But one other example of an entire country not being designed for bikes post WWII is the Netherlands. It took a lot of change to make it is what it is, today. I think the moral of the story is that that change was explicit, and wasn't just happenstance. In visiting the Netherlands, you would think all that bike infrastructure was obviously just always there.
NL has historically had bikes in large numbers since bicycles were a thing.
If there was one thing the Dutch were pissed off about very long until after the war it was that the Germans took all the bicycles (or at least large numbers of them) to toss them in the smelt for their weapons factories.
When I was a kid - not all that long ago, say 1971 - German tourists were routinely told that if they wanted to get directions they first had to return some bikes... Since then the sentiment has fortunately changed a lot but there definitely were tons of bicycles here prior to WWII.
Even the Dutch version of the road-side assistance was originally called the 'Algemene Nederlandse Wielrijders Bond', which is as much as the Dutch bicycling association. They were instrumental in marking the roads and providing help for stranded cyclists. Over time they morphed into the more car centric entity of today.
