[letouj]

There are plenty of small-to-medium-sized cities (25K–250K) with sufficiently intact city cores and higher-density corridors where it's still very reasonable to imagine increased cycling uptake if the infrastructure were just put in place. It's not about making every person ride a bike on every trip, it's about making more bike trips possible for more people. Obviously someone who lives in Montana five miles from the nearest stoplight isn't going to be using a bike for their primary transportation, but there's a big spectrum in between that and midtown Manhattan.

[vanilla_nut]

In all fairness, improved cycle infrastructure is also great out in the "middle of nowhere" far from stoplights -- even if you're not road cycling, it's a great way to get out, see the countryside, and get some exercise. Where my parents live, it's absolutely brutal to try to get outside and get some exercise, because the roads are unfriendly to pedestrians and cyclists. Improving that setup would let my parents do activities without hopping in a car -- even more valuable as they get older and less capable of driving a multi-ton pile of steel at 60MPH everywhere they want to go.