Originally Posted by
modernjess
You are right and I swapped wheelsets for a couple of years when I was rolling a single speed set up. It worked okay but eventually that got tiring too.
The thing is my commute has a few short sections that are in the shade almost all the time due to the low angle of the winter sun and they just don't melt off with any regularity, These are 100- 300 feet long, some downhills that can be shear ice all winter. The remaining 7 miles of the commute is dry blacktop a lot of the time. So not having the studs is treacherous, but only in a couple of areas. I've been on the ground in those spots more times than I care to mention, so... when the majority of my commute is dry, I roll with high presssures, when the weather turns and most of it get's covered I soften them up. But I keep the studs on and just grin and bear it.
Yeah, in the DC area the bike path that parallels I-66 is next to big sound-deadening walls that help preserve the ice even though the area is not super cold. In Germany many of the bike paths are shoveled & salted after snow. A few years ago we got a big blizzard & was happily riding a friend's mountain bike with 2-1/4" no-stud knobbies & was amazed how easy riding over snow was compared to my touring bike...1 block from home hit black ice & had a little spill.
Do studded tires help a lot over ice? I've read about auto non-studded snow tires...decades ago most folks would mount snow tires for the winter but when "all season" tires became popular they became much less popular. But now there are special rubber compounds that have tiny cells that create a lot of "stick"...however so many folks have SUV's or AWD cars they don't even consider snow tires & often wind up slipping & sliding. Jeez, after spending $50K on a vehicle one would think an extra $1K for snow tires wouldn't be so daunting.