I have a bike and enjoy riding it. I don’t ride it much because I live in a vast urban area that requires me to ride the bike (I have no vehicle to load it into/onto) along busy streets not designed for bikes before I can get to the nicer areas with bike lanes, dedicated bike paths and further out, trails and other places where riding a bike is actually calming and relaxing.
I wish there was some master plan for the Lower Mainland (Metro Vancouver) to add proper, separated bike lanes on basically every major route. Instead, we get weird piecemeal projects like New Westminster’s upgrading of Columbia Street (two blocks adjacent to the Royal Columbian Hospital, which is why it’s happening) and Sherbrooke Street (same reason). It’s nice and so far it looks great (work is expected to be complete in February 2025), but it’s just a few blocks, like a tease of what could be before you’re just dumped back onto the regular street with nothing but a white line separating you and your bike from every vehicle.
But without some central plan that de-prioritizes cars and prioritizes bikes, this is probably the best we’re going to get.
Maybe we should learn French and move to Paris, where they seem to have figured this out.