Suggested Citation:
Sears, Justine, Brian S. Flynn, Lisa Aultman-Hall, Greg S. Dana (2012)

To Bike or Not to Bike: Seasonal Factors for Bicycle Commuting

Research with a panel of working adults in northern communities was conducted to assess the impact of weather on commuting to work by bicycle. Participants commuted at least 2 mi each way and commuted by bike more than twice annually. Transportation mode was recorded for four 7-day periods in 2009 and 2010 (one sampling period per season). Mode, personal characteristics, and commute length were linked to location- and time-specific weather conditions and to daylight hours on commuting days. Analyses focused on the effects of season, weather, and other factors to develop binary models for commuting by bicycle. The likelihood of bike commuting increased 3% with every 1°F increase in morning temperature and decreased by 5% with a 1 mph increase in wind speed. Likelihood of biking to work was more than double on days with no morning precipitation. Hours of daylight had no discernible effect, although study participants cited this as a barrier in the baseline survey. Distance to work negatively affected the likelihood of bike commuting. Men were nearly twice as likely to bike commute on a given day as were women. Separate models for men and women suggested that these groups responded similarly to adverse weather conditions, although some effects were less pronounced among women because of a smaller sample size. An appreciable portion of participants biked to work throughout the year in a variety of weather conditions, a result that suggested that a northern climate might not necessarily preclude year-round bike commuting. Multimodal commuting was prevalent in the sample: on 20% of the days that participants reported biking to work, they reported returning home by another mode. Helping cyclists learn to deal safely with cold and dark conditions and facilitation of multimodal bicycle commuting may promote wider use of bicycle commuting and extend the northern bicycle commute season.