At Kobla, we love cycling in winter. But we’ll be the first to admit that it’s not always easy. So it’s good that someone is working systematically to improve the conditions!
The clever people at the City of Oslo’s Urban Environment Agency have conducted an in-depth study of winter cycling in the capital. They combined surveys with GPS tracking (using Kobla DigitalTRS) of a group of 100 cyclists to better understand where they ride and what challenges they face during the winter.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report shows that the biggest obstacle in winter is accessibility. A lack of snow clearing on bike paths means that cyclists have to use the main road, which is a challenge for road safety and more than half of the participants had experienced unpleasant safety-situations.
Snow clearing is a limited resource, until the day we have self-driving trucks, it is difficult to clear all places at the same time. The Municipality of Oslo has a prioritized road network, and with GPS route data from DigitalTRS, they gained new insight into how well the prioritized road network matches where people actually cycle. This is insight that is very difficult to obtain in other ways and can help improve conditions for winter cyclists in the years to come.
Read the full report here.
