[Chathamization]

> In cities where space is at a premium, a bunch of people standing, or on a bicycle, will always beat out people sitting down with room for an engine and a trunk.

It depends. For example, you can theoretically fit more people into crowded bike lanes than you can into crowded streets. But around here at least, bike lanes don't get a lot of people. I lived by one for years that I don't think I ever saw a bicycle on once. But even when not in use, all of that space is still being set aside for cyclists.

[bobthepanda]

Most of the time the issue with bike lanes is really an issue of a bike lane network.

Where a wide high-quality network is deployed quickly, you do often see high ridership increases, but usually in the US what you see is a bunch of scattered lanes that barely reach anywhere in an unbroken link, and no one wants to ride a journey that is even 5% dangerous.

But for example, London has seen 25% growth since pre-COVID by deploying more lanes widely: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-cycling-covid-...

[xnx]

As a regular, enthusiastic, urban cyclist, there is nothing I want more than widespread use of autonomous vehicles. With well-behaved (i.e. not human) drivers, every street becomes safer and less stressful than a dedicated bike lane.

[bobthepanda]

I think we're quite a ways away from that.

Also, there was that case with the Uber self-driving car hitting the person crossing the street with a bicycle in Phoenix, because they had turned off the bicycle detection resulting in automatic braking.