For the record, I love my bike and don't own a car. However, the local cycling "activists" in my community are from the same mold as the YIMBY, neoliberal urbanist types. Overwhelmingly white, PMC and childless, who view bicycling and bike infrastructures as the harbinger for livable cites.

When you're a coder or social media marketing douche sitting on an ergonomic chair for 8 hours, cycling for five minutes to and from your loft is an ideal arrangement. However, cycling is a lot less attractive to a blue collar worker who has to travel to a exurb for their grueling 9 hour retail or Amazon warehouse shift standing on their feet. They would much rather nap on the bus after a shift than push pedals for 5 miles.

There is significant research that bike lanes are a trojan horse for gentrification and neoliberal housing development.

In my mid-size city, the twittersphere about local city politics is disproportionately geared towards cycling. It's become a cool kids club for PMCs to get involved in municipal politics, while ignoring much more desperate issues like homelessness and police brutality.

  • regul [any]
    3·
    4 years ago

    Opposing bike lanes because you don't like the people who support them is just idpolling yourself in the foot.

    Bike lanes are objectively good and necessary if we're ever going to get people out of cars.

    Sometimes you end up working with people you don't like in politics. It happens.

      • 000ppp [any]
        1·
        4 years ago

        if you think public transport is somehow in opposition to bike lanes, i don't think you understand how public transport works

          • 000ppp [any]
            2·
            4 years ago

            in practice, in the us, the majority of bicyclists are working class, maybe don't us children also, women also ride bicycles, so if you want to keep being an idiot, maybe use 'people-children' when you're making weird, inaccurate characterizations also, bike lanes 100% make buses come faster, the number one reason for bus delays is private vehicle traffic also, if you're so worried about improving public transport, maybe look at what uses up 98% of transportation budgets (it's car infra)

              • 000ppp [any]
                ·
                4 years ago

                there's a whole chapter about it in the book the OP cites, it's like they didn't even read it!

              • regul [any]
                ·
                4 years ago

                https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/05/08/low-income-americans-walk-and-bike-to-work-the-most/

              • 000ppp [any]
                1·
                4 years ago

                buddy, again, i don't think you know how public transport works

                  • 000ppp [any]
                    1·
                    4 years ago

                    friend, if you're really interested in learning about this i'll start with this: the netherlands has the most dense and thorough public transportation networks in the world. visit and train or tram station and there and you know what you'll find? a public parking field packed with thousands of bicycles.

                    that's because it also has the most dense and thorough systems of bicycle infrastructure in the world. this is not a coincidence! in fact, the pattern repeats in every single country with good public transport. that's because public transportation and bicycle infrastructure are completely interdependent and mutually supportive. having one makes the other more viable and vice-versa.

                    that's because effective mass transport does not deliver you to your exact location, it works on lines and hubs. you need ways for people to disperse to their final destination once they leave the bus or train -- this is called the last mile problem -- and bicycles solve it better than any other type of infrastructure. it's cheap, efficient, cost-effective, and keeps neighborhoods and downtown cores alike healthy and at human scale.

                    trains and buses without bicycle infrastructure make no sense. it's like building a water main down the center of the street and then neglecting to install pluming into any of the houses. so come on, drop the silly anti-bike thing, it's ridiculous

                      • 000ppp [any]
                        ·
                        4 years ago

                        i'm afraid you're not making a whole of sense repeating that totem over and over

                          • 000ppp [any]
                            1·
                            4 years ago

                            Once again, working class people commute by bicycle more than any other demographic group. Maintaining cars as the dominant mode of transport is incredibly financially oppressive. And, as just explained, building networks for bicycle infrastructure is essential to having mass transit work at all.

                            Finally, if you're concerned about creating a better bus network, there is plenty of money for that if you reduce the amount spent on subsidizing automobile use which eats up the vast, vast majority of transportation budgets. Your fixation on bike lanes as a problem is based on an irrelevant cultural anxiety, not on any reality. You're like one of those conservatives getting apoplectic about the state spending 10 million spend on the NEA while the military eats up trillions. Your concern is completely misplaced.

          • CanYouFeelItMrKrabs [any, he/him]
            1·
            4 years ago

            It’s a bandaid that appeals to manchildren and their toys.

            I'm sorry for enjoying 20 minutes of exercise in the morning and evening. My bike cost $80 and I don't pay for gas to get to work