I don't think the majority of people will want to bike longer distances in the winter, just like most people don't want to walk long distances in winter. But there are many shorter distances that a person might find too far or inconvenient to walk that would be absolutely fine to bike. Assuming that the streets and/or bike lanes were properly cleared.
Of course, in large parts of the metro area, things are too dispersed for them to be reasonably accessible by anything except car - or to a lesser extent, bus. In order for both transit and active transportation to work really well, it's extremely important for planners to work on increasing density so that destinations aren't too hard to reach. That of course means not building large amount of retail, services, or residences out on the edge of civilization, for instance.
When I was just starting out on my own and living in the outer parts of Spryfield to save cost, it took me about 20 minutes to bike down to the Bell road NSCC campus. I biked not because I was some sort of cycling zealot
but because I was a poor student and needed to save money and also because using a car or bus would have taken twice as long due to traffic. I would never have been able to walk that far in the winter. I often grumbled and resented the fact that things were so low density and spread out, seeing countless detached houses that occupied less than half of their lots and whose yards were almost never used for anything even in the summer. Except as places where the occupant could walk their lawn mowers. Yet I had to drive twice as far in the cold just for their privilege of doing so.
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