Why do some car lovers oppose bike infrastructure, when more bikes would mean fewer cars on the road?
Like you sit in traffic for an hour each day to work. Wouldn’t you want to halve that by having more other people use bicycles instead?
They don’t ride bikes and they don’t see many people riding them for practical uses (work, shopping etc) so for them it’s hard to sell the idea of bike infrastructure (that they think is for mainly recreational riders) making their commute slower and taking up tax money that could be used on other projects.
I get how this is flawed thinking and I want more pedestrian and bike friendly areas, but that is their perspective.
Surely, this question is targeted at USA/North Americans. The average commute is beyond biking distance. The average suburb is sprawled beyond biking convenience. So, exactly to your point, people reliant upon cars largely don’t see the benefit potential of bike lanes. You can point to tight older cities like NYC or Chicago, but, surprise, the cars in the city traffic aren’t fromthe city. They drove in form the surrounding neighborhoods to their jobs.
I biked for 2 years when I happened to get a career job in the town I lived. It made sense because I could cut through a park and skip the traffic light bottleneck. The 2nd closest career job I’ve ever had was 17 miles. The furthest was 65 miles.
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Because every iteration of bike improvements has been fucked up. Isolated bike lanes that are painted where they can fit, but don’t properly connect anything. Bike lanes that are squeezed into part of a wider car lane. Designated shared bike/car lanes on 35mph roads that make cyclists a rolling obstruction to smooth traffic flow. Bike lanes squeezed between a travel lane and a parallel parking lane, causing exchange chaos, and double obstructions when city drivers double park in the bike lane. Widened shared pedestrian paths where cyclists are to pedestrians what cars are to bikes. Cyclists that think the bike lane isn’t for them. Cyclists going the wrong way. Cyclists taking their “right of way” sporadically, expecting drivers to read their minds. Bike lanes that barely overlap with my usual travel needs. Bike lanes in areas too sparse to be utilized for anything other than exercise.
I am a car lover. I am a motorcycle lover. I am a bicycle lover. I am a walking lover. I am a train lover. I am a bus lover. I use all modes of travels as they fit my needs and wants - how far, what logistics, what weather, what cargo, what fuel cost, what purpose.
Many good answers have been given already. One more is that many people understand it would be better for the environment and their own health if they biked instead of driving a car. Yet getting a car was one of the symbols of having the means for a good life. If you are able to let go of your car, it shows that you have held pointless things as important parts of your identity. You don’t want to have been a moron, do you?
So, you suppress the idea that you could be doing something else than what you are doing. And other people bicycling is kind of in-your-face. They show that you could have an alternative, and that causes a feeling of guilt in you. And that feeling of guilt is uncomfortable, and the people riding their bicycles are what have triggered that feeling. In other words: They have ruined your day by making you feel guilt. A completely self-created guilt, but an annoying feeling all the same. And then you hate everything that is connected to those people that keep ruining your days by the virtue of visibly existing.
This is not necessarily the reason for all of the people opposing bike infrastructure, but it is one of the important reasons for many.
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I think some of why is related to how most people in a traffic jam go “damn this traffic” not “damn, I’m making this worse”
Or “if only the city would open a new lane, it won’t be as congested”. Sometimes followed by “why dId the city shut the road, that’s just going to make traffic worse” when the council shuts the road for expansion works.
In short, it’s selfish myopothy. “I don’t see how this will immediately and directly benefit me so I oppose it and, now that I have made my uninformed knee-jerk decision, I refuse to listen to opposing arguments that might cause me to admit that I was ever wrong about anything.”
You might recognize this behavior in other aspects of society. It is not isolated to transportation infrastructure.
Look at the comments from others in this thread and it will give you a good idea that this isn’t just a knee jerk reaction
That’s evidence for some people having more than a knee jerk response, it’s far from statistically saying it’s the most common rationale. Smart people are also amazing at having a knee jerk reaction and then making it sound well reasoned with clever arguments.
I agree its not just a knee jerk reaction, and I know I don’t have a good basis for how many are knee jerk vs rationalised but I do know I’ve been around plenty of people that seem to have a knee jerk reaction and plenty that demonise the culture, hell half the world is being bullied not to have windmills and some of that is blanket anything green is dumb
There is no logical reason to be ideologically pro car
🤷 People often do or say things that make no sense.
Because conservatives ultimately do not believe in anything beyond helping the in ground and hurting the out group. That is it. Everything else is just window dressing.
because, overwhelmingly, they’re dumb and selfish and ignorant, and they choose to be that way.
some aren’t. some are willing to be educated. but not most.
They think of it as a zero-sum game. There is either a bike lane or two car lanes. The number of cyclists is fixed and the number of drivers is fixed. If there is one less lane to drive in, there is more traffic. If you spend limited tax dollars on bike infrastructure, driving infrastructure will not receive necessary maintenance.
It would also mean more bikes on the road, and drivers don’t like sharing the road with anything.
That very thing you said at the end is usually already too much thinking for car brains
I think it’s mostly pavlovian.
It’s not that they follow some chain of reasoning to arrive at opposition to bike infrastructure, but that the mere idea triggers anger, and the position follows the mindless emotional response
See also: pretty much everything that they consider “woke.”
