Chiming in from Minneapolis, major bike paths/routes are generally plowed just as often as the roads. It can be a hurdle, but it’s not as bad as you might think.

We used trucks with snow plows constantly in Finland too when it snows. The city where I'm from is called Tampere. I thought that the city used to be quite hostile towards bicycles ten years ago but since then they have built so many new biking lanes or removed lanes for the cars and replaced them for pedestrians and cycles. It was just faster to go everywhere with bicycle and with bicyclr6you don't need to spend time to search for a free parking place. If it rained a lot I used rain jacket or used the public transportation. In the winter we used tires with spikes in them (to battle the slippery ice).

Removing some lanes makes the city much more enjoyable for everyone but ofc this is harder to do in really old cities which were designed for horses or big metropolitan areas wherr extra land is scarce.

We moved to Tallinn, Estonia last year and compared to Finland the cycle lanes here are poorly designed and many local politicians still support cars over cycles which is a sad.

We use snow plows up here in Canada.

"There is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing." :-)

If the existing materials are not good enough, perhaps we can invent more waterproof, windproof, breathable, warmer, cheaper etc. materials

You dress up better. For the past several years, biking was the only way I went to work, the only exception being if my bike was in the shop for repairs when I'd take public transport.

You'll notice that regardless of the weather, people bike. Chuck some rain pants and a rain coat on, or carry an umbrella, or get a bike poncho thing, or all of the above. It's not hard.

If it's seriously shitty weather, the public transport is a bit more full than otherwise, but still people are out biking because that's how you get from A to B.

Couple of things from my anecdotal experience. Firstly, people already do this, yeah there are less cyclists in winter but the dedicated still ride. Secondly, nobody is advocating for bikes and nothing else, bike infrastructure in combination with a proper public transport system. Finally I see older people riding bikes regularly, often with a grandkid on the back or front and I'd guess they're in better shape for it.

I'm almost 60. I'm not a jock. I bike everywhere.

Try again.

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.

No train there. Rent a car? We're back to square one.