> In warm and dry parts of the world with good roads.
All you need are good roads. Bicycling in the winter in Helsinki or – even further north – Oulu is completely mainstream. People know how to dress for the outdoors, and as long as the bike lanes are cleared of snow, cycling is not viewed as the major inconvenience that people in warmer countries expect it to be.
“All you need are good roads.” That’s a Big expensive undertaking. In Canada (which is ever so slightly bigger than Finland) the roads range from excellent to abysmal. In the US the roads often have potholes and little accommodation for cycles, and the U.K. has some of the worst roads I’ve seen outside of a developing nation. Finland is also a small country with a population which all lives in the same climate. Countries like the US and Canada are huge, and far more populous, with population densities varying wildly. In addition, the climate ranges from lovely to arctic.
Needless to say, this creates a host of issues you won’t find in Helsinki, where 1.2m of Finland’s 5m inhabitants live. A bunch of very similar people living in the equivalent of one American state or small Canadian province, speaking the same language and sharing the same culture and weather can make roads and cycling a priority. Good luck scaling that.
Note that I mentioned Oulu. The bike lane infrastructure constructed there – the sheer total distance of lanes versus the city’s population – makes it preposterous to claim that Toronto (the example city in the grandparent post) cannot also have decent winter cycling.
We are talking about one city; no one is suggesting that Canada’s rural areas – which is the only place it would be relevant to bring up distance or low population density like you did – need bike lanes, too.
FWIW, I live in the UK. The roads are fine for cycling and the cyclepaths are excellent.
There is a "National Cycle Network" of cyclepaths and roads that are exceptionally well-suited to cycling (low traffic etc.), and it is signposted well.
(But, again, I hadn't noticed any of this until after I got the bike).
All you need are good roads. Bicycling in the winter in Helsinki or – even further north – Oulu is completely mainstream. People know how to dress for the outdoors, and as long as the bike lanes are cleared of snow, cycling is not viewed as the major inconvenience that people in warmer countries expect it to be.