What a weird take. Bike lanes do not take away the possibility for those less able to use a car, they strictly add options. You might as well argue sidewalks are ableist.
Agreed, like looking at the case inside out.
> Bike lanes do not take away the possibility for those less able to use a car, they strictly add options.
But, that is true only if the bike lanes are “free to build and maintain”. Otherwise, the city is allocating money toward bike lanes rather than something OP would argue is “less ableist”.
The “roadway” itself is another fixed resource, I think? So, either the street gets a bike lane or another vehicle lane, but not both because there is only so much space between the two rows of buildings.
Yeah, that gets into the whole "take the space away from cars" thing.
My opinion is that in cities due to the much higher throughput of bike lanes it can also help reduce congestion, but if the bike lanes don't get used, e.g. due to a fractured network with "high-risk" shared road in-between or very unattractive gutter lanes, that doesn't really do anything. My hope is that cities would be aware of that and that it would only be a temporary thing, but the whole point that initiatives of Strong Towns and others like Not Just Bikes make (among others) is that many cities don't seem to have a clue on how to handle transportation, especially mixed-mode.
One particularly egregious example is removing a lane of traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge in favor of bikes. This is in my opinion an oppressive action in favor of the wealthy who live in downtown Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn.
Have you seen how crowded the Manhattan bridge bike path gets, especially at rush hour? I don't deign to assume anyone's socioeconomic background, but it's also very clearly a wide swathe of the NYC population (I somehow doubt the folks on delivery bikes are living in the wealthy areas).
Were the city willing to invest in the project in a sane way, such as making a separate bike path like the one on the Manhattan Bridge or another tier, obviously it would add value. But as it is as a lane removal it's a lazy and badly planned move that snarls the middle class in traffic (which is already regularly backed-up onto the collapsing BQE) to allow the upper class to "enjoy" a "scenic" ride next to a bunch of smog blasting trucks. And maybe help a couple of door dash drivers I guess.
There are over 80,000 delivery cyclists in NYC.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/doordash-delivery-workers-d...