> Looking at the top 5% most rainy hours of the year in Dublin, usage rates dropped to 81% of the average. In Seville and Valencia, those numbers were 79% and 74%. In Chicago, though, it was down to 47%. In Melbourne it was 46%, and in Vancouver usage was as low as 22% of the average.

> Again, you’d be forgiven for thinking this can all be explained by acclimatisation. Folks in Dublin, say, are used to miserable weather, so it makes sense they’d be happier to ride in it. But according to Dr Bean and co, it’s more complicated than that.

> Seville and Valencia are both rather dry, and yet rain in those cities doesn’t make that much of a difference to cyclist numbers. Why? Well, as the researchers speculate: “The difference could be that Seville and Valencia have large [bike share] systems and safe cycling infrastructure whereas Melbourne only had a small system not useful for commuters.”

> It might be that good, safe cycling infrastructure is enough to encourage people to ride even if the weather is bad. But when bike share infrastructure is bad (e.g. like it was in Melbourne), and the weather is bad, that’s a recipe for lower cyclist numbers.

I think this is just a matter of variance masked by their use of relative (vs absolute) units. I'll bet Chicago had storm/flood/tornado warnings on many of those days. Is the weather in Dublin, Seville, and Valencia as extreme as Chicago, Vancouver, & Melbourne?