Transportation
Building a Bike Culture in a City That Gets 88 Inches of Snow a Year
In Ottawa, getting wintertime cycling to take hold is a work in progress.
A lot of people like to complain about how the weather keeps them from biking. Until just a few years ago, a lot of New Yorkers insisted that the city was too cold for commuting by bike in the winter months. (And, of course, in the summer, it was too hot.)
These days, the city's bike season runs all year long. I used to be nervous about riding across the Manhattan Bridge on a cold winter's night because the span was so lonely that I feared getting jumped. Now, a steady line of blinking taillights marks the way across the river.