In the spring of 2024, I finally got an electric cargo bike and immediately started using it for everything. I’ve talked about it a lot on this blog, and it has been life changing in many ways. I rode it over 1000 km in the last 10 months, including commuting downtown for work at least 10 times. I also joined the boards of three community non-profits and went full-on, orange-pilled urbanist.
Today, though, I want to talk about some of my experiences biking during the ‘winter’ (a term I’ll use loosely to describe the period in Ottawa after the first time it snows and before all the snow melts) with my new bike. Unexpectedly, the cold wasn’t high on the list of the biggest barriers to cycling all through the winter, but we will talk about what barriers were.
October 2024
In October 2024, I joined the Board of Bike Ottawa, an advocacy organization that promotes safe cycling infrastructure and enabling more people to cycle around our city safely and efficiently. The Annual General Meeting for Bike Ottawa was held on October 26, a day that is typically colder than is comfortable for most fair-weather cyclists, but in the grand scheme of things isn’t particularly cold. It hadn’t snowed yet in the season but cycling home from the meeting it was around 0 degrees Celsius. The ride from Orleans to Bayview Yards in Mechanicsville is about 20 km each way, give or take.
By dressing appropriately (ie. a coat, winter gloves, long underwear, and a balaclava), I was plenty warm enough for the long ride, and it wasn’t busy on the parkway at night, which definitely helped.
November 2024
November presented me with an opportunity to cycle more in what I would describe as fall weather, where it was definitely cold, but there wasn’t any snow. In just the last week of November, I rode to my office downtown for work, and to the Plant Recreation Centre at Preston and Somerset for a Bike Ottawa Strategy Retreat. These were effectively the same conditions as my ride downtown described in October, ‘fall’, but not really winter yet. I’m not including a map here as the route overlaps about 95% with the route above.
The rides were also very similar in conditions to October. The roads were clear, and if it was cold, I used layers. It was not as complicated as I expected it would be.
December 2024
December was the month where I had two new thoughts about the possibility of winter cycling. The first thought is that it was totally doable despite cold weather, since I had been doing it in the cold for over a month now and it was fine, given that I prepared appropriately. Second, I could probably take almost no risk or additional effort and cycle at least once (for transportation, an important caveat) each calendar month year-round. Biking around the block to check a box wasn’t necessary, I wanted to actually need to get somewhere. Once I set this goal for myself, I looked for opportunities when it would be possible to use my bike for relatively short trips when the weather was neutral but cold, and the streets and paths were clear enough.
The biggest issue I had with the roads being clear is that I don’t have a bike with winter or studded tires, and I wasn’t really able or willing to make these modifications to my bike this year to accomplish my goal of cycling at least once a month. December was definitely the closest I came to missing this goal, but I did end up going to pick up a pizza 1.3 km from my house on bike. I probably could have done more, I just didn’t have many other opportunities to go somewhere. It’s not like I was driving solo all over the place during that time.
Sidebar here, a cargo bike with a large, sturdy front basket is absolutely the best way to carry pizza longer distances using active transportation. Using ratchet straps to secure the pizza to the basket makes it pretty easy to keep the pizza securely held to the bike, and you can see it right in front of you and make sure it’s safe on the ride.
The day I picked up the pizza was absolutely the worst experience I had cycling this year, but only because I wasn’t properly prepared and dressed for the weather (which was about -16 degrees Celsius minus additional windchill). The pizza was fine and still very warm when I got home, but if I had a ski helmet it would have made my ride a whole lot more comfortable.
January 2025
Technically, my cycling experience in January was the first one that actually falls in the official winter season. This ride was probably my most ambitious one, not because it was super cold or super far, but because I made the silly (in retrospect) choice to take my acoustic (not electric) bike. At this point, I’d been using my electric cargo bike for almost 8 months, and I had gotten very used to not only the upright riding position, but the cargo capacity as well.
In the end, I took my road bike and a backpack for a grocery trip after a visit to the dentist. I did this in full winter gear, which made me feel very silly and uncomfortable hunched over for no reason on my hybrid road bike while riding. Both of the places I had to go were quite close, so neither the distance of the ride itself nor the conditions were an issue, it was simply the wrong choice of bike for the task. After the dentist, I wound up needing to get way more groceries (and in particular much more liquid) than I anticipated in bringing just a backpack. It was also snowing lightly by the time I made my way to the grocery store, but, honestly, this was barely made any more difficult by the fact that it was winter.
Upon leaving the grocery store, disaster struck (though once again nothing to do with cycling). I had managed to just barely fit everything into my backpack, and unfortunately ripped a shoulder strap because I didn’t loosen it from its last use in warmer weather before trying to maneuver with a full bag and bulky winter coat.
The ride home was a little tricky because of this, but I managed to make it home fairly easily once I secured the strap with a temporary knot. It was fully snowing big fluffy flakes the entire way home, but honestly that didn’t affect the ride at all, it was actually lovely, and those kinds of conditions are some of my favourites in the winter.
I should note, given this was my one ride on the acoustic bike in the winter, that I made absolutely no modifications to my regular road bike for this, the standard tires were completely fine, the roads we clear, though quite wet due to the fresh snow that morning. I could 100% see myself doing a grocery run repeatedly in the winter as long as the paths/road there was clear, I just need to be better prepared to bring groceries home, which is specifically why I have a cargo bike that can carry probably 100 pounds of groceries when I need to.
February 2025
The gap between the previous ride and this one is absolutely the longest period over the winter between my rides, and it was the time when the majority of the snow fell in Ottawa this year. I don’t have a ‘winter bike’, so I have just been using my regular bike to get around and do things when the conditions on the paths and roads were clear. I should also note that basically all of February I am also at my absolute busiest at work, which means I keep my schedule clear of a lot of extraneous tasks and errands that might otherwise require me to leave the house more frequently.
My ride at the end of February involved running a couple of errands and meeting a friend for lunch. It was a beautiful day, sunny and everything was melting. It was still too cold to consider not wearing a balaclava (especially when going over about 20 kph), but honestly when I have it on with my glasses, it doesn’t matter what the temperature is (within reason), it’s pretty easy to get around comfortably.
My opinion on winter biking is exactly the same as it is for winter driving. If the streets are clear and it’s not an active blizzard, it seems very reasonable to consider biking places as an option when it’s cold and snowy. If the roads aren’t clear, it doesn’t feel super safe to drive or take a bike.
The biggest impediment I can see for folks who are considering riding a bike for transportation in my neighbourhood has nothing to do with summer or winter. The road system we have in Orleans is extremely biased towards car travel, making most people who enjoy cycling or want to cycle more feel unsafe or uncomfortable biking in traffic or on the sidewalk.
March 2025 and Onwards
The month of March was probably the most interesting one for me in this experiment, because it’s the first time I ’emerged’ after biking less (but not none) in the winter. The roads were mostly clear in March, save for a couple of days of active snowstorm, which meant that I could count on clear roads and rely on my (I’ll remind you) unmodified and unwinterized bike for everyday errands.
At this point in the season, it’s not even worth mapping out what I did or how many rides, because biking became my main mode of transportation again. My experience biking through very cold temperatures in the dead of winter showed me that with proper preparation and dress, cold wasn’t an issue at all. If you can bike without turning into an icicle at -15 (Celsius), you can obviously do it at -5 or 0 or +5 or anything in between, as long as you know the weather and you’re prepared.
An ebike definitely takes the edge off, especially on longer trips. That being said, I think that using my cargo bike without the assist mainly feels ‘hard’ (harder than a regular bike) because it’s decked out with so much cargo capacity (and the frame strength to match). That extra weight makes it less agile, but not really slower overall, except maybe up an incline or right off a standing start. When I do use my road bike, it’s easier to pedal and maneuver than the ebike, simply because there is just a lot less mass to move around.
Biking in the cold has now just become one of my transportation options, and it is my first choice when going out to run errands or get somewhere, especially in my community. And it definitely helps the family budget to have absolutely no need or desire for a second car when a bike that costs a few percent the cost gets the job done in 95% of scenarios.
My Conclusions and Recommendations
If winter biking is something that interests you, I would encourage you to just try to get out late in the fall when it’s colder but before snow, and layer up when you go. If your bike isn’t suited to riding in the snow, consider it for trips when the streets are clear instead of just defaulting to the car. If you can include storage on your bike (panniers or baskets are both good options), that makes it much easier to take real trips on a bike, so you have more versatile ways to carry things with you.
Biking throughout the year isn’t like daylight savings time, it doesn’t need to switch off and on once in the fall and spring. It is very possible to read current conditions and make the right transportation choice for you on a given day. Of course, zoning bylaws in my community make many easy trips and errands much longer trips than they realistically need to be, but that hasn’t got anything to do with weather either.
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