Weather and the Needs of Bikes

Let me start with what this post is not. It is not about weatherproofing your biking practice, or how to bike in bad weather. Instead, this is about what cities (and other communities) can and should do to help bicycling continue when the weather is less than ideal. 

Why should they care about that? Well, bad weather is exactly when you don't want a huge influx of additional vehicles on the streets. All the more so if you have somehow managed to get people out of cars in the first place, meaning your infrastructure is designed for those people not to be on the streets at all.

Additionally, if people can't bike in bad weather, they'll need to own a car, which ultimately means more trips done by car even when there isn't bad weather, because the car is an investment they've made, so they'll use it.

So if you want to legitimately get bikes on the road, and people on the bikes, you want to help them be there in bad weather, and its aftermaths, or you don't see the most benefits from that modal shift.

I want to suggest three main things that help with this.

1. Clear the gutters

Honestly, this is basic street infrastructural maintenance, but it's especially important for bikes. Why?

Well, first off, many cities put their bikes in the gutter: either just by requiring bikes ride to the side of the road in mixed traffic (as Iowa does), or by using what some urbanists call "painted bike gutters," bike lanes that are just painted into those same sides of the road.

Combine that with a clogged actual-gutter, and as you can imagine the biking gets tricky:

That is by no means the worst I've seen; it just happened to be one I felt safe actually photographing. Biking through this is dangerous and wet (even at slow speed, carefully, with good tires and fenders).

That's better: it's still wet, because it's raining, but it's not making the problem worse.

Add to the above the fact that bikes are more affected by small things covering bits of the road (because their tires aren't huge and capable of ignoring everything and their vehicles don't weigh so much they smash through everything in their path), and a clogged gutter creates a major hazard even if the bicyclist goes around the worst of it. 

And that means not only more danger for cyclists but also a deterrent to riding in the first place.

2. Don't just patch, resurface

This is a point I've made before here already, but the freeze-thaw cycles of modern asphalt in winter weather create potholes that become significant for bikes before they do for cars: and the piecemeal patching places like the Quad Cities do to help cars once the problem becomes undeniable is often actually worse for bikes. Cities that just dump patches on top of patches create corrugated roads, and can cause anything from rattling to popped tires to wipeouts. If you have potholes, resurface enough of the street (or pay enough attention to what you're doing as you patch) so that it's at least vaguely smooth when you're done, for all our sakes.

3. Separate bikes from cars

In bad weather, you either functionally or literally have less road space to work with: bits are covered in water, or snow, or plowed slush, etc. The bits this happens to are also the bits that more vulnerable road users (aka non-cars) are using (see #1). So the best thing you can do to make biking functional in bad weather is not make people bike in the road--or have a real separated bike lane in that road if you do. The best way to make it feasible to bike in any weather is not about the weather at all. It's about avoiding cars.

If you want people not to be in cars, don't make them compete with cars. That remains true no matter the weather.