I am against having specific bicycling lanes, not because I am against cycling, but because I am for it. Separating bicycles from regular traffic hinders bicycle awareness and acceptance and the normalization of having bicycles as a legitimate transportation alternative. The more bicycles are out there in city traffic mixing it up with automobiles, the more quickly that will be seen as being a fact of everyday life. Neither cyclists nor the drivers of automobiles should be combative to each other, they can learn to work together. Ultimately if public transportation was seen as a human right and implemented, maybe neither automobiles or bicycles would be needed to get around. In real countries with real public transportation it is easy for citizens to take a low-cost or free train, trolley or bus to a destination then walk to where they need to go. In a fake country that preys on it's citizens, the citizen is forced to participate in spending their income on transportation and whatever else profits those who run it, not on what benefits the citizens.
If cities and roads are designed for automobilies instead of bikes, then people are going to use automobiles instead of bikes. Cities with the highest rates of driving to work have the lowest rates of cycling to work. Cars also take up more space both on the road and off the road, which lowers urban density, which in turn increases travel distances, which in turn makes public transit, cycling, and walking all less practical.
Public transit serves longer trips than the bicycle. For traveling short distances within their own neighbourhood, public transit is not a cost-effective option. Bicycle would be both cheaper and faster. This also means that promoting cycling makes more sense than promoting transit in very small cities.
High public transit ridership goes hand in hand with high rates of cycling. For a given population, cities with the most transit users tend to have the most cyclists, which means as these places continue to invest in public transit, they will also have to invest in more dedicated infrastructure for cyclists.
Public transit is already a fact of life in Canada. It has transit ridership on par with European countries, nothing like the US where huge swathes of urban areas have zero public transit service. And having more people riding transit, Canada also has more people riding bikes.
There is no "real public transportation" system that is free. Free public transportation kills transit ridership because it cuts off funding to the transit agency and limits the amount of service that they can provide. Less transit service means less transit riders. Free transit also gives the impression that transit is only for poor people. Free transit has been implemented in some cities in the US, most notably Kansas City, and Kansas City has one of the lowest rates of transit use in all of North America.
Annual passenger boardings, 2023
RideKC: 12.0 million ($0.00)
SORTA (Cincinatti): 13.1 million ($2.00)
VIA Metro (San Antonio): 25.1 million ($1.30)
Capital Metro (Austin): 25.2 million ($1.25)
Pittsburgh Regional Transit: 39.7 million ($2.75)
RTC Southern Nevada: 52.2 million ($2.00)
TriMet (Portland): 62.1 million ($2.80)
Calgary Transit: 144.4 million ($3.75 CAD)
Translink (Vancouver): 391.0 million ($3.15 CAD)
Number of people cycling to work, 2021/2022
Kansas City: 1,176
Cincinatti: 962
San Antonio-New Braunfels: 2.825
Austin-Round Rock: 3,916
Pittsburgh: 2,176
Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise: 2,992
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro: 15,366
Calgary: 4,210
Vancouver: 18,225