Thanks to Bill Dooley for sharing (on Facebook) this great short video on winter maintenance for bicycle facilities.
The City of Oulu is the cycling capital of Finland and the winter cycling capital of the world. It has one of the most extensive bicycling networks (613 km, 4.3 m/inhab.) in the world, a cycling modal split of 22 % (2009 data) and state of the art winter maintenance levels.
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22% rideshare even though Oulu has a subarctic climate with an average high temp of -6 F in January. Makes Minneapolis’ 4% seem rather paltry. I’m guessing this has everything to do with the city’s numerous segregated bikeways that are plowed before automobile routes in winter.
I was really curious how they stack up to Mpls/StP from a total snowfall perspective. Consistent data for snowfall is tough to come by. I used data from this site: http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/
I used share of days with snow/rain/hail and multiplied by total annual precipitation. Not sure if this is legit, but it’s the best I could do. I also threw in Copenhagen. Here are the numbers (excuse the formatting):
City Avg Inches Rain Avg Inches Snow Avg Inches Hail
Minneapolis 17.20 11.43 0.15
Oulu 10.33 8.65 0.04
Copenhagen 15.60 3.63 0.25
Oulu is much closer to us than CPH, close enough that I’d say they’re a fair example in the challenges of continuous snowfall, temperatures, and therefore how long the snow stays.
It’s colder on Oulu so I imagine that they have less ice to deal with and more packed snow. Copenhagen is so warm that snow mostly doesn’t last too long.
Also, not one skyway anywhere, how do they do it!