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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2026
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It's not like there are many pedestrians in Minnesota in November. Places where it is warm year round would correspondingly have foot traffic year round.
You'd be surprised. I biked to work almost all of November last year because we didn't get snow until the very end of the month, and after that I walked a lot and took the bus lol.
I'd rather walk here in winter than anywhere in August back in Florida.
In 2019, Minneapolis reported 16% of all trips into or out of the city were made on foot. In the same year, the Memphis Metropolitan Planning Organization reported 1.02% of commutes were done either walking or biking in Shelby County (the county containing Memphis). Commutes vs. all trips and 150 km2 city vs 2000km2 county, so it's not a perfect comparison by any means, but I don't think that data is indicative of a massive bias towards pedestrian activity in Memphis vs Minneapolis. Weather is not a strong indicator for pedestrian activity, infrastructure is. But infrastructure has a correlation with safety, so we don't see high pedestrian modal share cities like New York, Chicago, or Boston on this list, but it has nothing to do with how cold their winters are
So you maintain that there are the same amount of pedestrians when it is 80F as when it is -20F? Does that mat make sense to anyone?
I maintain that the correlation between those two factors is not nearly as strong as people make it out to be when trying to explain away the violence that American sunbelt cities impose on their residents. -20 vs 80 is an extreme example (Minneapolis probably has as many of those days as Memphis has days above 100, which surely has its own negative impacts on the appeal of active transportation), but yes I suspect that you could find more people walking about in below freezing temperatures in a city that is built with pedestrians and their safety in mind than you will find out and about in balmy temperature in a city that is built to put the car above all other forms of transportation. I don't even think it's particularly counterintuitive if you think about it for a bit. Think about a snowy Christmas market, and then think about a 4' wide, unevenly paved sidewalk flanked by a steep ditch on the side of a 6 lane highway in the most beautiful weather you can imagine. Which of those scenes would you be more surprised to see someone walking through?
I'm in Chicago. Plentiful pedestrian options. We have 100 degree days and -20 days. There are by far fewer pedestrians when it is cold than when it is warm. It's not even comparable.