To remove bike lanes and…

To remove bike lanes and prevent new bike lanes from being built in an effort to reduce travel times, you are blatantly ignoring the facts.

Fewer cars on the road means less traffic, which means faster commute times for drivers. A reduction in car traffic would also improve air quality and make the roads safer, leading to a lightened load for healthcare, which would improve those wait times as well.

There is no way to improve car traffic other than providing viable alternatives to driving. You can build more lanes, but that signals to people that driving is the easiest method of transportation, thus leading to more car trips and wouldn't you know it, traffic is just as bad as it was before. Induced demand.

Giving people proper functional bicycle infrastructure is essential to reducing congestion. Anyone can get a bike a learn how to ride it, bicycles physically take up a fraction of the space that a car does, cycling is active transportation so it improves the health of the riders (again, good for healthcare). If there were a comprehensive bicycle network that could get people where they need to go quickly and safely, more people would choose to leave the car in the driveway. I'm a delivery driver myself, but when it comes to doing personal errands, I take my bike if possible.

What we need is to give people options. If someone's only real option for transportation is driving, they're going to drive. If they also had the options of cycling and public transit like buses and trains, that would get them where they need to go faster, cheaper, safer, or maybe just less stressful, they could use whatever is the best option for them.

Not having bicycle infrastructure also alienates certain populations. Bicycles are cheap to buy and maintain, and are quite safe to ride (Cars are the biggest threat to cyclists and pedestrians and general. When cars aren't around, cycling is very safe.). Since bicycles are so cheap, it allows people who can't afford the enormous price of owning a car to still go where they need to go, whenever they need to go there. Cars are expensive enough on their own, but we also need to factor in gas, maintenance, insurance, the cost of getting a license and lessons, and even the cost of parking depending on where people live. It costs thousands of dollars every year to own a car, but I can go on Facebook Marketplace and buy a bicycle right now for $100 and start riding it today, since I learned to ride for free when I was a child.

Speaking of children, bike lanes also enable children, teenagers, anyone of all ages (yes, even the elderly) to ride safely and independently.

If you want to talk about actually putting money in people's pockets, build more bicycle infrastructure so people can choose to save thousands of dollars annually by not driving.

Additional benefits: Businesses see increased sales when more people are walking/ cycling, as the slower movement makes it easier for people to stop and enter the store. When driving, if you happen to see something interesting as you're driving by, which is less likely because there are more important things to focus on than the buildings you whip past, then you'd have to find parking, and if there isn't any, then you don't go into the store, and that business lost a potential sale. Cycling is also a monetary net positive for cities when everything is accounted for. Cars require more space, more space for cars is less space for homes, businesses, parks, etc. Cars are heavy and degrade road surfaces many times faster than bicycles, so roads require repairs more often than bike paths. Driving is more dangerous and leads to more serious accidents, and these accidents can injure or kill people, putting more strain on the healthcare system, businesses lose productivity from workers needing time off or never returning to work, car crashes can damage other infrastructure like barriers, buildings, road signs, street lamps, electrical poles, etc. Cars obviously pollute through emissions, but also particles from various parts of the car, like the rubber tires, end up in our water ways, and they also contribute to noise pollution. This pollution can have effects on people's health, by breathing in the polluted air, and even the noise from cars can cause health effects, like interrupting sleep. Again, more strain on the healthcare system. Bikes are quiet and have no fuel source. Since bikes are much lighter than cars, and the tires are much thinner in width and fewer in number, they should also produce fewer particles over the same time frame.

The information and application is abundant. Other parts of the world have figured it out, why haven't we? That's rhetorical, I'm pretty sure I know why. It's insulting and pathetic that we even need to have this conversation.