It's funny, no matter how I post about cities that have made cycling for transport work, there's always someone downplaying how meaningful it is.
You could look at Stockholm or Amsterdam or Copenhagen or Munich for biking, too. Those are all colder cities (but not as cold as Oulu) with decent or better bike infrastructure and cycling rates.
I'm in Munich and can speak to my experience here. Munich isn't as good as Dutch cities, but it's still better than any US city I've visited or heard of, by a fair margin. Weather is similar to Seattle, so kind of cold on average, but not horribly so. This winter we definitely had a fair amount of freezing though, and actually the last couple days we had snow again.
Munich makes it work with lots of protected bike lanes that clearly used to just be sidewalk. That's not ideal -- it cuts into walking space, obviously -- but it's still better than no bike infra, or painted bike lanes. There's also a fair number of off-street trails, multi-use paths (half the time these are just sidewalks where bikes are allowed, really) and walk/bike cut-throughs in neighborhoods. Oh, and the default road width in residential neighborhoods is small, which helps a lot.
You could look at Stockholm or Amsterdam or Copenhagen or Munich for biking, too. Those are all colder cities (but not as cold as Oulu) with decent or better bike infrastructure and cycling rates.
I'm in Munich and can speak to my experience here. Munich isn't as good as Dutch cities, but it's still better than any US city I've visited or heard of, by a fair margin. Weather is similar to Seattle, so kind of cold on average, but not horribly so. This winter we definitely had a fair amount of freezing though, and actually the last couple days we had snow again.
Munich makes it work with lots of protected bike lanes that clearly used to just be sidewalk. That's not ideal -- it cuts into walking space, obviously -- but it's still better than no bike infra, or painted bike lanes. There's also a fair number of off-street trails, multi-use paths (half the time these are just sidewalks where bikes are allowed, really) and walk/bike cut-throughs in neighborhoods. Oh, and the default road width in residential neighborhoods is small, which helps a lot.