by Mawr | 2026-02-28 03:10:10+00:00
It's utterly fascinating you wrote that and yet could not make the right conclusion.

"In a small town, which is 12x6 miles judging by google maps yet has 590 miles of bike paths."

+

"not all, as the author of the video himself mentions that Oulu stands out among Finnish cities in this regard"

The right conclusion here is that infrastructure and its maintenance is clearly the defining factor. This really shouldn't be surprising.

Consider this: how many trains do you think passed through the areas rail tracks are at before the tracks were built? Or: how many trains need to pass through an area before we can justify the cost of building train tracks there?

You simply can't point to just any winter cycling stats without first making sure the infrastructure is there. "Cycling in winter just ain't working out!" — no, you literally are not putting in the minimum of effort — "we've tried nothing and are all out of ideas" vibes.

And here's the kicker: You assumed these statistics are from a city that's a cycling paradise, but I'm willing to bet Oulu is a car-infested shithole, just like all of the Netherlands is. No, I'm not kidding in the slightest. And it's pretty much confirmed in the video the parent linked: [1].

Sure, those areas are as good as it gets at this time, but they're nothing to what things should look like, so since your conclusions are based on faulty assumptions, they are automatically invalid.

What these cycling-friendly areas are doing is slowly grinding away at the overbearing behemoth that is the already existing car infrastructure with the eventual goal of getting to at least parity. But they're still decades of work away.

The simplest example is free parking. You expect to get to take up 2m x 5m of public space with your private property for free and forever, almost anywhere in every city in the world. If anyone so much as touches it, they're strictly legally liable. That's normal though, right? Yeah...

Another, literally the snow plowing mentioned in the video: [2]. Imagine you woke up one day, got in your car to drive to work and... uh oh! There's 20cm of snow on the road! Can you imagine the uproar?

I sure can't, because 20cm of snow is normal on cycle paths in 99.9% of the world. And you're comparing those two realities with each other. So "not a lot of people cycle in winter" is actually "not a lot of people cycle through 20cm of snow". No shit.

Overall, the amount of information in the very video the parent linked you just straight up ignored makes me think you either didn't watch it, or didn't want to pay attention to a lot of the points made, like the one on population density: [3].

> yet those Finns make only 12% of winter trips by bike

Yeah, during Finnish winters. How many countries do you think this directly applies to? If 12% of Finns during their harsh winters can cycle just fine in -20C weather conditions then what does that say about the cycling stats of e.g. California?

> The secret is the lack of elevation...

I like to quip that bikes have gears for a reason and it's worth learning to use them, but these days the existence of e-bikes and e-scooters nullifies this argument entirely.

> ...and living in crumped cities: on average a Dutch person bikes 3km per day.

Yes, we're talking about cities here. So, the purpose of pointing out that biking over long distances in say, rural areas, is not viable is what exactly? We can pivot to talking about trains instead if you'd like...

[1]: https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU?t=182

[2]: https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU?t=260

[3]: https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU?t=192