Currently, my city of Rochester, New York is the countrywide leader in snow fall this winter. This is nothing new. For five cold months out of the year, Rochester and Upstate New York communities receive an average of 80-100 inches of snow. Even for the most hearty cyclists like myself, this creates a real problem.

And while the rest of the country’s cycling community demands that protected bike lanes be the answer for safe bike riding all year long, my midsized urban home, along with others like us, are faced with a cruel reality: our cities will likely never devote funding to plow and maintain sidewalks and bike infrastructure like they do roads.

Take our most prized piece of downtown cycling highway, the Union Street Cycle Track. For months at a time, this mile-long downtown connector is buried under snow. It is, for all practical cycling purposes, useless for a quarter of the year. Yet for much of that time, the street adjacent to it is extremely well plowed. And thankfully, that street has a low traffic volume. It’s relatively easy to make the switch to biking along Union Street during the snowy months.

The Genesee Riverway Trail, which hugs the banks of the historic Genesee River as it cuts north and south of Rochester, is a beautiful and practical two-wheel commuter route, connecting downtown with The University of Rochester and the University of Rochester Medical Center.