[danhor]

(I'm also very much only an interested citizen)

Yeah, that gets into the whole "take the space away from cars" thing.

My opinion is that in cities due to the much higher throughput of bike lanes it can also help reduce congestion, but if the bike lanes don't get used, e.g. due to a fractured network with "high-risk" shared road in-between or very unattractive gutter lanes, that doesn't really do anything. My hope is that cities would be aware of that and that it would only be a temporary thing, but the whole point that initiatives of Strong Towns and others like Not Just Bikes make (among others) is that many cities don't seem to have a clue on how to handle transportation, especially mixed-mode.