Comment by scj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scj | Hacker News Reader

One of the chief problems of transportation during winter is "How do we minimize accidents while half a meter of snow has fallen within a 12 hour period?" The problem is two fold: roads become slippery, and as they are plowed, the sides of them fill up with snow, reducing lane size.

Without dedicated bike lanes, a reduction in lane size is bad enough (it is hard to share the roads when there is no road to share). Add in drivers trying to swerve around bicyclists (a really dangerous action on icy roads), and you have a recipe for accidents.

As this article points out, advanced planning is key. But convincing Canadians (in places like Manitoba), who have very low population density and very far stretches of road to build/maintain, to sacrifice infrastructure dollars for bike lanes would be a tough political move. Finland is about half the size of Manitoba and has 4x the population. That's an 8x spending advantage in terms of roads!

Europeans have a much easier time with infrastructure than Canada (and the US to a lesser extent) because of significantly higher population density. I know I'd love to have European-style infrastructure, but it just isn't practical.

Personally, I wouldn't feel safe riding a bicycle in the winter. Not with our roads.

You know what happens to many bike lanes in winter around here (Germany)? The snow from the road gets heaped on them... It's usual for people to ride on the road then.

The same thing happens here with bike lanes that share the road.

But once enough snow accumulation has happened, a lost lane will be unavailable until spring. The dedicated bike path that cuts through my community is closed during the winter and much of the spring (too much snow accumulation). The snow plow budget in most years couldn't possibly cover it.

Much of Scandinavia (at least Denmark and Sweden) manages this by having small snow-removal vehicles specifically for bike lanes: http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/12/ultimate-bike-lane-snow...

In fact in Copenhagen at least the bike lanes are cleared much more reliably than the road. The city owns many more of these bike lane snow-removal vehicles (which are small and fairly cheap) and only a few of the big road-plowing trucks. Salting the bicycle lanes also takes less salt, so tends to be done more readily.

"How do we minimize accidents while half a meter of snow has fallen within a 12 hour period?"

I honestly think the best answer would be to stay home and work from there.

To your point, police tend to recommend people stay off the roads when things get bad. Sadly, it isn't an option for everybody.

I am not saying stay home for a month but just give it a little time for the roads to be cleared. If it snows 0.5m in 12 hours there is just no way to clear roads within a few hours.

You don't need to clear 12h worth of snow in a few hours, you send the plows to work early when it starts snowing and keep plowing until the snowing stops. This is how it's done in snowy places and people never stay at home due to snow.

Sure. It can be done. I still wouldn't bike during such a time. Visibility is bad, cars may be sliding around.

Cars rarely slide around in these places, they have studded tires and drivers are used to driving on snow/ice most if the year. But yes separated bike lanes/trails, like in the article's city, are much nicer than driving along with cars.

I have lived in snowy places and pretty much in all of them there was chaos for the first day(s) after a big snow storm. Definitely not the best day to be biking. After things have settled down, absolutely no problem.

OK, maybe I generalized too much. What I said reflects my experience of some snowy places. Probably depends on how big snow storms you tend to get.

"half a meter of snow has fallen within a 12 hour period"

That was the starting quote. I hope we can agree that that's a big storm.

Well, that quote was an example following a more general idea about waiting after it snows. But yes, that amount would be a big enough snow storm to make biking a tad sweaty endeavour immediately after.

The risk of death from diabetes or heart disease is far greater than death by falling over in the snow on a bicycle.

While I was figuring out winter cycling in Utah I did fall a few times on icy sections. This was never a big deal because those sections were walking and cycling paths. However, falling while riding on sections of road that I have to share with a car becomes incredibly dangerous.

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