[patrick451]

The vast majority of Americans prefer roads being dedicated to vehicles. I live in a town that is stealing drivable roadway for bike lanes. It's a total wast of tax dollars. There is never anybody in this bike lanes. Because even in this flaming blue, bike friendly city, people drive because it's just better.

[ai-astrologer]

Often it feels unsafe to bike on roadways, so people just avoid doing so. And most bike lanes on roadways have trash in them and are basically a glorified shoulder.

[wffurr]

"Stealing" as in having a public process for proposed street designs that you can't be bothered to attend.

"There is never anybody in this bike lanes" you don't see them because they aren't stuck in traffic like you. Also the city has to build out a full network of high quality bike facilities to convince a bunch of skeptics and scaredy cats to get out of their cars and enjoy life and actually get somewhere instead of just be traffic all the time.

[Hizonner]

There's this weird "bicyclist viewpoint" where the only acknowledged possible purpose of leaving your house appears to be to get your body to a different point within a relatively small area.

Personally, if I go anywhere at all, I'm usually moving more cargo than I could move on a bicycle, and doing that is the whole purpose of the trip. Cargo or no, it's often to a place I could not practically reach on a bicycle. And when neither is true, I can usually walk. The number of trips where I could use a bicycle is not large enough to make it worth maintaining one, and that wouldn't change no matter how good the infrastructure got.

Also, for a good chunk of the year, it's icy enough here that basically nobody rides bicycles... and in the rest of the year, it's not uncommon to get unpredictable thunderstorms. Sorry, riding in that is not "enjoying life".

By the way, the economy that feeds you and maintains your bicycle also depends on motorized road vehicles and the infrastructure to support them. The converse is not true; you and your bike could go away and nobody else would notice.

Seriously, they're very, very limited, niche vehicles. If your life fits into that narrow niche, then good for you... but the rest of us are sick of hearing from you.

[wffurr]

Not sure where this icy, thunderstorm-prone city where it's either walk or drive with nothing in between is, but it's certainly pretty far outside my experience.

From what I've observed, the vast majority of car trips in my city could be easily replaced with a bicycle trip.

We would most certainly notice if the modest bicycle traffic in our city was replaced with car trips. The already terrible traffic would be significantly worse. "Stealing" some space for cars for a drastically more efficient means of transportation that's also 5-6 times faster than walking is a huge win both for people who want to get places reliably and on time and those of you who are always carrying cargo or can't cycle for some reason.

You wouldn't hear from me at all if it weren't for accusations like "stealing" space from cars (who in turn stole entire walkable city centers and streetcar lines!) and just made a little room for those of us who are able (which is most people!) to choose a healthy, efficient, humane form of transportation instead of hauling a 3 ton steel caged air-conditioned living room with armchairs and sofa on every trip.

[Hizonner]

> Not sure where this icy, thunderstorm-prone city where it's either walk or drive with nothing in between is, but it's certainly pretty far outside my experience.

Montreal. I think there've been three thunderstorms in the past week, none of which I would have predicted if I'd stepped outside a few hours beforehand. Yes, that's an unusual week, but I've been caught in storms often enough, and you can't build your routine around conditions you can't rely on.

And only absolute fanatics ride bicycles in the winter. Even though I think the facilities are pretty good.

> From what I've observed, the vast majority of car trips in my city could be easily replaced with a bicycle trip.

You observe people driving around in cars. You have no way to know where they're going, where else they've been or may be going on the next leg of the trip, what they're carrying, anything about their physical condition, or, well, anything other than that they're driving. Even if you did a formal "study", you wouldn't know if you were asking the right questions (not that the people doing "studies" usually even try).