Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (But Finnish People Can)
youtube.com
youtube.com
I've attempted it and a concerned driver stopped to tell me how dangerous it was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ...
Why?
Personally, I'd like to live in American suburbia and backcountry. No crime, peaceful, plenty of resources and space, safe for kids, and cheaper than urban cesspool. Small towns are fine but they need good economy.
The gist is this:
- US-style car-centric design has created cities filled with parking lots, wide roads, sprawling low-density development, and as a result also sprawling water/sewage infrastructure
- High-density downtown neighborhoods produce much more revenue per acre than low-density car-centric neighborhoods. The higher revenue is more than sufficient to fund yearly maintenance as well as pay off the replacement cost of infrastructure (whereas the low-density, low revenue areas can't fund the replacement cost so need to be subsidized by downtown)
- New neighborhoods enjoy their federally-subsidized new infrastructure as they don't need to concern themselves with replacement cost for decades.
- But when it comes time to replace the infrastructure, these low-density areas cannot fund the replacement (e.g. Backus, Minnesota has very low density and sprawling sewage infrastructure; replacement cost would be $27k per resident, which is greater than their average income). So they go into debt
- The piling debt is obviously unsustainable. e.g. Tampa, Florida needs $3.2bn to replace its water infrastructure. It already spends more money each year to service the debt it has borrowed for its water infrastructure than it spends on actually maintaining it.
- Some cities are lucky - they have a growing population so can kick the problem down the road by using new tax revenue from new developments (remember, yearly maintenance cost of new infrastructure is very low, so new developments are net tax positive as long as you pretend like you never have to replace the infrastructure). This is the growth ponzi scheme.
tl;dr Only high density downtown areas are able to simultaneously fund their infrastructure maintenance cost as well as the replacement cost over decades; lower density areas outside downtown depend on downtown's excess tax revenue to fund their replacement cost. But some cities just depend on ever-growing urban sprawl to use the new tax revenue to fund their growing debt and aging infrastructure
These are all high-level ideas and conclusions, which is why Strong Towns' publications are so important. They investigate tons of actual cities and towns across America and show you actual numbers.
In my city, you call the police or fire department and 3-4 minute response times if it's a life-threatening situation. Depending on the severity of a medical call, they may dispatch multiple ambulances to speed response time.
"Safe for kids"? In many cities kids take public transit to school and have access to everything within walking distance of their home. See note above about crime rate. Plenty of kids in rural areas can't leave their neighborhood, or even the end of their driveway, because there's a 50mph highway and everything is a 10-20 minute drive away.
"Cheaper"? There are costs beyond per-square-foot purchasing/leasing. In cities with good public transit and pedestrian infrastructure, you don't need a car. No financing costs, no depreciation, no fuel/maintenance/repair, no vehicle-related taxes, no parking, nothing (also, public transit is orders of magnitude safer per mile traveled.) If you live in an apartment, there's probably substantially less exterior surface area per square foot of living space due to shared walls/floors/ceilings so heating and cooling costs are lower. If you're in a condo association, maintenance and repair costs for the building are shared.
There are numerous studies showing people living in cities cost society less and have a lower carbon footprint.
Compounding that problem is that according to the linked videos local governments have been getting subsidies to expand and build more, while the maintenance isn't subsidised and has to come out of property taxes which in most cases don't cover the cost.
I biked everyday in the snow for I was THE newspaper boy in Ontario where the snow banks reaches 8’.
It was way cheaper than Ski-Doo Arctic Cat’s or Panther’s gas expense.
Took a Huffy frame, slapped a pair of knobby tires, some BMX handlebars, and strapped pedals; it was wild!
Although, it may have been the fact that I’m Finnish.
Never mind.
But yes, I illegally road on the footpath in winter, being near the cars was certain death if you slipped on the ice. Actually Whitehorse has the highest rate of bike commuting in Canada, despite the cold & dark.
Most of my winter cycling was in south western Ontario. My biggest issues were because it wouldn't stay cold. When it thaws, then gets cold again there's ice everywhere. It also seemed to cause all of the fluffy snow to turn into a crunchy layer of ice, which is much less comfortable to ride through and fall into.
I put studs into my tires and actually never slipped on ice once (though I sure have on foot...)
Finland 0.338M sq.km. Pop. Density: 16.4/sq.km
Finns are packed in tighter, more cost effective.
How many kids outside of CA cities are gonna get their bikeways plowed whenever they have more than 4cm of snow?
But snowplows ignoring bike trails? Oh yeah.
Think of average class size vs. median class at a university. The majority of students' class experiences are class sizes are smaller than average. The average is dominated by the rare classes which are huge.
Likewise, the vast majority (80%+) of Canadians and Finns live in cities or suburbs. These places are far denser than the national average, and occupy tiny portions of the total land area, in both countries. So to that 80% of the population, the density they live in is nothing like the national average.
Over half of all Canadians live at a lattitude south of Seattle.
Most of Canada's population live in the small area between Toronto and Montreal.
What I'm saying is that population density using Canada as a whole is a dumb statistic. Where there's people in Canada, there's lots of them, and most of the land area is literally uninhabitable by almost any standard.