Cycling can only unfold its full potential for environmental sustainability, livable cities, and health if people cycle under most seasonal and weather conditions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people preferred cycling over public transit, in order to avoid infection. This change may also have affected the weather–cycling association: the pandemic mainly attracted new, fair-weather cyclists; and it may have encouraged cyclists to continue cycling, even under less favorable conditions. In this paper, we explore how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the association between weather and cycling. We analyze data from bicycle counting stations in Germany, combined with city- and hour-specific weather information and a continuous measure of pandemic intensity. The data set contains more than 2.2 million hourly bicycle count observations from 69 counting stations, covering the years 2017–2021. Results from the most transit-oriented cities in the sample, Berlin and Munich suggest that the cycling volume was more dependent on weather conditions at times of high pandemic intensity. This suggests that the pandemic put new people in the saddle, but these additional cyclists were largely fair-weather cyclists who only cycled when the weather was sufficiently nice. For policy, this could set two targets. First, encourage the new pandemic-cyclists to stay on the bike and, second, support them in transitioning into year-round cyclists eventually.

只有人们在大多数季节和天气条件下骑自行车，自行车才能充分发挥环境可持续性、宜居城市和健康的潜力。在 COVID-19 大流行期间，为了避免感染，许多人更喜欢骑自行车而不是公共交通。这种变化也可能影响了天气自行车协会：疫情主要吸引了新的、天气好的自行车手；即使在条件较差的情况下，它也可能鼓励骑自行车的人继续骑自行车。在本文中，我们探讨了 COVID-19 大流行如何影响天气与骑行之间的关联。我们分析来自德国自行车计数站的数据，结合特定城市和特定时间的天气信息以及对流行病强度的连续测量。该数据集包含来自 69 个计数站的超过 220 万个每小时自行车计数观测值，涵盖 2017 年至 2021 年。样本中交通最便利的城市柏林和慕尼黑的结果表明，在疫情高强度时期，骑行量更依赖于天气条件。这表明，大流行让新的人骑上马鞍，但这些额外的骑自行车者大多是晴天骑自行车的人，他们只在天气足够好的时候骑自行车。对于政策而言，这可以设定两个目标。首先，鼓励新的大流行自行车手继续骑自行车，其次，支持他们最终转变为全年骑自行车的人。