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Comment by dymk | Hacker News Reader

I watched the video, and I still think winter (and late fall, and early spring) weather is a problem for biking in the Pacific Northwest. It's just not a pleasant or safe thing to do most of the year.

I see a lot of snow in that video, and not a lot of rain. Best of luck biking in sheeting rain.

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For me, most of the reason it's not pleasant or safe to do in the PNW is due to cars. I stop biking around when DST kicks in and causes most of my riding needs to happen after dark, because it's just a little more likely some pickup truck will not see me despite my flashing lights and reflectors. Some journeys I'll still do, because there's good bike infrastructure - but general biking after late october is more risk than I want to take on.

Yeah, evolving the culture of drivers is harder than putting in bike infrastructure.

Painting bike lanes is cheap and effective, but not foolproof. You have to change how people drive, and it seems like the wealthier the suburb, the more careless drivers are (driving fast, blowing lights/signs, not yielding the right of way).

You must separated paths for bikes and cars. We did that in Paris in the past few years and bike usage has exploded. It simply becomes safe (and pleasant) to ride a bike and people tends to follow others when society make a reasonable choice (favor bikes over cars).

And it was/is not easy to make space for bike in such a dense city.

Indeed, and in the US when it comes to making changes to urban areas for bikes, the prevailing attitude is something along the lines of je suis fatigué.

Here in Boston I've had several coworkers who consistently commuted by bike even when it was pouring out. They just wore rain suits, had waterproof panniers, and presumably weren't trying to maintain a 20 mph pace.

I biked daily in the Pacific Northwest for over a decade. You get rained on, but honestly there were only 2-3 days a year where it was a lot of rain. Vast majority of the time it was drizzly and with proper rain gear it was completely unnoticeable.

Good rain gear and a set of fenders feels like having super powers.

Rain with leaves on the road is really the biggest problem. With the normal mountain bike tyres snow is giving good grip and not an issue. But if you can't cycle for two full months per year that's fine if you switch back for the rest of the year.

I'm in central Texas. Winter is (rarely) a problem, but summer is.

An ebike can help with that. I have family that live in Joshua Tree and use ebikes for some trips during the summer.

That's great as long as there's a shower at your destination (to deal with road grime, sweat, and sunscreen).

I'm fortunate that my office provides showers but a lot don't.

road grime, sweat, and sunscreen can be avoided with good clothing choices, and the ebike doing most of the work. You might not want to ride if you're headed to a black tie formal event, but the point is there are plenty of trips where none of these are an issue.

We just finished a period of something like 100 days over 100F. There's not much you can do to avoid sweat on those days, especially when it's also humid.

I personally won't ride when it's above 102F because even when I sweat and there's a light breeze I struggle to cool down.

I have a strong suspicion that most of these people are from costal cities.

Why is an ebike so impractical in Texas when motorcycles are so popular? And what about all the people on bicycles/motorcycles/scooters in even hotter regions like Vietnam and India?

I sold my motorcycle a couple of years ago because it was pretty impractical for much of the year. Riding around with a good jacket, pants, gloves, boots, and helmet isn't much fun in the summer, especially commuting traffic (I couldn't afford riding gear with built-in cooling).

I'm not sure what you are asking about people in Vietnam or India. I've never been to either place however there are a lot of Vietnamese and Indian people who work in the same office park I work in and going by the people I meet around the bicycle rack, I don't think they are any more or less likely to commute via bicycle than any other group.

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