Your stats are nearly a decade old. Cycling popularity has increased, not decreased, even surpassing the pre-pandemoc levels: https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2026/08/17/july-bike-counts-...

"After all that, the mode share of biking has actually gone down in Seattle over the last decade, to under 3%" <-- your article is from 2018 and that is like 8 years old, an eternity ago.

There is significantly more bike infrastructure now then in 2018. Plus the lime scooters and bikes have radically shifted the balance of bikes vs cars to the point where I'd say that bikes now rule the street in most of the dense parts of Seattle.

I would imagine there are at least 10x more people using those lanes than there was before affordable e-bikes and "bike shares" showed up. You've got people who would never, ever ride in a million years be caught dead on a bike using those bike lanes to run errands, go to visit people, commute to work, etc. Just sit down anywhere in the dense parts of the city and you'l see them go by constantly!

I doubt the people who put those bike lanes in back in 2018 and before ever could have imagined how popular they are now thanks to lime bikes, electric scooters and such. Its honestly pretty remarkable and thank god somebody had the thought to build up that stuff back then!

Stockholm is colder, further north, (though admittedly less hilly).

I can't argue that the bike infra improvements in Seattle haven't made a huge difference, but I'm not at all convinced this is because it is intrinsically unlikeable.

For what it's worth, the environmentally incredibly bikeable SD/LA has such bad infra that they have both fewer bikers and far more deaths.

> We've effectively subsidized a recreational interest for a very small population

Many such cases

Well, I was basically agreeing with the idea that bikes and cars should ideally be separated. I don't know if the laws are even formally different on these streets, but it kind of communicates to everyone what they should expect and helps cars and bikes stay out of each others' way, which they both want.

I also think that residential streets are often under-utilized, though (mostly existing to connect houses to thoroughfares), and I'm skeptical that drivability is being sacrificed all that much—I still don't have statistics but IMO there are plenty of places to drive and I don't find my neighborhood hard to navigate by car. Just one person's experience, but I think it's a nice, cost-effective solution that I hadn't seen before I moved here.

(I have a bike and commute with it most days, but I also have kids, so weekends are all driving, and I sometimes need to drive to work too, for one reason or another).

I don't know if the laws are even formally different on these streets, but it kind of communicates to everyone what they should expect and how they should plan their trips (though they do have these concrete bollard-looking things in the intersections that narrow them to one lane, presumably to slow down car traffic).

IME it just makes it easier for cars and bikes to stay out of each others' way, which I think they both basically want.

Nobody pretended they're a car. But yes, people on/in vehicles use the road that's dedicated to vehicle traffic instead of narrow sidewalks where they harass pedestrians and little kids.