are happy to head out year-round -- some 80 percent of riders in Copenhagen still cycle through the winter. And ridership rates are higher in these bike-obsessed but colder Northern European countries than their southern neighbors like Spain, Portugal and France (in Sweden, 17.1 percent of people primarily get around by bike; in Spain, it's just 1.6 percent). Almost everywhere, however, this same pattern emerges: European Cyclists' Federation These are 12-month seasonal ridership rates in four Finish towns (blue is Helsinki, pink Jyvskyl, yellow Oulu and teal Rovaniemi). Here's a similar picture of cycling in Quebec in 2010: Long story short: For biking to be a serious commuting alternative, it needs to be more than a seasonal one. So how about it? Think U.S. cities will ever be ready for automatically toasted bike lanes? Wilder technology has been built for cars.