People who complain about the cost of protected bike lanes.
My current pet peeve is people complaining about the 'cost' of protected bike lanes because "people on bikes don't pay their way".
Beyond even the data showing just how much private car ownership is already subsidized, can we just take a moment and acknowledge: We wouldn't need protected lanes at all if cars were not killing and injuring so many people.
It's like the owner of an animal bemoaning the cost of an enclosure for their animal, which keeps killing and maiming members of the public as they pass by.
It's not the victim's fault the enclosure is needed, and it's not the fault of someone riding a bike they need protection in a public space.
Cars normally have a state level annual registration and various gas taxes that are slated to be used for road maintenance. So, that's actually somewhat true. That said, the cost of maintaining roads for cars far exceeds the amount of money generated by the current gas taxes.
What it also leaves out is that the primary cost of road maintenance is potholes and resurfacing. Protected bike lanes have barely any of those costs since what causes the damage is the weight of the cars.
It also leaves out that people who use their bikes for errands and work commuting generate commercial activity (and the taxes from it). Those taxes don't have to repave the bike lane over and over like a road, so it's much closer to pure profit for the city.
People in many communities around the world use bicycles for most of their daily errands. This includes grocery shopping, taking kids to activities, moving goods for work, and so on. They use trailers and Bakfiet style (https://bakfiets.nl/en-en) bikes, many of which are now electric assist so you can haul lots of material (or kids - I've seen 6 seaters for K-3 aged kids) at city scale distances.
For reference, the number I have seen is that for city roads, 70% comes from local taxes (property tax generally) on average. Potential cyclists are already more than paying for a fully equipped cycling infrastructure, it is just being used to subsidize driving and lock them into that
Well couldn't you just say the car taxes and such pay their way on the car road and the bikers "pay" for the bike lanes (which needs much less maintenance)? Just a rhetorical question, I'm guessing the people who make this argument never think this far.
People in many communities around the world use bicycles for most of their daily errands.
Haha, you don't have to tell me, I live in Copenhagen and do that myself :)
Protected bike lanes also keep regular car traffic moving more smoothly. By reducing the lanes, which reduces the ability of the (left lane speeder), who tailgates everyone thinking that the red-light ahead of them would have been green if they were driving faster. Single lane roads with turn lanes, keep traffic moving at a regular speed pace, which in many cases is better than a two lane road with zig-zagging cars.
As a public transit user, and a small car driver, I appreciate the smooth 20 > 40mph single lane roads with protected bike lanes, makes sense to me.
As someone living in Copenhagen, a city built for biking around, I find this take kind of weird. Bike lanes just make sense to separate car and bike traffic. Nobody wants that traffic mixed, not drivers or cyclists.
There are smaller streets in Copenhagen where there are no bike lanes, but that's because the traffic volume in those streets is so small that a car and a bike are unlikely to even use the road at the same time.
I think that's the point. If everyone was in the same road, car drivers would get frustrated to be going so slow. Therefore, it's in the drivers' best interest to have a separate bike lane so cars can go faster.
Why not both? Protected bike lanes as much as possible, but have a city wide 30 kmph limit which will make driving itself less dangerous and people can cycle relatively safely on streets while the bike lane infrastructure is being built out.
In some cases yes, however in others where there's speedbumps in the road and not in the bike lane, with the bike lane protected to stop cars avoiding the bumps in them, the bikes (35kph) move faster than the cars (25kph)
I feel like the person making that kind of argument is speaking from emotion, so any facts and statistics aren't going to be persuasive.
I've been thinking about this a lot. Like, giving up on the assumption that people are rational and driven by facts. Nope. It's all emotions and in-groups for a lot of people most of the time.
So you'd have to come at it a different way to change their mind. Figure out what they're really mad about.
Unfortunately, it might be something like "seeing people on bikes makes me feel bad that I'm out of shape. I also know I'm needlessly contributing to climate change when I drive short distances. That makes me feel bad. Feeling bad is unacceptable, so I will find excuses, any excuses, to justify myself"
I don't have a shoulder on the road, sidewalks, anything. Literally can't ride a bike here, a really high chance you'll die. I can't imagine arguments about protected lanes when unprotected lanes are still a distant dream.