apparently my city literally literally banned public rail funding, and people online love jerking off about how good biking is, so i figured might as well try. I have come up with:
pros:
- good for mental health / exercise / endorphins
- arguably quaint
- feel like an old timey guy taking his wares to market
- feel european
- can annoy others
- less of a police state around them vs cars
- more flexible parking, routes
- capacity to be peaceful
- nice in summer
cons:
- look like an annoying dork (esp w neon - which also hurts the quaint factor)
- have to wear a helmet (^)
- getting sweaty, potentially “unpresentable” for work
- still have to find safe parking
- still takes a while
- have to find new routes to places
- can’t listen to music or might die
- little meaningful protection against severe injury
- can only carry so many groceries/etc
- sucks in winter
Finnish children cycle to school
At 06:25 they explain that 35% of the people use special wheels with nails, so that’s different of course (they also use such rails for the winter triathlon (running (with spikes), cycling (with spike wheels), cross country skiing)).
With such wheels it for sure is safer, if someone wants to go cycling in winter that’s definitely the way to go. But if there are 20 cm of fresh snow you’ll still get stuck, you need clean roads like in the video.
Ty, always trying to improve my English. Comments like that are really helpful because noone corrects those things in real life, ig they assume they’re trivial.
Refer to my last sentence in the comment you replied to (no elevation, no sharp turns).
Even with spike tires you’ll struggle greatly as soon as you add elevation. But in one of the cities without elevation you’re correct, yes.
Of course it’d be stuck, but generally the situation is, at least in my country: It snows, there are for example 20 cm of fresh snow -> roads get cleaned -> there’s no / hardly any snow on the streets anymore. So the situation where you’d have to cycle on snow is when the snow is a bit deeper. If I really can’t wait for the roads to get cleaned (which happens very quickly so usually it’s no problem) I go by foot or use skis, depending on how much snow there is.