It’s Plus 1 Minus 2 time again! This time, we’re looking for the most bike-friendly winter city.
This collab video with @PekkaTahkola compares the Canadian city of Calgary and the Finnish city of Oulu to determine which is the most bike-friendly. It’s based on the trusty (and totally made up) Plus 1 Minus 2 scale — score one point for anything that makes it easier to ride a bike, and lose two points for anything that makes it difficult or unsafe. The goal here is to showcase elements that can make cities everywhere a bit more bike-friendly.
After you watch this, make sure to go see Pekka’s video so you can see his comments and his scoring. Prior to publishing, I haven’t seen his video and he hasn’t seen mine, but I guarantee you’ll learn something — he’s one of the world’s foremost experts on urban winter cycling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABV7WUJl6fU
If you want to see more Plus 1 Minus 2 videos, check out this playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9VVRCsi30Sk0_tUjy3O0Y8HIYztR-GNA
The original Plus 1 Minus 2 collab with @NotJustBikes: https://youtu.be/iFMhiwtBfAU
0:00 Intro
1:14 Riding in Calgary, Canada
14:35 Calgary’s score
14:47 Riding in Oulu, Finland
28:15 Oulu’s score, and conclusions
#cycling #bike #commuting
Buy my book Frostbike: The Joy, Pain and Numbness of Winter Cycling: https://rmbooks.com/book/frostbike/
I don’t really do proper product reviews, but here are some products that I’ve tried on this channel that I like. (Of course you don’t need anything fancy to ride a bike, other than a bike, but these are Amazon affiliate links, and I get paid a small commission if you buy them 😉)
• Here’s the winter bike I’m riding these days: https://bit.ly/2PhqUqF
• Cliq Smart Bike Light (nice rear brake light): https://amzn.to/39lfqwo
• RedShift Acrlight Smart LED Pedals (clever lights for your pedals): https://amzn.to/3NL1Npg
• Aftershokz Titanium bone-conducting headphones (if you want to listen while you ride): https://amzn.to/3e9Tofa
• JBL CLip 4 Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker (for your party-pace group rides): https://amzn.to/3pcMLPm
• Crane Bicycle Bell (the ding is sublime): https://amzn.to/3OwfZCu
• Ibex Merino Wool clothing (good for summer and winter): https://bit.ly/3xXkbEd
• Bicycle Cargo Net (why did it take so long for me to buy one of these?): https://amzn.to/31s1Ovu
• Vaude Cover II Rain Poncho (for higher-end, try Cleverhood or People’s Poncho): https://amzn.to/3jLkift
• Kryptonite U-Lock (your bike is going to get stolen eventually, sigh, but at least make it hard): https://amzn.to/3tPWcGi
• Peak Design phone case (the one I use, paired with the Peak Design phone mount): https://amzn.to/3HGM0FU
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23 Comments
If it's safe to run a stop sign, then the stop sign isn't warranted and the city should be removing it. Idaho Stop laws are a stupid band aid for thoughtless engineering.
10:54: Man you took being the victim of vehicular assault rather well.
Man Calgary was looking to match its score with the temp 😆.
Your comment on ShareROWs got me thinking. If they only changed the graphic on the sign, it would make more sense to everyone and be so much safer.
Hear me out. Rather than a bike and a car side by side, show a bike with a car in FRONT and a car BEHIND it. Meaning riders and drivers are to use the lane in the same way, ie nobody passes anybody (until the ShareROW street ends). Thoughts?
Is snirt the same thing as the Montreal slush?
You guys in Calgary are lucky your lanes are even plowed. Here in Quebec City cycling is still mostly considered a recreative activity.
What do you think of the sport check 160-190 canadian $ nakumara bikes? They look better than supercycle. Also whats ur suggestion for the best cheap canadian commuter under 500
12K??? Please don't tell me you need to travel that far. I live near DT Vancouver and have a Canadian Tire less than a five minute walk. But that's not a fluke. There's a Home Depot one block further. But that's not a fluke either. The next closest Home Depot is about a ten minute bike ride – about 2.5K. I'd guess there are a dozen hardware stores, large and small, within a 12K radius.
Maybe Calgary has bigger problems than the quality of its bike lanes?
As a Finnish guy it looks insane when you bike on the road where the cars ride when there is a walking lane right next to it. Here in Finland when there are no specified bike lanes we ride our bikes on the walking lane. Also this plus 1 minus 2 might not work perfectly since I feel like cyclists being separated from motor vehicles is much more significant than the other points mentioned. It makes such a big difference that it deserves at least 5 points here. Great video!
Love this format!
Now do some in really bad cities (like mine) so you can feel a bit better about Calgary 🤣
Great comparison. Having secure places to lock the bike while shopping are important. I live and ride in a rural area on roads that don't even have shoulders. The law says motor vehicles must give bikes 1 meter of space! More bike , pedestrian infrastructure costs money. US is car centric. Not bike friendly.
wow… I'd really like to see Oulu without snow and holidays, if this impression of almost never even interfering with cars stays.
Tom with the arcteryx drip 💧
I'd give Oulu a +1 on that taxis were in pedestrian areas to pick up shopping not allowed in the UK
Usually roads with no snow in winter just have the heat pipes for the houses running under them
As someone that used to live on 12th and then just off Richmond Rd by the old children's hospital and that has ridden that entire route many times, I can appreciate how much better it is now than it was 10 – 20 years ago. There's still a tonne of room for improvement but back then you wouldn't dream of riding on 12th unless you had a death wish. Then the only option was to head north and follow the river. The thing you forgot to mention about Scarboro is how the wealthy there have manage to block ingress into their neighborhood by having so many roads closed along 17th.
Wow. Impressive for Finland. I want to move there.😮
+1 for snow? 🙂
torontonian subbed immediately after seeing you ride your bike in winter Calgary!!
Sorry you really need to change your mindset, the bikelane is not there to benefit the cyclists, it is there to prevent CAR drivers to make their plentiful mistakes.
I do got a wonder why don’t you ride in the middle of the lane
I'm thinking of building a precision GPS based multi use path clearing machine and trying it out in my little city of Cheyenne, Wyoming (where I think it would be not so hard getting approval to operate it, and possibly money to do so as well). We have a set of reasonably useful multi-use paths with some weak spots… and while parts of it are sometimes cleared during the winter, it is too dangerous to cycle on when there has been consistent snow.
Up here we don't get that much snow, and it's drier than Calgary, with more clear sky days in winter and slightly higher average temperatures. The net effect is that when the sky is clear, full snow removal is the best option, because within about an hour of sun-up, any residue of snow will have melted and evaporated from a properly cleared path. The main challenges around this would be preventing mounds from melting onto the path and forming hard ice. The other issue with the existing snow removal, when it happens at all, is that the plows overshoot the sides of the paved area, and they end up tearing up grass and shifting gravel/stones into the path.
I think the sweet spot would be to have both plows and brushes on the machine, and to have a precise outline of the path boundaries in the computer; this way you could look at the forecast, and if it's blue skies that day you brush all the snow off, otherwise if it's cold enough and overcast enough, you leave a packing layer like shown in Oulu.
Snirt? I call it 'chop'.