You've made ~10% of the comments for this article and you are dismissing things other people say by accusing them of caring too much about the issue. I'm also not sure repeatedly dismissing the same minor points does much for the conversation (of course repeatedly raising them doesn't do much good either).
I think you are probably right that bike lanes alone aren't going to get a lot of people biking, but I think you are wrong that they don't matter. It's a situation where each piece of the puzzle needs to exist, so safe routes probably matter just as much as sensible city planning and shower availability and so on. The existence of safe routes could even impact planning some (because if there is significant interest in using them to commute, it should show up in housing decisions).
"You've made ~10% of the comments for this article and you are dismissing things other people say by accusing them of caring too much about the issue. "
You say that like it's a bad thing. At least I'm engaged on the issue and am actually trying to solve it rather than just paint lane markings all over creation and expect people to start hoping on bikes.
The claim being made, and the source of all my karma shedding on this is that adding more bike lanes will get more people to ride bikes. The "Field of Dreams" argument.
My counter argument is that bike lanes, while important, are not sufficient. Much more important, larger and prerequisite issues need to be attended to before bike lanes become part of the discussion. But I'm arguing against people who have a vested interest in biking, and really don't give two rats asses that biking is a horrible inconvenience most everywhere and would rather shoot derision and scorn and the car driving masses. Weather, environment, convenience, terrain, distance, time, hygiene etc. be damned; clearly most people are simply too fat and stupid to enjoy the glories and obvious benefits of riding bikes everywhere. Everywhere is exactly like the Netherlands right?
I'm actually a strong supporter of bike lanes for lots of reasons beyond biking. But I'm also not deluding myself and understand that the central claim is flat out wrong.
But this is a self-serving religious issue, no amount of reason can penetrate that.
This is one of the topics that really pulls out in front the inadequacies of the demographic that tends to be HN readers. It's pretty disappointing to be honest.
I don't understand what issue you are saying you are engaged with.
I do think the people replying to you saying "You can so bike" are engaging in relatively pointless activism (for one thing, 10 miles really is plenty far to try to build into every day). But that also isn't really the issue at hand.
All the article really says is that 1 designer thinks that bike lanes that 'feel safe' will get more people using them (and then a few characteristics are explored). I sort of think that shouldn't be a controversy.
This article is about adding setbacks and curbs and bike specific signals and you are engaging in 'paint lane markings all over creation'.
Where is The claim being made, and the source of all my karma shedding on this is that adding more bike lanes will get more people to ride bikes. The "Field of Dreams" argument.
The comment you link agrees with you. There's not much glassy eyed pontificating about the wonders of bike lanes in the rest of the tree either.
