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.
Good point, I guess sprawling exurbs and 12-lane freeways through dense low-income neighbourhoods is the progressive solution after all
Bike lanes aren't the be-all end-all, but it's a vitally important part of re-framing how cities function. They're cheap and easy to implement infrastructure that should be easy wins for any municipality that wants to make urban living less of a hellscape. No, it's not going to be a solution for everyone, but we really shouldn't be building cities around how easy it is to access the Amazon warehouse anyways.
the world's dumbest people cite that book as if it is a condemnation of bicycle infrastructure itself