“Schabas also found the government failed to provide evidence that removing the lanes would alleviate congestion — one of the law’s stated purposes. In contrast, expert testimony presented by the applicants suggested lane removal would likely increase collisions, injuries and even deaths.”
I made that argument to my city almost a decade ago. I dug deep in our city traffic design and planning documentation to find bike lanes were the excuse to choke vehicle traffic. Their measure of success is a reduction of vehicle miles driven. It’s not actually about safety, walkability, or bikes; we have all that already. It’s about making driving undesirable. So we have 400 miles of empty bike lanes now and unpredictable congestion. Slow clap
There’s no point presenting a logical argument to someone with an agenda.
Have you considered that those bike lanes may be empty because they are poorly designed, unsafe, or don’t go places people want to go?
Oh, they are over designed and have all the “safety” possible. They commandeered an entire lane, divided with cement curbs, built bus islands just after intersections so busses no longer pull over but block traffic on green lights, all on a main artery serving thousands of residents.
And I can walk to that street, any time of day, take a pic with my largest telephoto lens and the entire lane will be void of bikes. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and sits entirely wasted space.
It does sounds like badly design. Also maybe you should sit there whole day and let us know if there’s really no one using it(meaning usage is 0 bicycle per day), or it’s only used on peak hour. I’m honestly curious.