Great responses those last two by JRA and ILTB.

I have stayed out of this argument because a while back it suddenly became crystal clear to me that the anti-bike lane VC pitch isn't really about bike lanes at all. It's about trying to define what a legitimate cyclist is.

It is a rigid definition that excludes whole segments of people and strives to maintain car-centered city planning in order to maintain that exclusion. Its adherents have an extreme fear of being considered inexperienced, passive, and physically weak. They would deny bike facilities for families and children in order to not to be considered in need of child-like coddling, because that would delegitimize them. Any concrete statements about static lines, lane positions and all that is not about any of that. It is all about defining a legitimate cyclist as one who is closer in behavior to a Chevy than a Huffy. Legitimate cyclists don't need facilities (strong, not weak), don't have accidents (assertive, not passive), have no fear (experienced, not inexperienced). Their macho statements about how fast and far they can go, how steely their gazes, how learned/erudite and logical they are (masculine, not feminine) really make me wonder what they're really afraid of.

Anyway, I've strayed to far. VC ideology is identity politics. That went out of style in the 90s, I'm afraid.