Finnish Lessons
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What can cold cities, where people nonetheless bike year-round through snow and seemingly endless hours of darkness, tell us about what it takes to make better streets? In this episode, Sarah reports back from her trip to Finland and the the 8th annual Winter Cycling Conference, held in Joensuu and Helsinki in early February. How does active transportation figure into Helsinki’s goal to become the world “most functional city”? What’s the right way to prioritize transportation modes? And why are most fully grown Americans less rugged than the average Finnish 11-year-old?
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SHOW NOTES:
You can find all the presentations from the 2020 World Cycling Congress in Joensuu on the Congress website. Here’s a little movie that shows some of what it was like. See if you can spot Sarah!
Coverage of the conference from Bicycle Dutch:
Winter Cycling Congress 2020 in Joensuu
Coverage of the conference from The Guardian:
Winter wheelies: Finland blazes trail in keeping citizens cycling and healthy
Why Finland leads the field when it comes to winter cycling
Check out opportunities for winter adventure cycling in Eastern Finland with Karu Survival.
The end music for the episode, from the song “Cold Dead Eyes,” comes courtesy of Joensuu thrash metal band Killing Attack. You can find more of their music on Spotify.
Special thanks to Tony Desnick of Cycling Without Age, Oskari Kaupinmäki of the City of Helsinki, Matti Hirvonen of the Network of Finnish Cycling Municipalities, Timo Perälä of the Winter Cycling Federation, Markku Pyykkönen of the City of Joensuu, and Maria Halava-Napoles at the Finnish Consulate in New York.
Find us on Twitter: @TheWarOnCars, Aaron Naparstek @Naparstek, Doug Gordon @BrooklynSpoke, Sarah Goodyear @buttermilk1.
Email us: [email protected]
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | That is the sound of winter in Finland. In early February I was in the Finnish city of Johansu where I was attending the 8th |
| 0:20.0 | International Winter Cycling Congress. |
| 0:23.2 | The event kicked off in a schoolyard |
| 0:25.1 | where dozens of 10 and 11 year old students |
| 0:27.3 | were participating in a workshop |
| 0:29.0 | to improve their winter cycling skills. |
| 0:31.0 | Behind you, there are four kind of straight lines that simulates different conditions and surfaces of winter. |
| 0:41.8 | The temperature was about 9 degrees Fahrenheit. The sky was gray. It was |
| 0:46.4 | snowing lightly and at least half of the kids in that school yard had ridden their |
| 0:50.7 | bikes to school. I talked to one of them, an 11-year-old girl named |
| 0:55.4 | Saeme Bruh about her daily commute. I have a very steep uphill which is not very fun and then I have a very nice downhill |
| 1:06.7 | with a sharp turn which is never fun because I always fall and then I have two bridges probably on the way and then I go through |
| 1:16.2 | town so I have to watch out for all the people but it's pretty easy. |
| 1:21.8 | Do you ever feel scared of the traffic? Not really because it's quite safe here, |
| 1:27.0 | like really safe and I rely on the cars. Well of course I stop but they're always kind. They'll let me go first. I'm not really |
| 1:36.3 | scared that I'm going to get run over by a car. |
| 1:41.6 | Welcome to the War on Cars, the podcast that dreams of a world in which we can all rely on the |
| 1:48.0 | cars. |
| 1:49.0 | They're reliably terrible. |
| 1:51.0 | Yeah, you can rely on them too, run you over. |
| 1:53.6 | Yeah, I'm Sarah Goodyear. |
| 1:55.1 | I'm Aaron Napersack. |
... |
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