[djrobstep]

That is not how it works. What people want is a function of the choices available.

When the government builds a ton of car roads, people want cars. When they build great rail, bike lanes and walkable streets, people want cars much less.

[wolverine876]

> What people want is a function of the choices available.

> When the government builds a ton of car roads, people want cars. When they build great rail, bike lanes and walkable streets, people want cars much less.

Is there evidence of that? I haven't seen an American city where bike lanes are utilized more than sparsely, even when an extensive network is built.

[bedobi]

Everyone from kids to phd urban planners and traffic engineers know that viable alternatives to driving lead to people switching modes. This isn’t controversial.

[wolverine876]

I'm not claiming it's controversial. Do you happen to know where I can track down the factual basis?

My many but anecdotal observations of bike lanes do not support it (I wish it did).

[ghaff]

You see more bikes in Cambridge MA than you did before a lot of the bike lane work (probably intermixed with some changes in attitudes/preferences). But still a tiny fraction of both pedestrians and cars.

[zip1234]

Bikes need a network, not just lanes. Also many bike lanes just randomly end, aren't protected/separated properly, etc.

[wolverine876]

I agree, but I'm talking about bike lanes in places with networks.

I'd like to be wrong: Where have you seen medium or high utilization of bike lanes, in the US?

[Moldoteck]

does us even have a network of protected and optimized bike lanes+comfortable parking for them ? If you can't let a child drive alone in that lane, it's not safe. The point of bike infra in NL is that it's generally safe, many shades for hot summers, semaphores autoswitch when bikes approach to give them green, there are lot of bike parkings and bike routes are shorter compared to car ones, as result you'll get to dest same or faster compared to cars. As result, ppl prefer to use a bike even if car ownership in NL is pretty big(cars are mostly for long trips for routes where pub transport is not that good). Does US have anywhere same lvl of bike infra(or even close to it) any any existing city?

[bedobi]

there's not a single city in the US that has a real bicycle network

despite all the improvements even cities like NYC still doesn't have this

imagine a city that's made up of a neighborhoods with high quality roads inside them but unconnected and separated by patches of sand dunes or dirt fields with between them

would you look at that and conclude "nobody drives here, these people must hate cars, we shouldn't invest in roads then, roads and cars are a useless technology, hiking on foot or riding a camel or donkey is superior!"

of course you wouldn't

but that's exactly what it's like being on a bike in ALL cities in the US - islands of a few (mostly unsafe) bikeways here and there, but not a complete, safe network to connect them in a meaningful way, so it's little wonder they're not as used as they could be (although despite that, esp in nyc, bikeways ARE heavily used)

if you wouldn't ride in them, they're not safe

if you wouldn't let your kids or nephew johnny ride in them, they're not safe

meanwhile in the Netherlands, Valencia, Seville, Barcelona, Paris and a bunch of other places in the world, they HAVE started to build meaningful, safe bikeway networks, and what do you know, then, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of people (including families and kids) end up using them daily

taking cars off the road and freeing up space for ardent motorists who always complain about traffic

it's a win win but most motorists are too blind to see it

[mitthrowaway2]

I do think driving is less dominant in New York, for example.

Bike lanes in Vancouver and Montreal are pretty heavily utilized. But bikes are quiet and take up so little space compared to cars that it's easy to not notice.

[djrobstep]

New York City, for one. Heavily used transit, and in recent years much improved bike lanes, and a v successful bikeshare scheme. I highly recommend reading about Janette Sadik-Khan's great efforts to make NYC more walkable and bikeable and reduce car dominance (she has a good book called Street Fight).

[wolverine876]

But how heavily are those bike lanes used? Pretty sparsely IME.

[djrobstep]

From wikipedia:

> Cycling is increasingly popular in New York City; in 2018 there were approximately 510,000 daily bike trips, compared with 170,000 daily bike trips in 2005.[2][3]

[burnished]

Might depend on the city. I've personally been on pretty dogshit bike lanes, and it really only takes one or two particularly dangerous spots to lead you to re-route.

Might also depend on what you consider and observe for 'bike lanes'. I've known very pleasant walk/bike paved paths that you wouldn't necessarily see from a car.

Have you ridden any of the bike lanes you've observed? My hunch is that they don't adequately serve the need due to a combo of dangerous intersections/car exposure and poor road conditions (potholes, construction, rails or grates sufficiently wide to trap a wheel).

EDIT: you might try looking for a counter example in Portland, OR? Purely anecdotal but my recollection is that I and many people I knew primarily biked around the city, probably had something to do with the infrastructure (roads felt safe, car exposure felt manageable, etc).