The winter cycling congress in Montreal takes place on February 8-10/2017 I will participate this year. Previous winter cycling congresses took place in Oulu (Finland), Winnipeg (Canada), Leeuwarden (Netherlands) and Minneapolis-St. Paul (USA). The congress switches between Europe and North America (looking forward to a winter cycling congress in Mexico one day). Update: the 2018 congress will take place in Moscow.
Conceived in Ottawa, Born in Oulu
The winter cycling congress is the brainchild of Timo Perälä from Finland. Did you know that he came up with the winter cycling congress after I had invited him to come and speak about winter cycling in Finland at our Citizens for Safe Cycling (@BikeOttawa) Annual General Meeting? I think that was in 2011. Timo stayed with me for a week so naturally we had lots of conversations about our respective winter issues.
Black ice
In October last year, I was approached by Vélo-Québec’s Jean-François Pronovost, who suggested I should talk about winter cycling at the conference. I thought there wasn’t much to say about winter cycling in Ottawa anymore and there is little I can tell about winter cycling in the Netherlands, other than harking back to my childhood years.
The only thing I remember though is falling on black ice pretty badly, going around a corner on my way to high school when I was 12 years old (1975) back in Holland. The other memory I have is that there was so much black ice that we actually skated on the streets one winter. When I took my skates off at the toy store I nearly broke the shop window, hitting the window with the back of my skate. I remember a few colder winters with ice in the canals for a few days, but not much else.
But Jean-François insisted I should talk about winter cycling so I suggested I could probably talk about winter and the Dutch railways.
To the train by bike
The railways in Holland are notorious for messing everything up when it is -2C/28F only. But that is not what I am going to talk about. I am planning to give a bit of an intro (I only have 20 minutes and I will talk too fast) on how to build the perfect conditions to get people to the train stations by bike, even in winter.
I have one problem though. I don’t have photos of people cycling in winter in Holland. Of course, I could harvest pics from the Internet or ask @BicycleDutch or Mobycon for material but I prefer to use my own images. The few times I was in Holland in winter lately, it looked like mid October in Ottawa, with thousands of people still happily cycling around without gloves, under bare trees and on clean dry roads.
Apologize in advance
So you have to excuse me for the somewhat summerlike take on winter cycling at the winter cycling congress: it is all Jean-François’ fault.
On the other hand, there are bound to be 99 other speakers with depressing gray and white photos of winter cycling, so a colourful presentation might save you from grabbing your anti-depressants half way the congress.
The winter cycling congress has a packed program, with lots of speakers as well as mobile workshops and participatory workshops.
There will be lots of representation from Ottawa:
Alex deVries, Heather Shearer, Hans Moor – @BikeOttawa;
Lana Stewart – Militante et Specialiste des communications;
Elyse McCann and Jennifer Stelzer from Envirocentre;
Kate Whitfield from Parsons;
Karl Saidla – Municipality of Chelsea and Chelsea Trails; (OK, near Ottawa)
Adam Hortop – City of Ottawa;
Sean Ralph and Loïc Olivier – OMBA – Ottawa Mountain Bicycling Association
City councillors Tobi Nussbaum and Jeff Leiper
I am already regretting I signed up as I don’t know what to say, but I am in the program already now. You won’t see many winter pics, but mostly state of the art Dutch bike infrastructure and services to improve train usage, if you can bear that.
O sigh, what did I do to myself? I should never have invited Timo back in 2011.
Info on the Winter Cycling Congress
Interested in the congress? Increase your knowledge and meet lots of new people. The page opens a bit slow sometimes but once loaded scroll down a bit to the program. Lots of fun stuff to do.Use the hashtag #wcc17
Update after the conference. It was a great to participate. Finally met Tom Babin from Calgary. Saw a lot of winter maintenance ideas, met lots of people and my presentation went well. I managed to do the entire presentation within the allocated 20 minutes.
Read all my winter blog posts
Will your speech and other presenters be available on the Internet at some point?
Yes they will be posted soon. We just received an email today for permission to post it in PDF. So keep an eye on their website say after March 1.
Will be delighted to meet you at #WCC17! Great you will cover the combination of cycling and public transport in the Netherlands.
As funding for my participation at WCC arrived too late, I will not present any insights on (winter) cycling in the Netherlands this year. Maybe I can offer you some of my colourful pictures for your presentation?
I am very close to the deadline but if you have two photos of een auto kalm station in winter en een besneeuwde commuter route dat kan helpen