No Stupid Questions

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.

Prep the downvotes.

I live in a larger Canadian city. I used to commute via transit. Sometimes the bus driver would stop abruptly. Every time the driver needed to stop the bus hard - twice a month - it was a bicyclist driving erratically, like cutting off a transit bus or, in one case, brake-checking the bus.

I've almost been hit twice - same intersection, different days - by a cyclist running the red, shooting through the crosswalk I was on, and cursing me out for it.

I have an idea as to why drivers worry about more bikes on the roadways.

I've been abroad. I've seen segregated bikeways where there's a ribbon of green space between bicyclists and cars. This works really well. What they're doing here Does Not .

But the reverse is true, and this is why I do not envy bicyclists : they're gonna die on these metro roadways where they are mixing bikes and cars and tractor-trailers and buses, and fast. I have no desire to be someone else's lesson on blind spots.

Real life is more complicated, a typical bike line is built over an existing road, at worst you get some painting on the road, which barely changes anything and piss off both side. At best, a lane es turned into a nice cycle lane which pisses off car-driver, especially when the rest of infrastructure doesn't follow.

I am all in for car free city, but too many mayors skip the build parking which connect to public transport at the Town entrance. Closing lanes without offering alternatives is just a way to get your work cancelled after next election and to block any alternatives project for another decade

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.

Imo, it should start with getting the MASSIVE cars and trucks off the roads. You wont convince us to get rid of our cars (i have many) because for a lot of us, we actually need them.

However, we DONT need Karen in an F350 that she takes to work and back by herself getting 5mpg and causing huge hazards due to massive blind spots. If only we could ban these vehicles or require better licenses that would at least help. I myself hate large cars, and only have a pickup (single cab, 40 years old, long box,) for hauling lumber or other house construction materials. All my other cars are under 3200 lbs. Even next to a new crossover they look TINY. And this further makes people who drive those monstrosities drive and act like assholes.

This will never change though. Redneck outrage would be too big a pushback and you cant change what car mfgs are doing.

If I had it my way, the only car youd be allowed to have is a miata, and a ute for work. If you have more than 2 kids you can get a wagon.

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"

Cities generally have a fixed budget for infrastructure and maintenance.

This means that resources put towards bike infrastructure are taken out of car infrastructure resources, but because cities tend to have elected people setting policies on alternative infrastructure, it is rare that you get a properly implemented city plan that benefits drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

Take my area; to use a bicycle to get groceries, I have to leave my place and go onto a single lane road with parking and pedestrian only sidewalks on both sides.

This goes around a blind corner to a busier two lane street with parking on both sides and a shared pedestrian/bike path… that is on the far side of the road with no crosswalk, that runs for 500 meters, dumping you at an unlit intersection that has a road going away from the shops that has a pedestrian only sidewalk on the opposite side of a two lane road, and a gravel shoulder used for parking on the near side.

The route you need to take is a right turn onto an unlit two lane road with no shoulder, down a steep hill.

This road has traffic calming at the far end with those white traffic sticks to prevent people from parking on the side… forcing cyclists out into the center of the road right before they need to turn right…

…onto a wonderfully engineered road with lights, plenty of driving space, parking, and a set-back shared bike and pedestrian way…

…that then loses that a km further on, directing foot and bike traffic onto what is now a narrow two lane road.

Then through another intersection, on the far side of which, there’s sidewalks, then a bike lane, then parking, then a two lane road.

On this stretch, the only like it in the city, cars open their doors into car traffic onto one side and bike traffic on the other. Many larger vehicles park into the bike lane. At intersections, the bike lane is invisible to turning vehicles.

But all that’s OK, because this road dumps cyclists onto a four lane highway with no bike lane and a sidewalk that has obstacles that make it impossible to push a stroller down it, let alone ride a bike on it.

This takes you to the shops, where as a cyclist you have to ride the length of the parking lot to get to the limited bike racks by the loading bay, and THEN walk all the way back through the parking lot to get to the shops.

And I know this isn’t uncommon. It makes bikes visibly annoying to car drivers, creates unavoidable choke points, and statistics indicate regular use of this route will eventually end in injury.

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.

If you ride in a town or city a lot, you know one big piece of the answer: jealousy.

If there are more cyclists, you'll see them more often riding by you at red lights and lines of cars at stop signs. Drivers hate this; it reminds them that sometimes cars are slow, and they love their cars, so they get angry.

If there are more cyclists, drivers will have to be careful not to hit them, and being careful is annoying. Right now, depending where you live, the driver can say "almost no cyclists are out here, so I wasn't expecting them, they need to be more careful". And the drivers believe it, and their friends do, too. But more cyclists around would make those excuses look like the BS they actually are.

And related to the second point is that, if cyclists increase in number, they will demand (and get) more bike lanes and protected areas to ride and park. This will absolutely come at drivers' expenses. Drivers know this. So even though fewer cars would decrease congestion, drivers know that they would be inconvenienced in other ways, and that would again remind them that they aren't as important as they want to be.

Finally, in the US specifically, large SUVs and trucks are causing massive increases in dead pedestrians, children, and cyclists. The increased death rate over the last ten years is appallingly high. If cycling is normalized even more, clearly political opinion will shift, and those giant vehicles will be heavily restricted or taxed, or their insurance rates will skyrocket, or drivers will be charged more frequently with manslaughter for the death that they cause every day. People are reasonably afraid that their unreasonably large vehicles will be taken away from them.

I would say I am more a car person than a bike person.

I'm not against bicycle infrastructure, but I am against bad bike infrastructure.

I use to live in Cambridge in the UK and bike lanes were often an after thought meaning adapting the existing area to accommodate everyone regardless of if space was available. Unfortunately, it usually seemed that it was done for the lowest price so the local council could tick a box to say that it was done even if it was not fit for purpose.

The most common examples are where there is still parking or bus stops on the side of the street which blocks the bike lanes and forces cyclists onto the road again.

Another is the inconsistency of bike lanes being on the footpath or on the road. The cheep option seems to be to take which ever is widest (the path or road) and squeeze in a bike path. If the road and path were actually resized, and resurfaced properly, there would often be enough space for everyone.

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.

I used to ride a bike every day for 15 years, I'm currently a car driver.

The big problem is when design desisions are made without considering all users.

For example where I used to live they divided the pavment into two, one side for pedestrians one for bikes. The only thing making this divide was a line of paint. This meant that you had to dodge pedestrians who didn't like the bikes encroaching on their area whilst also having to deal with crossing junctions.

If you stuck to the road in the same area you could get a much higher speed as you didn't have to deal with obsticals. The big problem was now in the eyes of the car drivers you weren't supposed to be on the road as you had your own lane on the pavement.

Similarly, in a nearby area they decided to try and take a lane away from the cars to make a cycle lane. The issue being they ignored the fact that most people needed to take a turn that crossed the lanes, the only way to do that was to leave the cycle lane and join the cars, but again you have your own lane and the car drivers don't think you're allowed in theirs anymore and you've made their traffic worse.

This kind of infrastructure led to so many negative encounters for me that I gave up riding all together.

The problem tends to be that these kinds of infrastructure changes are only done as token gestures and are rarely well thought out. When these kinds of changes are done well it can be fantastic but those occurrences are rare so everyone defaults to the defeatist stance of the changes will cause more problems than they solve.

It's a catch 22, you need to build new infrastructure that is good and works, to stop people being against it but it can't be built because people only know the bad examples that have been built in the past.

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.

Vehicle users should pay for the cost of transit and cycling infrastructure via a tax on gasoline. This could allow transit to be free of charge. Don't want to pay the gas tax? Take the bus for free. Everyone wins.

🤷 People often do or say things that make no sense.

That very thing you said at the end is usually already too much thinking for car brains

Having been a dumb kid growing up in bumrucksville, I'll add this too: Congnitive load.

You have to learn to cope with something new. Driving sucks, other drivers suck, you're telling me I have to drive in a two lane which could become one lane at any moment? I have to watch for faster pedestrians? "Isn't the sidewalk for bikes, why do they need the road??", then not realizing sidewalks aren't properly flat enoigh and mixing bikes with walkers on a 3ft wide space is as stupid as the rest of stroad design to mix pedestrians and cars.

Nah, sounds like too much work, bikers can drive like the rest of us, "keeps everyone safer" or whatever you wanna tell yourself without thinking further. Too much work to re-evaluate.

Because they lived in world of lies. They don’t care about facts or studies, they only care about being angry at someone and the media they consume say that cyclists are the problem

There is no logical reason to be ideologically pro car

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.

obviously they don't know that, but also it's an individualist society. people aren't taught to think about how an entire community works together. they're taught that they're the only person that matters and everyone else should inconvenience them as little as possible.

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.

It would also mean more bikes on the road, and drivers don't like sharing the road with anything.

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."