It's true. It's actually very disconcerting how much less snow there usually is on the bike lane, than on the sidewalk it's built into. There are stretches where folks just walk in the bike lane, because the sidewalk is so unsafe.

Maybe. I stopped biking in the winters in Cambridge purely because the pathways are impassable because of the snow. Not because of the weather.

> It probably doesn't matter so much though because the percentage of people who continue biking even in cold winter and with adverse snow conditions is quite low.

This is not necessarily true. Here in Copenhagen the amount of people cycling in winter is not significantly less than at other times of the year. That said, we don't have much snow, but the bike lanes are cleared before the road lanes (to incentivize not taking the car into the city).

The city does clear the snow from bike lanes with little mini bobcat tractors, but there's only so much that can be done. In mid-winter, I think studded snow tires are a must. And even those aren't exactly magic. There were a couple of late season storms this year were the city basically didn't plow much at all because they knew it would melt; and while the slush was navigable easily with a car, trying to carve through that on a bike was pretty freaky. Studs are great on ice and hard pack but with mash potato snow they don't help much.

Even when things are cleared off, melting and refreezing can make the lanes treacherous. That said, I estimate the number of people riding mid-winter is probably less than 10% of what you see in Spring through Fall.