is probably related to that, and it's more difficult to find alternatives there.

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