This is basically "bootstraps" talk applied to transportation. Biking in most of the US feels uncomfortable and dangerous. Bike lanes are scant, protected bike lanes rarer still, where they do exist they tend to pop in and out of existence at random intervals, so it's not exactly a surprise that most avoid it.
There's a reason few people bike for transportation in the US, and that's that biking in the US is mostly really terrible. It can be done, sure, but it sucks enough to where very few want to do it. Saying "well it's still a personal choice" is like looking at the cycle of poverty and saying, "yeah poor people in poor neighborhoods have some serious systemic problems, but if they really tried they could still make it work!"
Bicycling in general is terrible, though. I say this as someone who did bicycle and walk as primary transport for a lot of their life. Bicycling is a lot of fun in good weather and on a gentle route, but really sucks otherwise, and that's often a lot of what happens in areas of the USA. Even if lanes were made and infrastructure was better, it doesn't change the climate, the slope of the roads, the effort expended for a mild speed boost, or the distance between things.
The problem is there's a large, noisy cadre of bicycle enthusiasts who spend tons of money on their hobby and think it's the answer to the world's problems. They tend to dominate conversations like this.
It's really not. It has its disadvantages, sure, but there's plenty of advantages to it, too. In comparison to cars, it's healthier, kid-friendly, cheaper for the user, cheaper for the government, less noisy, less pollution, less danger generation, better for the community, etc. And it's quite pleasant with the right infrastructure.
You're exaggerating the downsides here. Climate? Tokyo has a high bike mode share with plenty of heat and humidity in the sumnmer, Oulu a high bike mode share even with near-endless winter. Hills? E-bikes are rapidly becoming cheaper and more common. Distance? Well, that's part of the land use/infrastructure problem. America in general has been designed to be hostile to anything that's not a car, and that hurts walking, it hurts transit, and it hurts biking. It needs to be fixed for all those.
Biking doesn't have to cover every person or every trip, but declaring that it's "terrible in general" is just projecting your own preferences onto the world. Reality begs to differ: we can see that places that have the right infrastructure and land use see high bike rates. Period.
Now, maybe you personally would still avoid biking in Copenhagen or Amsterdam, but that has little to do with whether it's good general policy.
> The problem is there's a large, noisy cadre of bicycle enthusiasts who spend tons of money on their hobby and think it's the answer to the world's problems. They tend to dominate conversations like this.
This is wrong for a couple reasons:
1. Biking is an excellent option for a variety of reasons. Most Americans are plainly ignorant of how it can work. Not that it's their fault, really: everywhere they've lived, biking is awful, so naturally it must be always be awful, right? Same thing with public transit.
2. The kind of people that would benefit most by things like protected intersections and protected bike lanes is not the lycra-wearing, dentist-bike-riding, "take no prisoners in the war against cars" crowd. The kind of people that benefit from Dutch-style bike infrastructure are ordinary people who do not think of themselves as cyclists, but just people who happen to bike.
There's a reason few people bike for transportation in the US, and that's that biking in the US is mostly really terrible. It can be done, sure, but it sucks enough to where very few want to do it. Saying "well it's still a personal choice" is like looking at the cycle of poverty and saying, "yeah poor people in poor neighborhoods have some serious systemic problems, but if they really tried they could still make it work!"