Considering the fact that northern European folks in bike oriented cities can do it, I'm sure the folks in Eau Claire can prove themselves just as tough.
The infrastructure appropriate for one isn't necessarily appropriate for the other.
For what it's worth, Oslo is still 10 degrees F (5.5 degrees C) warmer in the middle of winter than Eau Claire.
London, Ontario (used in the video) is further south than Madison, WI.
> The cold season lasts for 3.3 months, from December 3 to March 13, with an average daily high temperature below 38°F. The coldest month of the year in London is January, with an average low of 18°F and high of 29°F.
It's a bit nippier than Assen but its quite a bit warmer than Eau Claire in the winter.
Studded tires make an enormous difference if you get ice in your town.
The problem is not the climate. It is the infrastructure. American cities, towns, suburbs, roads, and just about everything else are designed for one mode of transportation: the car. Even walking is an afterthought -- ever feel uncertain of how you're supposed to get from your car to a business, because there's a sea of parking lots right up to the business's front door?
Cars are not scalable. We need to redesign American cities for micromobility today.
The problem is partially the infrastructure. My rust belt city, or Eau Claire WI, could put in perfect bike and pedestrian infrastructure tomorrow, and it would be barely used for a generation, or more. Many bike advocates advance the wrong approach. Sure, with the right gear, anybody could commute in the middle of a Wisconsin winter. A better approach would be convinced the residents of Eau Claire (or any town, USA) to start by riding their bikes when the weather is good. Then gradually shift expectations to riding when it is raining. Then riding when it is cold. Lather, rinse, repeat. I think it would be a huge improvement if 2/3 of the residents of my city walked, took the bus, or rode their bikes to work five months out of the year. Over time, some percentage of those folks would realize that they could ride (or walk) when the weather isn't great.
The solution to get people riding in summer is the same as winter… safe infrastructure.
I was using Eau Claire as an example... Eau Claire itself has a population of somewhere between 68,000 and 70,000 depending on when the count was done. 70 is a nice round number. Eau Claire is in Eau Claire County which has a total population of 105,000 (2/3 the population is in the city) an area of 645 square miles (1670 square kilometers) and the population density for the county is 165 people/square mile (64/ square kilometer).
We head to Assen, and that has a population of 68,000 and move up to the province of Drenthe... that has a land area of 2634 square kilometers (1017 square miles), a total population of 493,000 (nearly 5x the population of the county of Eau Claire) and a population density of 188/square kilometer (490/ square mile).
This is, where I believe, things get different when doing these comparisons. The city of Eau Claire needs to be built for the people who aren't in the city (even though most live in the city). Its a 90 minute drive there before you get to Minneapolis or if you head in the other direction, its 90 minutes before you get to Wausau (population 40,000).
In Drenthe, there probably isn't any place where you need are 50 miles from the nearest hardware store or grocery store of reasonable size (according to Google Maps you can drive from one end of the province to the other in under an hour). Assen to Groningen (p. 200,000) is 1/3 the distance of Eau Claire to Minneapolis.
With that much higher of a population density it makes a lot more sense to optimize for more local transportation.
If we took a Voronoi chart based on cities with a population of more than... 40,000 and overlaid that on Wisconsin and the Netherlands I am fairly sure that the area that each city reaches to is larger in Wisconsin and that the population that area is larger - that there's a lot more rural population in Wisconsin.
The consequence of that is that the cities at the centers of each area need to be designed primarily with distance travel in mind rather than local travel.
The places where those areas are smaller because the cities are more closely packed (the large metro areas on the coasts in particular) it is more feasible to invest in local transportation options because that citywide be serving a higher portion of local population rather than the "out of town".
In terms of investment in bicycle infrastructure - it is those places that will have the greatest return - like Portland and Seattle.
Trying to redesign Eau Claire or Wausau for micro mobility means that population outside of the urban area is very poorly served by the city.
Which creates a feedback loop. The city is redesigned to accomodate car commuters so it’s less pleasant to live in so more people move to the suburbs so the city is redesigned for those extra car commuters so it’s less pleasant to live in…
I think this is a fallacy. Why should the transportation infrastructure be built for those who don't live there? When cities are built for cars, then cars is what they get. But if they build for other modes, then those modes because much more preferable. The preference of these occasional visitors shouldn't be dictating the immense budgetary concerns of maintaining car infrastructures. There's no reason folks coming from outside the city can't park at a periphery (or even central) parking structure and then bus/walk/bike to their destination, if we take the original corollary that Eau Claire gets perfect bike infrastructure tomorrow.
I do appreciate the math you've done. Assuming it's all accurate, those are good points about density and temperature averages. However people can still walk and bike safely in that weather, extra buses can be scheduled during the winter months, and if the majority of the folks live in the city like you said, it's best to serve them with better pedestrian infrastructure due to the quality of life, safety, and money savings the population would receive.
My example with Eau Claire and Eau Claire county - yes, the majority of people live in the city... and it is the largest area of population within an hour's drive.
Now, if you look at Assen, Assen itself is a suburb of Groningen which is only half an hour away and has 200,000 people.
The number of people who need to go into Assen because its the place to go for a particular thing is rather small compared to those who would go to Groningen.
Meanwhile, Eau Claire is the only level II trauma center for a very large area ( https://dhsgis.wi.gov/dhs/traumacare/ ).
It is necessary to build the city to be able to support the surrounding area - even if those people don't live there.
Meanwhile, another comment mentioned the city of Davis in California... which is a suburb of Sacramento. Or Portland Oregon which is surrounded by smaller cities (Beaverton, OR which abuts Portland has a population of 1.5x Eau Claire). In this way, the city of Portland doesn't need to support the surrounding area as much because the surrounding cities themselves area able to take that load on and so there's a much larger portion of local transportation rather than regional transportation.
If you were to draw that Voronoi chart for the Sacramento area, or Portland area, or Drenthe, NL you would find that the cities that are best able to support local bike commuting and build the infrastructure for it are not as dependent on the rural in the area between them and the next city of 40,000. It is quite possible that for Portland, that Voronoi chart would be entirely within the city proper.
> There's no reason folks coming from outside the city can't park at a periphery (or even central) parking structure and then bus/walk/bike to their destination, if we take the original corollary that Eau Claire gets perfect bike infrastructure tomorrow.
My parents live half an hour outside of the city that they're closest to. They go in to town once a week and get groceries to feed a family of five for the week. This fills up the entirety of the back of a SUV.
Doing a "drive in and park on the outside" wouldn't work for grocery or hardware or any of the other shopping excursions needed. I would contend that that is the norm for people heading into town from outside.
I live in town and can walk a few blocks to a grocery store with a small pack and get what I need for right now whereas my parents have to commit an hour just to commute into town and back out for groceries... and that's done to reduce gas use.
The point that I'm trying to make with this is that if you live in an area where the distance between cities of reasonable size is an hour or so apart, the city has things that pressure it into being built for regional rather than local travel.
One of the things to consider is in the days of old where regional travel was less common, the even smaller towns and cities were self sufficient rather than having people living there need to head into town.
When I was growing up, instead of heading into the city (30 min each way) for groceries or hardware, we'd go to the nearby town (10 min by car - possibly bikable in fair weather) that had a grocery store and hardware store. About 20 years ago, the grocery store closed and 15 years ago the hardware store closed (and last year, the pharmacy closed).
I believe that the path to encourage bikes and smaller transportation areas, the smaller outlying towns need to become more self sufficient in supporting the needs of the surrounding areas so that people don't need to drive half an hour or more to get to the grocery store or hardware store. By doing that, the larger cities serve a smaller area and in turn can have their infrastructure more focused on local transportation (e.g. busses and bikes).