On deceptive paths, road salt and biking lanes

I took those photos previous Saturday in the Furuset/Grorud area in Oslo, Norway. Now, look at this road ... it looks really good, one could easily go there with a pram, or with a bike with fat tires.

However, further down it narrows - good thing that I came by my feet and not with wheels. I did such a mistake once in the summer time with a pram in the forest, started at a path that looked like a "nice road", but in the end that cost us more than an hour, carrying the pram more than rolling it as the path only became worse and worse before it met with a bigger road. I've also had many similar experiences when biking, finding a path that looks totally good for biking, but after a while it's just nonsense.

In this case it seems a bit odd - the only thing shaping the path is people walking there, it seems like there have been a lot more people walking at the top of the hill than in the bottom - but it seems very unlikely that a significant amount of people stop in the middle of the hill and return up again. The reason may be that it's steeper at the top - on days when it's icy and slippery, people may choose to walk in the snow rather than on the path because it's safer, making the path much wider.

The path becomes even worse as we get closer to the car road, but this is for another reason

Snow should be white! However, in many urban places the snow tends to get grey or black as soon as it hits the ground. Here it's due to excessive usage of road salt.

Instead of "solid snow", the parts of the path that is closest to the road is more like some "brine slush", not nice at all.

And then, let me rant a bit about this bike road. It looks quite nice, doesn't it?

I believe it's a total waste of taxpayers money - and yes, I've been biking frequently there.

• I believe most "winter bikers" have studded tires and rather want to bike on some snow/ice than on salt (salt makes the bike dirty, rusty and corroded. I love biking on snow and ice with studded tires, but after I moved to Oslo I more or less stopped biking winter time - think I did it one or two seasons only - it's far too dirty and salty, and not good at all for the bike).

• There isn't a lot of car traffic on the parallel road, it's perfectly safe to bike on that car road.

• It's actually a lot faster to bike on the car road than on the bike road - on the car road one can continue biking straight at every crossroad. Particularly if biking in the other direction, one will have priority in every crossroad. Bike on the bike lane, and it makes big detours at every crossroad, and one is supposed to yield for all and every traffic, if there is any traffic.

All photos available on IPFS QmSNvfwQdnoPRCWXKoR93rCeepeXhBcnywEk4YXVdZFfiJ. License: CC BY-SA 4.0