Originally Posted by
CargoDane
Your bike won't die from a little salt - be it dissolved in water or suspended in snow/slush. If you're worried, you can rinse it with some fresh water at home after the day. There is no need to ride on the sidewalk just because there is salt on the road. It's not acid.
Unless, of course, you ride an unpainted/unlacquered steel bike, you want to keep it absolutely mint and it's your only bike that is really only a sunny afternoon bike.
It's not the salt that I'm worried about. My winter bike gets drenched in salt. I don't regularly wash it during the winter. In its present incarnation, it's an old Schwinn Varsity frame with an IGH and modern wheels. I've been riding through the winter for several years, but this is my second winter with a dedicated winter bike. I noticed that the city doesn't plow the streets, but the people shovel their walks, so the sidewalk is just the path of least resistance.
What I'm talking about is streets that are not plowed or salted, which is many of the "inner" neighborhood streets. What happens on a few streets is that the cars make ruts through the snow, then it partially thaws and freezes again, and becomes nearly un-navigable. That's also why I mentioned thinking about suspension.