Ranking Bordeaux and Nantes next to Amsterdam is nonsense.
Amsterdam is miles ahead in terms of infrastructure. This ranking dilutes the most important thing to get these results : good bike lancés everywhere with no discontinuity.
Disclaimer : I've built villes.plus, an open source automated evaluation of bike lanes. 100 points, compute itineraries in "secure" mode with Brouter between these points, count the % of secured km -> score.
Amsterdam tops at 8/10. Bordeaux is at 3/10, Nantes 2/10.
I can't speak about Nantes which I haven't visited for decades but I think it is wrong to count bikes lanes as a single parameter.
Dutch urbanists have found that bike lanes are very important when streets used by cars are unaltered. Once you implement a lot of traffic calming features and cars never reach 30kph comfortably, bike lanes aren't that important and then streets can be shared across all users.
I always have a laugh when I see Copenhagen brag about its cycling infrastructure (e.g. Scandinavian Airlines declaring it bike-mecca in their flyers). I am very sorry, but it really doesn't come even close to Amsterdam, or most other Dutch cities really. There are a tonne of places where high-volume car traffic still intersects with low-speed bicycle traffic in Copenhagen, a lot of high-speed car roads with painted on lines, instead of actually separated infrastructure.
Also, the Netherlands is in its entirety covered in separated infrastructure optimized over decades. Just take a look at how anemic Denmark's infrastructure is outside the cities (https://www.opencyclemap.org/).
Things like "usage of cargo bikes", "percentage of women on bikes", "presence of NGOs", "media tone" all make for rather arbitrary outliers depending on how much they weigh in the final score.
Paris being 5th when biking there is pure chaos compared to many Asian cities makes the ranking look capricious. Paris's City hall is definitely pro bike and a lot of money and effort was poured into infrastructure, but that dosn't suddenly makes it safe or largely adopted.
More generally, infrastructure isn't everything. Tokyo small streets with absolutely no markings can be way safer and bike friendlier than a bright lane in the middle of constant car traffic.
I'll note the company doing the ranking is based on Paris, so familiarity might hide many of the flaws.
I didn't even feel particularly safe as a pedestrian in Tokyo or Osaka. Despite the good public transport, Japanese cities have cars absolutely everywhere, even in tiny streets that should really be pedestrian zones. Paris is much better in my opinion.
Tokyo fundamentally doesn't define pedestrian only zones except in very specific conditions.
I get why you'd feel unsafe, but IMHO it's the exact opposite effect: 99% of the streets don't have a sidewalk or anything specific for pedestrian, and thus are pedestrian first.
Small kids, dogs, cats, elderlies will be walking in the middle of the street. As a result cars drive way slower than they'd do in Paris and they need to be way more alert to what's happening. Every small street is basically the same as the pedestrian zone in the middle of Paris.
Came here to say that. I've lived a long time in both Amsteram and Paris, and seeing those two cities close in that ranking call the whole thing into question. For sure, cities couldn't game the metrics used by tha ranking, but I'm sure the metrics definitions have been gamed to make some cities look better.
"Usage and Reach" is ranked better for Paris than Amsterdam? But in Amsterdam I can safely and efficiently bicycle from anywhere to anywhere, including across the rings, to the countryside and even to the sea, with the kids, and no fear. In Paris, I would not dare to venture outside of the touristic city center, and even there I would keep an eye on kids.
It's evident that people use bicycles in Montreal -- TFA itself attests this.
But if your point is that North American cities all tend to have the same downtown/suburban contrasts, you are quite right.
People who live $Downtown usually have walkable neighbourhoods and perhaps even access to underground transit. People who live outside the centre of the city mostly end up depending on a private vehicle.
Bicycles are part of the mobility culture in Montreal. But Car Cancer has the same effect everywhere.
They do. Also people who use bicycles in Montreal are disproportionately males and mostly of the certain age group. That's very apparent if you stay for ~10 minutes near Grande Bibliothèque for example or any other relatively busy piste cyclable.
If you call it a 'mobility culture' it a very niche one. Bicycling is a thing for very specific demographics in Montreal in comparison with Amsterdam and even with Eastern European cities.
Interestingly that high schoolers are not biking that much in Montreal, again in comparison. Biking to school was/is an exception where I live(d) in Montreal, i.e. Le Sud-Ouest, NDG.
> If you call it a 'mobility culture' it a very niche one.
And yet it is relatively successful in Montreal (as TFA says). If we are completely honest, bicycling could be called a niche activity in most of North America.
> Bicycling is a thing for very specific demographics in Montreal in comparison with Amsterdam and even with Eastern European cities.
For students, for example.
I did say, "Bicycling is part of the mobility culture of Montreal". I did not claim more, and I also said that it's a controversial topic. On the positive side, Bixi has been a relative success compared to other Canadian cities.[1]
(You know Bixi, so I'll add a link for others to read.)
Montreal's city leaders might be friendly. Its climate is not. Once the snow falls, the number of bicycle commuters plummets towards zero. Paris, vancouver, the netherlands ... they have stable climates condusive to bike use. At -10 it isnt the cars that will cause a crash, it is the physics of a two rubber wheels trying to navigate on ice.
Also, Quebec is not a city. The city is called "Quebec City" just as how New York and New York City are very different places.
The thing is: after a snow fall, they prioritize the bike roads/lanes before taking care of the roads used by cars.
When I was living in Switzerland, I kept a set of spare wheels with studded tires for those days with risk of ice. Riding on packed snow is perfectly fine on regular tires and ice is not dangerous when you have studded tires.
> the number of bicycle commuters plummets towards zero
That's proof that there's either a lot of progress to be made, or the local culture just isn't as tolerant to the cold.
Cycling around -10 works just fine if the roads have been taken care of (which, in your example, doesn't seem to be case, as apparently they're covered in ice).
With decent infrastructure, the difference between cycling 10 degrees above and 10 degrees below freezing is a matter of outfit.
Ice isnt a product of cold. It is actually rare on roads in the high north. Ice requires melting and re-freezing, and gets more slippery when wet. Ice is a problem when the weather bounces back and forth around freezing. Each city will be very different, but those near the great lakes are famously impacted by ice storms. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ice_storms
I still see people cycling in Chicago in the cold and snow (usually while I'm also riding my bike)
Granted in a bona fide blizzard like today, i am choosing the bus instead. But this is the biggest snowfall in several years, not exactly a frequent problem.
Oh The Urbanity! just did a great episode on Victoria, B.C. The city is too small to make this list (pop. ~100K), but the video is worth checking out if you want to feel a little better about the progress of bike infrastructure in N.A. cities:
Of course it helps if the city, and country in general, is completely flat. Cities in Norway or Nepal have mother nature against all form of manual locomotion.
I think Norway is more about being comfortable riding in the cold on spiked tires. The hills of Oslo don’t bother you after a couple months of riding them.
I'm in Wisconsin, and I just got the bike with spiked tires out today. Even if there's not a lot of snow, I prefer to sacrifice one bike to road salt than have to maintain my "nice" bike through the winter.
People act like I'm some kind of freak when I arrive at work on my bike in the middle of the winter. But I remind them that there are people who work all day outdoors in places like Alaska and Canada, and 20 minutes on a bike doesn't even come close.
This is how I feel about riding in the rain to work. Like yes you get wet but also are you unable to get wet? If you want, wear rain clothes so you stay dry. And if it’s really pouring just wait half an hour or take the bus if you can’t wait. Just plan to ride every day and be okay with the days when life won’t let you.
I think what happens is when people have a routine outdoor activity, they develop a sense of their local weather, that seems like a mystery if one isn't regularly immersed in it. Also, some subtle adaptations make it easier, such as wearing quick drying clothes or having an emergency change at work.
Now, I do have the luxury of flexible hours at my workplace, but (for instance) my daughter doesn't, and she manages just fine.
In Copenhagen, the vast majority of people park their bikes on the street using only a cafe lock (frame mounted, immobilizes the rear wheel). The bikes are generally nothing special, old rusty junkers, with one or three gears. E-bikes flatten terrain but also you need an indoor place to store it and they become a magnet for theft. A cheap bike you can ride to the Metro and leave in the elements is versatile in a way e-bikes are not. (I say all this as a massive e-bike fan living in a very hilly US city who recently visited Copenhagen and adored its bike culture.)
We once rented bikes in Copenhagen, they all looked like they were fresh from the junk yard. We had to try several to find ones where at least one of the brakes was still working. It was a horrible experience, and we tried several different places. That was after we found out that the public bikes that were supposed to be available all over the city had all been stolen.
For me personally charging and keeping e-bike batteries in the apartment is a source of stress. I do keep and charge my drone and FPV plane batteries at home, even DIY ones, but e-bike batteries are much bigger and harder to chuck out of the window in case something goes wrong. I actually got rid of my e-scooter because of that, I just didn’t trust it.
On my first visit to Amsterdam, my friend picked me up on a bike at Centraal Station, and I rode to his apartment in the traditional Dutch style sitting on the back rack.
On the way said "only three more mountains to go till we're home"! I asked "WTF?" and he explained that's what they call the bridges over the canals.
This is one of the intersections we went through right after one of the mountains, showing how much the local culture affects the traffic safety and bicycle friendliness as much as the geography:
They hold themselves in high regard but Copenhagen doesn’t hold a candle to most Dutch cities. And for that matter, very few cities can compare themselves to the Dutch biking infrastructure, without even mentioning the cultural aspects and acceptance by other traffic participants.
The biggest hurdle to biking for me is parking safely. Unless I can park it behind locked doors I have an anxious feeling that it may not be still there when I return. This is no problem when bicycling to work, but for arbitrary errands it is. A good lock helps of course, but it still feels like a gamble.
This is the ultimate American urbanist conundrum. Bikes are pretty useless for transportation in American cities because of rampant theft. Locks get cut in the broad daylight and even if the thief is too inept to steal an angle grinder, or already ran out of batteries for today, they will still rip off parts (wheels, saddle, brakes, group, they will even rip out lights from the mounts, just because). But they also cannot demand the law enforcement against it because the thieves are the precious "unhoused" (which is very easy to check by visiting any encampment and observing all the bikes and bike parts there). So we get this strange situation when cities build bike lanes and bike parks which are empty because, at most, you can only commute on your bike if your place of work has a secure storage.
Enforcing the laws against bike thieves would be 100x more effective in promoting biking than building anything.
This is ridiculous. Bike thieves are prosecuted here, and parts theft is nowhere near as common as you're implying. Nobody I know here (Chicago) has ever really had a problem with it (bikes entirely being stolen, yeah that happens, but CPD is absolutely not refusing to investigate someone on account of being homeless, that's patently absurd)
So you are arguing that people you know only had their whole bikes stolen and not wheels/saddles/etc ? I don't think it's a good argument, tbqh. Even if the people you know made a meaningful sample of Chicago population (they don't) they still get bikes stolen and it still means the law is not enforced well enough.
And CPD can investigate all they want, CPD, like any other police department, cannot put people in prison. The DA has to press charges and prosecute in the court, which won't happen with any DA in any major city against homeless (otherwise all homeless would have been already in prison).
I always kept my bicycle inside my office. I also found out that if you ask politely, many shops allows you to enter with your bike provided there is enough space.
That strongly depends on the city and the places you park your bike. I've never needed to chain my bike, although I do it for new bikes because insurance demands it.
There are neighborhoods in cities like Amsterdam where bicycle theft is pretty much expected to happen no matter how many locks you buy, but in smaller towns there's barely a need to lock your bike at all during the day.
I went to Copenhagen this summer. I was quite disappointed in the bicycle infrastructure, I felt like it was on par with what we have in Stockholm. Rented bikes and biked around for two days. It was nice!
Not sure how this index is being calculated (site breaks a lot), but my general feeling was that Denmark is just better at marketing than actual infrastructure when comparing to Stockholm at least
It is currently -1 to -3 in Montreal and -2 to -7 in Quebec (city).
So yes folks literally freezing. It will remain so (down to -35) for the next 4 months.
According to Wikipedia, the mean daily minimum of Helsinki in January is -5.6°. In Quebec City, it’s -17.7°. Not the same, at least according to Wikipedia.
Bike paths don't have to be dry though, you can sweep them and it's fine. If you use studded tires, you can ride a bike in places where you can't even walk. Source is I used to do this when I lived in the middle of nowhere in Sweden. I agree with you that infrastructure is key though. The temperature doesn't really matter, if you're good to go on a walk, you're also good to go for a ride.
I see bikes in the summer here. I dont see almost anybody biking in the winter here. Like 100:1. The winters here are not mild (like in vancouver). This is basically artic-like weather. People also tend not to walk. The very poor take the bus. Most drive.
In Vancouver this mostly works because it is cold but not cold enough. There are only a few days where it is very sketchy. The rest of Canada is not like this.
Studded tires. This is an investment but it works. Caveat is you need space to store them on a second set of wheels or bike because you don't want to ride them all year long so it is not for everyone.
'space to store them on a second set of wheels' This probably explains everything about this discussion. I think im dealing with very poor people (Europeans).
I think I have space in my pool shed or my other shed. Worst case I will put them in one of my many empty rooms.
Ah well that settles it then! Im going to tell the female lawyer I know to stop taking her car and instead buy gear and a bike so she can bike in the freezing cold for 20 minutes to get to her job where she also has to dress as a lawyer. No problem just pack a bag of clothes in a pack + all other workthings and then don artic style gear. So much fun!
My gf is a doctor and rides year-round. In the winter I swap wheels with studded tires onto her bike (it takes a couple minutes). Where there's proper infrastructure, it's far safer to go out on a bike in poor conditions than it is an automobile. Plus you accumulate tremendous health benefits from not being sedentary. I'd work that into your pitch (of course, my gf is lucky to observe this first-hand at work every day, which an attorney might not).
People dont live like this here. We would view this as hardship for peasants of another ancient time.
This is not to say it must be cars. It can be other forms of transit like bus/subway. Of course standing in an unsheltered area waiting for a bus is also highly undesirable. The windchill makes this literally dangerous.
Perhaps there is a cultural barrier here? or perhaps you are not familiar with real winter.
I'm not surprised to see Utrecht in the first place, but quite a bit surprised to see the other Dutch cities so low. No offense, but Rotterdam or The Heague is 100x better than Paris from safety and convenience point of view. I'm curious why is the ranking like this.
How did you even manage to see the page? I just clicked on it and got to WPAdmin install page, asking to setup the admin account.
Completely agree with you, I've traveled with my bike to many cities in Europe, the Netherlands in general has a fantastic bike infrastructure, not even sure why it's called "Copenhagenize" since I go to Copenhagen quite often and compared to Dutch's bike infrastructure it's still not on par to it. It's definitely great but the Dutch have it ahead.
I've cycled the SF South Bay Area, Davis, Amsterdam, Kinderdijk, Bruge, and Antwerp.
Austin TX plants random, worn out, unpainted, leftover, camouflaged concrete shapes that serve no discernible positive purpose in the middle of city streets frequented by motorcycles, pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, and skaters. That's how much of a shit they give about anyone not in a truck or a rented Slingshot.
"Welcome to the famous five-minute WordPress installation process! Just fill in the information below and you’ll be on your way to using the most extendable and powerful personal publishing platform in the world."
yes, seems the site is completely broken and I suspect someone is in the middle of a panicked reinstall or reconfigure of WP. I feel for them.
[edit] back up now, it seems.
Ranking Bordeaux and Nantes next to Amsterdam is nonsense.
Amsterdam is miles ahead in terms of infrastructure. This ranking dilutes the most important thing to get these results : good bike lancés everywhere with no discontinuity.
Disclaimer : I've built villes.plus, an open source automated evaluation of bike lanes. 100 points, compute itineraries in "secure" mode with Brouter between these points, count the % of secured km -> score.
Amsterdam tops at 8/10. Bordeaux is at 3/10, Nantes 2/10.
https://villes.plus/cyclables/Amsterdam?id=271110
https://villes.plus/cyclables/Nantes.8
I can't speak about Nantes which I haven't visited for decades but I think it is wrong to count bikes lanes as a single parameter.
Dutch urbanists have found that bike lanes are very important when streets used by cars are unaltered. Once you implement a lot of traffic calming features and cars never reach 30kph comfortably, bike lanes aren't that important and then streets can be shared across all users.
> it is wrong to count bikes lanes as a single parameter.
Of course it is. See % of safe km as a minimal condition, not as perfection.
Note that bike lane ! = safe km. You're right. There are bad bike lanes and good peaceful streets. See other comment for algorithm.
20 km/h streets are counted.
Fun fact Amsterdam recovers roughly 15000 cycles per year from their canal. IIRC they have a board with the number for each year
What does it mean to be "secure"?
https://github.com/laem/villes.plus/blob/master/isSafePath.j...
Feel free to suggest a better algorithm ! It's version 2, issues already discuss missing important OSM tags.
>Amsterdam is miles ahead in terms of infrastructure.
Amsterdammers prefer to think of themselves as kilometers ahead. ;)
I always have a laugh when I see Copenhagen brag about its cycling infrastructure (e.g. Scandinavian Airlines declaring it bike-mecca in their flyers). I am very sorry, but it really doesn't come even close to Amsterdam, or most other Dutch cities really. There are a tonne of places where high-volume car traffic still intersects with low-speed bicycle traffic in Copenhagen, a lot of high-speed car roads with painted on lines, instead of actually separated infrastructure.
Also, the Netherlands is in its entirety covered in separated infrastructure optimized over decades. Just take a look at how anemic Denmark's infrastructure is outside the cities (https://www.opencyclemap.org/).
Not Just Bikes, the internet famous pro-bike infrastructure enthusiast, voiced their critique on this list a few days ago: https://social.notjustbikes.com/@notjustbikes/11560519028224...
The note about Copenhagenize being a consulting firm probably explains why the list is so full of weird and arbitrary choices.
At least their method is somewhat open (though I can't find the raw data they used/compensation factors/calculations): https://copenhagenizeindex.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/COP...
Things like "usage of cargo bikes", "percentage of women on bikes", "presence of NGOs", "media tone" all make for rather arbitrary outliers depending on how much they weigh in the final score.
Paris being 5th when biking there is pure chaos compared to many Asian cities makes the ranking look capricious. Paris's City hall is definitely pro bike and a lot of money and effort was poured into infrastructure, but that dosn't suddenly makes it safe or largely adopted.
More generally, infrastructure isn't everything. Tokyo small streets with absolutely no markings can be way safer and bike friendlier than a bright lane in the middle of constant car traffic.
I'll note the company doing the ranking is based on Paris, so familiarity might hide many of the flaws.
I didn't even feel particularly safe as a pedestrian in Tokyo or Osaka. Despite the good public transport, Japanese cities have cars absolutely everywhere, even in tiny streets that should really be pedestrian zones. Paris is much better in my opinion.
Tokyo fundamentally doesn't define pedestrian only zones except in very specific conditions.
I get why you'd feel unsafe, but IMHO it's the exact opposite effect: 99% of the streets don't have a sidewalk or anything specific for pedestrian, and thus are pedestrian first.
Small kids, dogs, cats, elderlies will be walking in the middle of the street. As a result cars drive way slower than they'd do in Paris and they need to be way more alert to what's happening. Every small street is basically the same as the pedestrian zone in the middle of Paris.
Came here to say that. I've lived a long time in both Amsteram and Paris, and seeing those two cities close in that ranking call the whole thing into question. For sure, cities couldn't game the metrics used by tha ranking, but I'm sure the metrics definitions have been gamed to make some cities look better.
"Usage and Reach" is ranked better for Paris than Amsterdam? But in Amsterdam I can safely and efficiently bicycle from anywhere to anywhere, including across the rings, to the countryside and even to the sea, with the kids, and no fear. In Paris, I would not dare to venture outside of the touristic city center, and even there I would keep an eye on kids.
Bicycling is part of the mobility culture of Montreal, but whether Montreal is actually friendly to bicyclists is open to heated debate.
Cars dominate the topology.
I really enjoy biking in Quebec city. I don't have as much experience with Montreal, but I can see how QC is a top spot.
100%. Only a North American could consider Montreal bike friendly.
Montreal is bike friendly in comparison with Paris. Personal opinion of course.
Paris is not bike friendly (much better than a decade ago of course)
> 'Bicycling is part of the mobility culture'
That's a very {Plateau,reddit,no-kids}-centric view.
It's evident that people use bicycles in Montreal -- TFA itself attests this.
But if your point is that North American cities all tend to have the same downtown/suburban contrasts, you are quite right.
People who live $Downtown usually have walkable neighbourhoods and perhaps even access to underground transit. People who live outside the centre of the city mostly end up depending on a private vehicle.
Bicycles are part of the mobility culture in Montreal. But Car Cancer has the same effect everywhere.
> It's evident that people use bicycles
They do. Also people who use bicycles in Montreal are disproportionately males and mostly of the certain age group. That's very apparent if you stay for ~10 minutes near Grande Bibliothèque for example or any other relatively busy piste cyclable. If you call it a 'mobility culture' it a very niche one. Bicycling is a thing for very specific demographics in Montreal in comparison with Amsterdam and even with Eastern European cities.
Interestingly that high schoolers are not biking that much in Montreal, again in comparison. Biking to school was/is an exception where I live(d) in Montreal, i.e. Le Sud-Ouest, NDG.
> If you call it a 'mobility culture' it a very niche one.
And yet it is relatively successful in Montreal (as TFA says). If we are completely honest, bicycling could be called a niche activity in most of North America.
> Bicycling is a thing for very specific demographics in Montreal in comparison with Amsterdam and even with Eastern European cities.
For students, for example.
I did say, "Bicycling is part of the mobility culture of Montreal". I did not claim more, and I also said that it's a controversial topic. On the positive side, Bixi has been a relative success compared to other Canadian cities.[1]
(You know Bixi, so I'll add a link for others to read.)
[1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixi_(bicycle_share_system)
Yeah people without kids aren't a part of the culture
Montreal's city leaders might be friendly. Its climate is not. Once the snow falls, the number of bicycle commuters plummets towards zero. Paris, vancouver, the netherlands ... they have stable climates condusive to bike use. At -10 it isnt the cars that will cause a crash, it is the physics of a two rubber wheels trying to navigate on ice.
Also, Quebec is not a city. The city is called "Quebec City" just as how New York and New York City are very different places.
Tell that to the cyclists in Oulu, Finland. https://oulu.com/en/living/mobility/cycling/
The thing is: after a snow fall, they prioritize the bike roads/lanes before taking care of the roads used by cars.
When I was living in Switzerland, I kept a set of spare wheels with studded tires for those days with risk of ice. Riding on packed snow is perfectly fine on regular tires and ice is not dangerous when you have studded tires.
> the number of bicycle commuters plummets towards zero
That's proof that there's either a lot of progress to be made, or the local culture just isn't as tolerant to the cold.
Cycling around -10 works just fine if the roads have been taken care of (which, in your example, doesn't seem to be case, as apparently they're covered in ice).
With decent infrastructure, the difference between cycling 10 degrees above and 10 degrees below freezing is a matter of outfit.
Ice isnt a product of cold. It is actually rare on roads in the high north. Ice requires melting and re-freezing, and gets more slippery when wet. Ice is a problem when the weather bounces back and forth around freezing. Each city will be very different, but those near the great lakes are famously impacted by ice storms. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ice_storms
I still see people cycling in Chicago in the cold and snow (usually while I'm also riding my bike)
Granted in a bona fide blizzard like today, i am choosing the bus instead. But this is the biggest snowfall in several years, not exactly a frequent problem.
Oh The Urbanity! just did a great episode on Victoria, B.C. The city is too small to make this list (pop. ~100K), but the video is worth checking out if you want to feel a little better about the progress of bike infrastructure in N.A. cities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpWm45qting
Of course it helps if the city, and country in general, is completely flat. Cities in Norway or Nepal have mother nature against all form of manual locomotion.
Actually, I don't think it's a huge coincidence that a lot of cities are relatively flat, because they tended to develop near larger bodies of water.
Oslo is #18 on that list, not too shabby. Kathmandu is in a valley.
I think Norway is more about being comfortable riding in the cold on spiked tires. The hills of Oslo don’t bother you after a couple months of riding them.
I'm in Wisconsin, and I just got the bike with spiked tires out today. Even if there's not a lot of snow, I prefer to sacrifice one bike to road salt than have to maintain my "nice" bike through the winter.
People act like I'm some kind of freak when I arrive at work on my bike in the middle of the winter. But I remind them that there are people who work all day outdoors in places like Alaska and Canada, and 20 minutes on a bike doesn't even come close.
This is how I feel about riding in the rain to work. Like yes you get wet but also are you unable to get wet? If you want, wear rain clothes so you stay dry. And if it’s really pouring just wait half an hour or take the bus if you can’t wait. Just plan to ride every day and be okay with the days when life won’t let you.
I think what happens is when people have a routine outdoor activity, they develop a sense of their local weather, that seems like a mystery if one isn't regularly immersed in it. Also, some subtle adaptations make it easier, such as wearing quick drying clothes or having an emergency change at work.
Now, I do have the luxury of flexible hours at my workplace, but (for instance) my daughter doesn't, and she manages just fine.
In Trondheim, Norway we have the famous bycicle lift. :)
https://youtu.be/zipZ5kwhFfs?si=2kEsb-7wEpcS2Vkn
Are you a time traveler from 2010 who's never heard of e-bikes?
In Copenhagen, the vast majority of people park their bikes on the street using only a cafe lock (frame mounted, immobilizes the rear wheel). The bikes are generally nothing special, old rusty junkers, with one or three gears. E-bikes flatten terrain but also you need an indoor place to store it and they become a magnet for theft. A cheap bike you can ride to the Metro and leave in the elements is versatile in a way e-bikes are not. (I say all this as a massive e-bike fan living in a very hilly US city who recently visited Copenhagen and adored its bike culture.)
We once rented bikes in Copenhagen, they all looked like they were fresh from the junk yard. We had to try several to find ones where at least one of the brakes was still working. It was a horrible experience, and we tried several different places. That was after we found out that the public bikes that were supposed to be available all over the city had all been stolen.
Do you think it’s a coincidence that the top two countries are completely flat?
E-bikes make this much less of an issue.
For me personally charging and keeping e-bike batteries in the apartment is a source of stress. I do keep and charge my drone and FPV plane batteries at home, even DIY ones, but e-bike batteries are much bigger and harder to chuck out of the window in case something goes wrong. I actually got rid of my e-scooter because of that, I just didn’t trust it.
No, E-bikes doesn’t make this much less of an issue.
On my first visit to Amsterdam, my friend picked me up on a bike at Centraal Station, and I rode to his apartment in the traditional Dutch style sitting on the back rack.
On the way said "only three more mountains to go till we're home"! I asked "WTF?" and he explained that's what they call the bridges over the canals.
This is one of the intersections we went through right after one of the mountains, showing how much the local culture affects the traffic safety and bicycle friendliness as much as the geography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8
One reason for Utrecht scoring high: it has the largest bicycle parking lot of the world: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2024/08/21/happy-annivers...
Why the Copenhagenize Index when Copenhagen is not particularly bike friendly by Dutch standards?
It's even more hilarious to see Paris in top 5
They hold themselves in high regard but Copenhagen doesn’t hold a candle to most Dutch cities. And for that matter, very few cities can compare themselves to the Dutch biking infrastructure, without even mentioning the cultural aspects and acceptance by other traffic participants.
The biggest hurdle to biking for me is parking safely. Unless I can park it behind locked doors I have an anxious feeling that it may not be still there when I return. This is no problem when bicycling to work, but for arbitrary errands it is. A good lock helps of course, but it still feels like a gamble.
This is the ultimate American urbanist conundrum. Bikes are pretty useless for transportation in American cities because of rampant theft. Locks get cut in the broad daylight and even if the thief is too inept to steal an angle grinder, or already ran out of batteries for today, they will still rip off parts (wheels, saddle, brakes, group, they will even rip out lights from the mounts, just because). But they also cannot demand the law enforcement against it because the thieves are the precious "unhoused" (which is very easy to check by visiting any encampment and observing all the bikes and bike parts there). So we get this strange situation when cities build bike lanes and bike parks which are empty because, at most, you can only commute on your bike if your place of work has a secure storage.
Enforcing the laws against bike thieves would be 100x more effective in promoting biking than building anything.
This is ridiculous. Bike thieves are prosecuted here, and parts theft is nowhere near as common as you're implying. Nobody I know here (Chicago) has ever really had a problem with it (bikes entirely being stolen, yeah that happens, but CPD is absolutely not refusing to investigate someone on account of being homeless, that's patently absurd)
So you are arguing that people you know only had their whole bikes stolen and not wheels/saddles/etc ? I don't think it's a good argument, tbqh. Even if the people you know made a meaningful sample of Chicago population (they don't) they still get bikes stolen and it still means the law is not enforced well enough.
And CPD can investigate all they want, CPD, like any other police department, cannot put people in prison. The DA has to press charges and prosecute in the court, which won't happen with any DA in any major city against homeless (otherwise all homeless would have been already in prison).
I always kept my bicycle inside my office. I also found out that if you ask politely, many shops allows you to enter with your bike provided there is enough space.
In the Netherlands you just chain it to something then you’re fine. Otherwise it’s gone in 60 seconds.
That strongly depends on the city and the places you park your bike. I've never needed to chain my bike, although I do it for new bikes because insurance demands it.
There are neighborhoods in cities like Amsterdam where bicycle theft is pretty much expected to happen no matter how many locks you buy, but in smaller towns there's barely a need to lock your bike at all during the day.
Pro tip: just ride an old and rusty omafiets that nobody wants, no need for a chain.
Is it really so binary? Locked bikes don't get stolen?
just a lot less, because there are so many bikes
I went to Copenhagen this summer. I was quite disappointed in the bicycle infrastructure, I felt like it was on par with what we have in Stockholm. Rented bikes and biked around for two days. It was nice!
Not sure how this index is being calculated (site breaks a lot), but my general feeling was that Denmark is just better at marketing than actual infrastructure when comparing to Stockholm at least
It is currently -1 to -3 in Montreal and -2 to -7 in Quebec (city). So yes folks literally freezing. It will remain so (down to -35) for the next 4 months.
Helsinki hits more or less the same weather, people cycle there just fine. It's only a matter of infrastructure and gear.
According to Wikipedia, the mean daily minimum of Helsinki in January is -5.6°. In Quebec City, it’s -17.7°. Not the same, at least according to Wikipedia.
Yes I agree but in general we dont have infrastructure and it gets much colder. Salt doesnt work at some point so you dont have dry pathways.
Bike paths don't have to be dry though, you can sweep them and it's fine. If you use studded tires, you can ride a bike in places where you can't even walk. Source is I used to do this when I lived in the middle of nowhere in Sweden. I agree with you that infrastructure is key though. The temperature doesn't really matter, if you're good to go on a walk, you're also good to go for a ride.
I see bikes in the summer here. I dont see almost anybody biking in the winter here. Like 100:1. The winters here are not mild (like in vancouver). This is basically artic-like weather. People also tend not to walk. The very poor take the bus. Most drive.
People wear appropriate clothing for the weather. Those temperatures are no reason to stop biking. People do not "literally" freeze when it's below 0.
It gets much colder than zero. With blinding northern winds. Yes a human can do anything but is it desirable?
Cycling or walking when it is -20C or even less does sound a little masochistic if there are alternatives available.
Oulu Finland has plenty of biking in the winter, despite its extreme northern latitude. It's about infrastructure and investment.
In Vancouver this mostly works because it is cold but not cold enough. There are only a few days where it is very sketchy. The rest of Canada is not like this.
Studded tires. This is an investment but it works. Caveat is you need space to store them on a second set of wheels or bike because you don't want to ride them all year long so it is not for everyone.
'space to store them on a second set of wheels' This probably explains everything about this discussion. I think im dealing with very poor people (Europeans).
I think I have space in my pool shed or my other shed. Worst case I will put them in one of my many empty rooms.
Is was like that in the Netherlands about a week ago. It really doesn't make a difference.
Ah well that settles it then! Im going to tell the female lawyer I know to stop taking her car and instead buy gear and a bike so she can bike in the freezing cold for 20 minutes to get to her job where she also has to dress as a lawyer. No problem just pack a bag of clothes in a pack + all other workthings and then don artic style gear. So much fun!
My gf is a doctor and rides year-round. In the winter I swap wheels with studded tires onto her bike (it takes a couple minutes). Where there's proper infrastructure, it's far safer to go out on a bike in poor conditions than it is an automobile. Plus you accumulate tremendous health benefits from not being sedentary. I'd work that into your pitch (of course, my gf is lucky to observe this first-hand at work every day, which an attorney might not).
People dont live like this here. We would view this as hardship for peasants of another ancient time.
This is not to say it must be cars. It can be other forms of transit like bus/subway. Of course standing in an unsheltered area waiting for a bus is also highly undesirable. The windchill makes this literally dangerous.
Perhaps there is a cultural barrier here? or perhaps you are not familiar with real winter.
I live in Chicago, most people I know don't drive, many of us bike in the cold, no it's not because we're poor
Eh, biking in the cold isn't really worse than walking in the cold. The snow is a bigger issue.
The alternative is not walking :)
I'm not surprised to see Utrecht in the first place, but quite a bit surprised to see the other Dutch cities so low. No offense, but Rotterdam or The Heague is 100x better than Paris from safety and convenience point of view. I'm curious why is the ranking like this.
I've lived in both cities and I'm surprised to see Utrecht above Amsterdam. Both are great, but I'd say Amsterdam is actually more bike-centered
I have lived in both as well, and I feel the complete opposite.
How did you even manage to see the page? I just clicked on it and got to WPAdmin install page, asking to setup the admin account.
Completely agree with you, I've traveled with my bike to many cities in Europe, the Netherlands in general has a fantastic bike infrastructure, not even sure why it's called "Copenhagenize" since I go to Copenhagen quite often and compared to Dutch's bike infrastructure it's still not on par to it. It's definitely great but the Dutch have it ahead.
Taipei? Are they ever bene there?
I've cycled the SF South Bay Area, Davis, Amsterdam, Kinderdijk, Bruge, and Antwerp.
Austin TX plants random, worn out, unpainted, leftover, camouflaged concrete shapes that serve no discernible positive purpose in the middle of city streets frequented by motorcycles, pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, and skaters. That's how much of a shit they give about anyone not in a truck or a rented Slingshot.
I keep meaning to cycle DC and Portland.
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You better learn how to drive bicycle while sleeping because you are not renting or buying any housing in any of these cities.
"Welcome to the famous five-minute WordPress installation process! Just fill in the information below and you’ll be on your way to using the most extendable and powerful personal publishing platform in the world."
Ooops.
lol wpadmin
yes, seems the site is completely broken and I suspect someone is in the middle of a panicked reinstall or reconfigure of WP. I feel for them. [edit] back up now, it seems.
back up now, it seems.
Says you, I clicked 22 minutes after you posted, and got the WP install page. Like you, I sympathize; no one deserves this on their Saturday.
I clicked again, though, to get a repro and it was back. :shrug:
great website, very helpful for traveling cyclists