On-Street Parking in the winter

On street parking in the winter is not nice. It's not nice for the poor Mr. SnowPlowMan who has to clear the treet but the snow pile zone is full of parked cars. Nor it is fun for the drivers who get their cars blocked by the snowpiles, and have to scrape the windows clean and shovel the snow off the roof. And then they have to try starting the car without the benefit of electric heating, causing extra wear and tear in the engines if it's cold. And create clouds of pollution from the cold-start.

Meanwhile, bike parking on the bikeway is not really a thing. First, one can usually park the bike easily in the racks near just a few meters from the front door (if indoor parking is not available/rider too lazy) so why would anyone leave their bike on a bikeway? That'd also mean they walked away, and that's not something we like to discuss here in Very Northern Cycling Blog. Bikes were invented to stop people from walking, you know!

And there's the danger of snow camouflage. What happens is the bike fell over and then it snowed a lot and Mr SnowPlowMan does not notice there's a bike? Well, he plows it away!  I think most of the worst ones will get sent straight to the recycling, but many mangled ruins of a bicycle gets sold every time there's a "Lost&Found" sale.

Still, short term parking does happen. Met a friend on a walk, flat tires, the chain came off, it was colder/more slippery than you thought so one has to walk instead, or too much alcohol. In the autumn picking berries and mushrooms are good reasons to stop, but usually one should carry the bike 100 meters into the bushes to leave no clue for others to find your good berry bushes. Maybe the dog got an interesting scent and dragged the rider off to the woods?

An unusual sight; on-bikeway parking! Of a bicycle, that is.

School yard in Tyrnävä

Here's what a School yard in Finland might look like in the winter:

picture by Koivuneva/Kaleva

That picture above makes me wonder if there's enough gritting or too much? Bikes like sand, potkukelkkas (kick sleds) do not. Obviously the sleds are 'in' at the moment. I did sometimes go to school with kicksled when I was a kid, too, bot that was ages ago. Walk, bike, kicksled or ski. (Skiing is the easiest way to transport skis to the school for the gym class. :-)

And here's a link to related story in the local newspaper Newspaper Kaleva story with a video of kids arriving at school.

Sunny Sunday ride

The weather was great: warm, sunny, just a little bit wind. A lot of people were on the bikes, I was not the only one. Even if there's nobody in the first two pictures:

 With the new buildings came a few new bikeways. These are really new routes, riding them will certainly qualify for LGRAB summer games. Recently the local newspaper told the city has decided the new standard for MUPs is 3,5 meters minimum width, to make it easier to clean them from the snow in the winter. The gap between the bikeway and the street is for snow.

 Saw a train, too. Some new double deckers. The rail company used to have red livery, now they're painting their trains green. Is that greenwashing? :-P

The parking lot of a supermarket on a sunday aftenoon. Note the green asphalt? Here in Very Northern Florida, it's the cars who get painted asphalt, not bicycles. Although I have to admit this was the quieter half of the parking lot. Still, there's not many cars...

but bikes a plenty. I tried to count the cars in the parking lot and the bikes parked in the racks, but that is difficult because they keep moving. There was about 50 cars, and 58 bikes. This is a supermarket which has a huge parking lot, and it's located very conveniently for car commuters to do their shopping. On a sunny sunday most of their customers got there on their bikes. Awesome.

Telling off people walking on the bike lane

Yesterday I was downtown, riding on one of the sidewalk MUPs that actually has cycling and walking separated to prevent 'dooring'. There's a row of street lights, bike racks, trees etc, and people are supposed to be on the street side if they're biking and away from the street when walking.

Look at the picture, how does this help dooring? The cyclists are next to parked cars, in the door zone. The dooring I'm talking about is cyclists scaring or even hitting pedestrians stepping out of shops' doorways. There's more people stepping in and out of shops than there's people getting in and out of cars, so this arrangement makes sense.

The bikelane is two-way, and we have right hand traffic. A cyclist riding close to the cars would very likely be riding towards the camera (unless passing pedestrians like I was), in view of the passengers and driver. So a passenger could easily see the cyclist and not hit him with a door. And if he did, the door would close (and possibly squeeze the passenger), not open more and throw the cyclist into the racks.

There was this one woman walking slowly in the bike side, and although she was not the only one, she was walking particularly middle of it to block the whole lane. I decided I would ask her in a friendly manner if she had noticed she was walking in the wrong lane. When I passed her, I asked her in finnish.

To my surprise, she asked me in english (a tourist from the UK, likely) for directions to a bar, and I forgot about telling her off when I tried to remember how to find it. Doh!

A Small Biker Gang Invades Supermarket

A few days ago I made some macaroni casserole and when that was in the oven, I was feeling creative, and I had a ache in my sweet tooth, so I decided to bake a cake. Except I was short of some ingredients, aka eggs I had just used in the casserole. I had to rush into the shop to get eggs while the casserole was still in the oven. Take too long and the casserole might get too dry and burn, then the smoke alarms would alert the neighbours and the firemen would use the axe to open my door, I would be evicted and be forced to sleep outside in the snow, all because of two eggs!

In a very short time (as the trip is only about 2 km and on excellent bikeways I don't even have to ride fast to make it a short time) I arrived at the supermarket, and spotted this cute little bike:

It was so cute I had to take a picture before entering the shop. A little basket and all. After a quick walk through the shop to get the things I needed and a short but fast cashier queue I came back to my bike and noticed there was now two little bikes:

After I packed my camera away and unlocked my bike, I turned around to leave and what do I see! A third small bike! It wasn't there when I got there!

Luckily I got away before more members of the Small Bike Gang arrived and blockaded me completely!

The whole trip took about 22 minutes, and the mac was fine when I got back.  and the blueberry cake I made was delicious. Somehow I ran out of the cake faster than the casserole...

Home from the railway station

Oulu is an university town, so we have lots of people who spend the week here and go visit their parents and friends on the weekends or the holidays. If you live far away, one of the best ways to do that is by train. You'll know that when you see the trains on fridays and sundays.  To get to the train station, you can take a bus, or bike there. Oh, you can get there by car, too, but then you'd have to park it somewhere. You can park your bike right at the train station. The photo was taken on an average -20C weekend. Typical of February.

The railway station is a small rectangular building and bike parking is provided at both ends of the station. During the cycling season, there's a lot more  bikes than places on the racks.

While I was taking pictures of the bike parking, I noticed some local youth biking past the railway station, three abreast:

They were biking on this pavement (MUP). In the grid street area most bikeways are on the pavement, because any bike lane markings would be under the snow. And sharing the busy street in the winter- no thanks!

Long shadows...

There's a long line of cars waiting at the traffic lights. The intersection is a busy one. The railroad track (north-south direction) splits the city in half, and one can get to the other side by underpasses or bridges. One of the underpasses is to the right.


There is also a big river which splits the city in half. Going straight, you get to one of the bridges, and turning left, you get to another bridge. So you can see why this intersection gets a lot of traffic.

A little closer

Now, remember there is an underpass to the right. Pedestrians and cyclists going straight get their own "express lane" next to the railway tracks on the bridge. They don't have to stop at the traffic lights.

A look from above.

The pedestrians and cyclist wanting to go to the other side of the tracks (for example to one of several supermarkets there) have more choices than motorists, because there is more underpasses available for them.

From the other side of the tracks

Note how the bikeways on both sides of the car lanes are higher than the car lanes? The trucks and other high vehicles need more clearance to get under the bridge. The underpass has to be dug wider and also lower for them, making the underpass more expensive. On the other hand, by building the bikeways at a higher level there is less earthworks needed, and the bikes get a flatter route with smaller uphills.

Cycle parking

I took some photos a few days ago. The first two are taken at one of the bike parking places at the university. I noticed that maybe having a camera made of plastic would have been better than a metal frame camera. At -13C the metal camera was cold, and my poor fingers did not like it at all. Maybe I should have left the fair weather gloves home and worn the winter mittens :)

One of the bike parks, on a fresh -13C winter day.

You can see there are some spaces available, so some people have decided to take the bus instead of biking. -13C is not too cold for most of us, though.

Standing in the same spot, I turned 90 degrees and took a photo towards the bus stop.

Some landscape artist decided we need more trees in the campus so they planted them in the bike park. Right now they look a little ridiculous because they are so small, but I think they look better in 50 years.

There is a bus stop behind those trees. And one of the car parks. The car parks are much further away from the doors. It makes only sense. The drivers arrived by car, therefore they are not tired from the exhausting cycling so they can walk a little more than us poor cyclists! Perfect!

Three kinds of parking in this picture: cars, bikes and dogs .The dog cage is behind the last bike on the right, not very visible in this picture.

This was taken the same day as the pictures above. At the supermarket near the university there are three places to park bikes: on the right (closest to the doors), in the shed-like building on the left or another shed behind me. The cars have to park further away, behind the sheds. You can clearly see the sheds are awfully far (30 meters or so) from the doors. I don't know if they originally planned the bike parking to be only at the sheds but when everyone started parking closer to the door, added racks there too.


If you see an actor/actress cycling in a movie, how do you know if they (or the director) are utility cyclists or just pretending? In one movie I saw the main character arrive somewhere on her bike, stopped over 10 meters before the bike rack and pushed the bike to the rack.

That does not make any sense! Don't they know that one of the best things about bicycles is that they get you closer to the destination than cars? Any good utility cyclist would have cycled at least 8 meters more and taken only one or two steps before parking her bike!