No, bike riders simply want to not die on the streets. Also, bonus, if it is safe to ride, then others who are not as fearless as those who ride currently, may give it a shot, and that opens up driving lanes and parking spaces for the people who want to, or have no choice but to drive. |
People use infrastructure after it is built. The more bike lanes (actual good ones that is) get built, the more people ride bikes. This isn't a mystery, as its well documented around the world. The pandemic put a dent in DC ridership, but its growing again. Keep building bike lanes, and people will convert car trips to bike trips (its often faster already!). Once they do that, they start advocating for more infrastructure and so forth. That's what drivers actually fear, not that the bike lanes will be empty. The possibility of cars losing their primacy, and all the identity issues tied to that are the real issues. |
The only people with identity issues tied to transportation are bicyclists. Everyone else just wants to get places as efficiently and hassle free as possible. |
You could just not ride bikes on very busy streets. That's an easy way to avoid dying. |
This idea that expanding bikes lanes pulls cars off the streets is completely nonsense. Cars are expensive to own and extremely convenient, and I'd like to see the evidence that expanding bike lanes means fewer cars on the streets. If anything, bike lanes are probably pulling people out of public transportation. Whatever the case, the effect is surely small because there's so few cyclists in this city to begin with. |
Most drivers probably don’t really care. There’s a subset of personality-disordered neighborhood cranks who are obsessed with anything changing in a way that doesn’t align with their own personal beliefs about what they are entitled to control. Unfortunately our current system gives these people way too much say in public works. As a result this country has an absolutely pathetic ability to build infrastructure and housing. It took what, 20 years to get the McMillan parcel developed? And the years-long battle over that ugly concrete “plaza” in Adams Morgan? |
Ahem: https://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2024-04-24/the-cycling-revolution-in-paris-continues-bicycle-use-now-exceeds-car-use.html?outputType=amp |
Most people who ride bikes to work also don't have any identity wrapped up in it, and they also just want to get around without a hassle. For me, it's just as fast to bike to work as it is to Metro (and only about 5 minutes slower getting home), but it's better exercise than riding the subway is. It's not more efficient -- that's what makes it better exercise -- but "as hassle free as possible" is pretty much the exact definition of what people on bikes are hoping for from protected bike lanes. |
Except the busy streets have the places to buy food. Maybe the way to avoid dying is for motorists to acknowledge cyclists are using the same roads and lanes and follow the law, the same as is requested for cyclists. |
You keep saying there are so fewer cyclists and it is just wrong. Tens of millions of bikes sold in the US each year. Hundreds of thousands of capital bikeshare rides each month. And if you think a the metro commuter from Shady Grove is cycling in over the Ward 4 Chevy Chase resident who wants to ride safely but can't, I don't know what to tell you. |
The number of cyclists in DC is tiny, and surveys show it is shrinking. It's not just bikes. Every mode of transportation is becoming less popular except driving. |
Check this out: It turns out you won't starve if you can't ride your bike. I did some research and it turns out DC has a whole subway system. If that's not your thing, we also have a bus system. Don't like the bus? There's ubers. There's water taxis. You can even walk! We have sidewalks everywhere! There's so many transportation options here. |
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yessss like all that CaBi data smashing trips-taken records. Definitely shows nobody is interested in biking. |
https://ggwash.org/view/93270/bikeshare-beat-cabi-continues-to-break-records-through-march |