What If Electric Bikes Were as Cheap as Conventional?

My issue isn't needing to pedal, it's the lack of proper bike lanes with physical barriers away from cars. If I could get where I wanted to go without worrying about a car coming into the bike lane, or the bike lane just being a swatch of paint on the road, I would bike much more often.

I just moved away from a city that got it's first protected bike lane... but since it was just down one road, and could be walked in under 10 minutes, it wasn't all that useful to me. There were also many spots where cars and trucks still obstructed it. While it's a start and better than nothing, there needs to be a serious investment in infrastructure. I feel like this is a "build it and they will come" situation. Peachtree City, GA is an example of that. They built a ton of golf cart paths all over the city, and everyone just takes golf carts everywhere instead of full cars [1]. It looks fantastic.

Said city also did some things during COVID to make temporary protected bike lanes with a bunch of construction barriers. It wasn't until they removed it that I found out that was the purpose. I don't think anyone else got the memo either, as very few people used them. It just made traffic horrible, as we lost lanes everywhere, for what looked like a construction project that never started.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcVGqtmd2wM