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.
The Netherlands and Denmark show that you can build a whole society around biking + public transport, and that crucially the two forms of transport can be made to work together. People in the Netherlands for example don't all cycle to work, more common is to take a train or bus part/most of the way, and then do the remainder by bike, which enormously reduces the amount of car traffic in their cities to the great benefit of all, while also being perfect for short journeys around a city centre.
At the moment cycling infrastructure and public transport infrastructure is terrible in the US (where I assume you're from) because the neighbourhoods have all been built around car use, but that wasn't the case 80+ years ago, and there's no reason why it should be the case 80 years from now - that is,if people start pushing for positive changes to urban planning now, so that new roads and neighbourhoods are updated to be low traffic, accessible to public transport, as well as pedestrian and cycle friendly.
Just because you decided something is "PMC" doesn't mean it isn't a good idea.
OK but these countries specifically use that a lot because they are extremely flat. Like, various mayors have been trying to force bicycle lanes where I live as a means of gentrification and pretending they are doing something for infrastructure even though it is, like, impossible to cycle for more than 1km without dying of exhaustion because of how uneven the city is. Yeah, bike lanes are cool when they can work and if properly done, but I kinda get where this is coming from.
You know, I never thought of the hill factor. Like the area I live in has pretty consistent bike lane coverage but it's hilly. The only bikers I usually see on the roads are the hardcore types, with the body suits and such
Yeah every time someone puts bike lanes here, that's the only people you see there, because the city is literally built on a bunch of rocky hills.
Motherfuckers should be putting down charming SF style street cars instead of road lanes for sickos to show off in Lycra
I guess e-bikes might make that less of a concern as they become more popular, a lot more expensive that a regular bike but costs seem to be dropping as they become more popular.