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Comment by gentleman11 | Hacker News Reader

I can’t even imagine that here where I live. My neighbourhood has sidewalks, which is nice because all the adjacent ones don’t. To go downtown in this little town in winter you have to risk a treacherous steep hill covered in ice and snow that never gets cleared and it’s actually dangerous

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Yes, it's amazing how bike advocates view the world as a homogenous place.

Where I live it's 90 degrees or higher, and humid in the summer, and can be sub-zero in the winter. It's also quite hilly -- flat and level riding is the exception. I'm not riding a bike any substantial distance in those conditions, regardless of paths or lanes.

welcome to (southern) Germany, I recommend you a bike with electric assist and you will be fine

The real game changer is a helmet with a full face visor. Also I am warmer on a scooter than a bike due to the fact that I'm not moving my legs "pumping" air in and out of my clothes.

I found that on an electric scooter with a full helmet I was totally warm at high speed into icy wind coming off the sea. Warmer than say just standing outside for a few minutes with a hat and scarf but my face not covered.

Do you mean scooter as a standing one or as motorbike

Standing on one, but really I think the main point is you aren't peddling. My legs would absolutely freeze riding a non-electric bike, each rotation of the peddles as your knee flexes all the warm air is forced out of your pants and then cold air is sucked in as you straighten your leg at the bottom. At least this was the case for me with jeans. I would do ~25mph on a fold-up type scooter in the same weather, just adding the full visor helmet, and didn't feel even slightly cold.

This isn't a problem with biking in Finland in the winter.

Bike lanes are plowed and/or compacted multiple times a day during heavy snowfall. Albeit it isn't really that hilly but more than weather, the main constraint is having a city willing to actually maintain biking infrastructure.

In heavily biked areas, is Finland mostly flat?

We have e-bikes, S-pedelecs, e-scooters and electric motorbikes. Hills are not a relevant issue technologically

Riding on a flat surface isn't such a big deal. Riding up & down a hill street covered in snow and/or ice is non-trivial.

I lived on a mountainside in Norway. The amount of people that slipped and slid down on our roads was much higher than I could have imagined. That was people that lived there all their lives, let alone me trying to cycle.

Eh, I'll dispute that. Outside of Oulu, the winter maintenance of bicycle infrastructure is often just barely adequate if even that.

I live in a similar climate, and while I don’t know what constitutes a “substantial distance,” I will commute and run errands in either of those extremes.

On those days it’s a little less fun than the other 95% of days, but still feasible. And even I didn’t brave those extremes, 95% of days biking is a lot more than 0%.

It's a myth that people can't ride bikes in cities that experience exceptionally hot or cold weather. They can, and do, it's just that the cities need to fund infrastructure to make those things more comfortable and enticing.

For heat specifically, you need trees covering sidewalks and bike paths. Also the materials you build sidewalks and structures with contribute to this, and if you can then adding some evaporative cooling via fountains or ponds is a great idea too. For more ideas: https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/heat-island-cooling-strategi...

The heat island effect is real, and it's only going to get much much worse in cities that refuse to work to fix it.

Do you live in a place that regularly reaches 100 degrees in the summer? No amount of shade or water is going to be enough to persuade me to go outside at 5pm, much less commute home on a bike.

Or commute to work - getting to work drenched in sweat or soaked in rain isn’t a reasonable thing to expect people to do. Most offices don’t have showers or reasonable places to change clothes.

The Netherlands is a famously rainy country and manages quite high levels of cycling mode share.

Yep, I live in Nevada. I also live in a part of my city that has a lot of trees and water, and it makes it bearable in the summer to ride or walk around

In Tel Aviv Israel it is normally 90 or higher and humid. A large portion of the locals commute to work with bike or e-mobility devices. Most offices have bike rooms and showers.

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