Winter Cycling Federation
Founded in 2014, the Winter Cycling Federation is an international non-profit, dedicated to achieving more and better winter cycling in communities around the globe.
Our Vision
Winter Cycling Federation's vision is winter cycling for everyone — a world where cycling is understood as a normal and practical transportation option for people of all ages and abilities year round.
Our Mission
Winter Cycling Federation's mission is to create opportunities for inspiration, research and collaboration. We help cities and countries around the world foster bicycle-focused transportation year-round.
Methods
Our primary goal is to normalize cycling in the winter, everywhere. We achieve it by:
- Sharing stories, images and other examples of where cycling in winter is already normalized.
- Hosting fun, meaningful and inspiring international events aimed at all ages.
- Sharing the best design and techniques that currently exist.
- Foster innovation where needed.
- Measuring winter cycling rates and trends around the world.
- Fostering a community of practitioners and interested experts.
- Keeping everyone informed and excited while involving the public meaningfully.
- Supporting our partners in business, art, health, and all other sectors.
Board
- Edmonton, Canada
- Minneapolis/St. Paul, USA
- Boston, USA
- Montréal, Canada
- Tampere, Finland
- Delft, Netherlands
Timo Perälä
Timo is a Finnish urban wellbeing engineer a.k.a. "kick ass" engineer determined to make our cities and the people living in them healthier and happier. His experience from urban design, traffic planning, municipal procurement procedures, sports and wellbeing technology, ITS and smart mobility gives him a broad and fresh view on how to develop our cities as well as different organizations and bodies and procedures within them. The values of the consulting company called Navico Ltd. where he works as CEO present also his own ones in life; easygoing and "fair game" kind of atmosphere, creative madness and better environment. A major driver for Timo in his personal as well as professional life is to do things "not exactly by the book". He gets things done fast and has an everlasting hunger for learning new skills.
Pekka Tahkola
Pekka lives in the winter cycling capital of the world: Oulu, Finland. Located almost at the Arctic Circle, the city enjoys long, snowy, harsh winters, which, even though you might think the opposite, when paired with good maintenance make winter cycling just a normal everyday activity in the city. Apart from bicycles, he has a huge interest in transportation history, vintage pianos, adventures of all sorts, and ice cream. His main areas of expertise are about how walking and cycling can make our transport system work more efficiently, how they can improve our lives, health and economy, and all in all make our communities of better quality. He was named Finland's Cyclist of the Year 2021. Ask him what that means.
Anders Swanson
Anders is a multimedia artist and expert on transport policy and design. As a longtime volunteer working at the grassroots who evolved into a design and policy professional working at both very large and very small scales. He has been involved in many initiatives in his home of Winnipeg, Canada and around the world. He currently acts as chair of Canada's national transportation cycling organization Vélo Canada Bikes and works as the executive director for a dynamic multimodal nonprofit called Winnipeg Trails. He specializes in mixing data and story, and developed the CounterPoint and BikeWalkRoll software platforms. He loves making art, films, posters, websites and maps that inspire others, and, even more, loves implementing practical real life solutions like good bike lanes or the Plain Bicycle project. A good portion of his adult life has revolved around advancing the cause of the bicycle, but if you ask him, his favourite form of transportation is actually the canoe.
Bartek Komorowski
Bartek is an urban planner by training and has worked in the field of active mobility for 15 years. He is currently leader of the Design Practices Team in the Sustainable Mobility Strategies Division at the City of Montreal. His team coordinates the Montreal Sustainable Streets Design Guide, which provides integrated guidance on safety, universal accessibility and green infrastructure within street rights-of-way.
Prior to joining the City, Bartek was a Project Leader in the Research and Consulting department at Vélo Québec, Canada’s largest cycling advocacy organization. He is a coauthor of Vélo Québec's 2020 design manual, Aménager pour les piétons et les cyclistes (Planning and Design for Pedestrians and Cyclists).
Prior to joining the City, Bartek was a Project Leader in the Research and Consulting department at Vélo Québec, Canada’s largest cycling advocacy organization. He is a coauthor of Vélo Québec's 2020 design manual, Aménager pour les piétons et les cyclistes (Planning and Design for Pedestrians and Cyclists).
Tony Desnick
Tony is a parent, grandparent, bicycle activist, teacher, architect, and urban designer. He has spent much of his career advancing the cause of bikes being the perfect 19th century solution to a myriad of 21st century problems. He is currently the Executive Director at the Finnish Cycling Embassy and Cycling Without Age Twin Cities. Besides the Winter Cycling Federation he has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Move Minnesota. His passion for bringing cycling to individuals and to communities is outlined in his TEDx talk "The Amazing Ways Bicycles Change You" that has been viewed over 2.5 million times.
Isla Tanaka
Isla is a planner and urbanist who loves winter. She is the Winter City Planner for the City of Edmonton, Canada. Isla holds a Master of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies degree from the University of Northern British Columbia. Her thesis research explores how the design and promotion of outdoor recreation spaces in winter cities encourage, or discourage, winter play. She has given presentations on winter life and design in North America, Asia and Europe, and helped plan four international winter cities conferences. Before working for the City of Edmonton, Isla worked in the area of assistive services at two Canadian universities. As a result, she has an interest in universal design, which has carried over to include accessibility of recreation spaces, amenities and active transportation infrastructure in the winter. Isla has raised two children in northern Canadian communities, she cycles year-round, and loves cross-country skiing. She can also be found in a canoe in all seasons — whether on a lake or river, or hurtling down a ski hill in the local Flying Canoë Volant races in February.
Matti Hirvonen
Since 2008, Matti has worked as the Executive Director in the Network of Finnish Cycling Municipalities. His main task is to offer the best possible tools to cycling promoters all over Finland in different cities, municipalities, companies and NGOs. He knows that in order to increase the levels of cycling in Finland, a high quality assortment of measures is needed to improve cycling infrastructure and maintenance year round as well as motivate people to cycle more often. Matti is involved in various types of cycling promotion programs, infrastructure development projects, campaigns and marketing. In order to convince decision makers about the importance of cycling, among the many benefits of cycling, he focuses most of all on the economic impacts and cost efficiency. Infrastructure and maintenance is important to get more people cycling in winter, but so are attitudes, and attitudes can change.
Rebecca Wolfson
Becca ran the Boston Cyclists Union for 7+ years and helped it grow from a scrappy start-up of two employees to a powerhouse of six. She currently works with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority where she coordinates and manages the implementation of transit priority projects within the MBTA region.
Stephen Kurz
Stephen is a Canadian-born Dutch-trained Mobility Advisor for Mobycon in Delft, Netherlands. He has acted as a consultant for various municipalities both in the Netherlands and beyond regarding topics of sustainable mobility, policy and design. During this time he has hosted several webinars and workshops on cycling policy and infrastructure, and is a Certified Bicycle Policy Auditor (BYPAD). He takes joy in adapting road and intersection design for bicycles, especially where small design changes can make a world of a difference. Having lived most of his life in Winnipeg, Canada, he is no stranger to winter and the difference good infrastructure and maintenance policy can make. At home in The Hague, his bike is always at his doorstep, ready to roll around town regardless of the weather. Outside of cycling Stephen is an avid hobby photographer and is always looking to try out new recipes.
Q&As
The Winter Cycling Federation emerged after the very first Winter Cycling Congress in Oulu, Finland. It began as an advisory board to help future organizers host a conference every year. As we added more board members, what started as a commitment to hosting further gatherings evolved into a desire to provide research and projects outside of that annual ritual.
In some locales, cycling in the winter is already considered essential. In those places, where uptake is very high, large percentages of the population rely on well-maintained interconnected facilities that take them wherever they want to go.
However, we live in a world where transportation uses and norms vary tremendously from community to community and from country to country. At no time of the year is that more clear than the divergent approaches cities take to human-powered transport in the winter.
After more than 10 years of inspiring people with ideas and knowledge, it's been quite clear that there is a thirst for lived experience and practical advice because until it is real, it, well, isn't.
Our goal is to help everyone recognize that there are powerful benefits to widespread use of bicycles in winter, that it is more than possible to make it easy for most people and that most of the barriers are in our own heads. Once we commit to it, a whole new world of fun and efficiency awaits us.
We believe that by providing leadership and a voice, more people will have the ability to advocate for the same things we are.
However, we live in a world where transportation uses and norms vary tremendously from community to community and from country to country. At no time of the year is that more clear than the divergent approaches cities take to human-powered transport in the winter.
After more than 10 years of inspiring people with ideas and knowledge, it's been quite clear that there is a thirst for lived experience and practical advice because until it is real, it, well, isn't.
Our goal is to help everyone recognize that there are powerful benefits to widespread use of bicycles in winter, that it is more than possible to make it easy for most people and that most of the barriers are in our own heads. Once we commit to it, a whole new world of fun and efficiency awaits us.
We believe that by providing leadership and a voice, more people will have the ability to advocate for the same things we are.
We see our main areas of interest as:
- Connecting like-minded people from disparate communities with similar climates
- Busting myths
- Showcasing what's possible
- Knowledge transfer
- Innovation in engineering and planning (in terms of adapting practices that are in place in areas with high levels of active mobility)
- Equity and inclusion
- Design
- Communications and visual language
- Joy
Winter, technically, is simply the part of the year where you live when days are shortest. It has impacts on everything from the type and volume of precipitation you see to construction of the built environment. Because of the resulting conditions that can vary even hourly, we do not have one overarching definition for a winter city. Every winter is different. One city's "shoulder season" is another city's "worst winter". You see this clearly where, in places with regular and significant seasonal variability, the transition period between fall and winter — or winter and spring — can look a lot like the average winter somewhere nearby and coastal and present similar challenges even at different latitudes.
Winter is definitely not a monolithic thing that can be "fixed" by one type of "treatment" and it can even vary within the same community from year to year. What we do know is that we all benefit by sharing our experiences. On a practical level, all cities need to be prepared for extremes, and will benefit from collaborating on incremental improvements and seeing how it is done — even in wildly different scenarios.
What's more, winter is changing. The innovations that winter cities most need to make right now involve mitigating and adapting to climate change. On a practical level, it may be felt as though a city has been moved 200 km south where suddenly the weather and climate is different and the equipment for maintenance too.
We have lots to learn from each other.
Winter is definitely not a monolithic thing that can be "fixed" by one type of "treatment" and it can even vary within the same community from year to year. What we do know is that we all benefit by sharing our experiences. On a practical level, all cities need to be prepared for extremes, and will benefit from collaborating on incremental improvements and seeing how it is done — even in wildly different scenarios.
What's more, winter is changing. The innovations that winter cities most need to make right now involve mitigating and adapting to climate change. On a practical level, it may be felt as though a city has been moved 200 km south where suddenly the weather and climate is different and the equipment for maintenance too.
We have lots to learn from each other.
The best time to make winter plans is yesterday, the next best time is now. Spring, summer and fall are busy periods for any community or organization that takes year round transportation seriously.
In the spring and fall, cities with snow focus on having the right equipment to quickly transition, removing sand and leaves, and maintaining equipment. Like them, we are getting ready to, and we meet to discuss conference planning, and share knowledge with the public and our members.
We also do take a break and go hiking, surfing, kayaking, canoeing and so on.
In the spring and fall, cities with snow focus on having the right equipment to quickly transition, removing sand and leaves, and maintaining equipment. Like them, we are getting ready to, and we meet to discuss conference planning, and share knowledge with the public and our members.
We also do take a break and go hiking, surfing, kayaking, canoeing and so on.
Although we originally didn't structure ourselves as a membership organization, at every Winter Cycling Congress we had attendees come up to us asking how they can become a member — individuals, organizations as well as municipalities.
People wanted to support us in growing as an organization and helped us see the value in creating a network and meaningful connections. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for us to meet in person and memberships became a way to strengthen the sense of community.
People wanted to support us in growing as an organization and helped us see the value in creating a network and meaningful connections. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for us to meet in person and memberships became a way to strengthen the sense of community.
The Winter Cycling Federation is an NGO run by a volunteer board with part time staff, and relies on donations, event revenue and memberships to carry out its work.
Contacts
We are Headquartered in Oulu, Finland, the winter cycling capital of the world, and run by a volunteer board with members from snowy countries around the world.
For all inquiries please email
For European and Asian media inquiries, please call Timo Peralä
+358407060415
For North American media inquiries, please call Anders Swanson
+12047971962
Our mailing address
Nummikatu 34, 90100 Oulu, Finland