NYC is kind of a joke in urban planning circles, they have a lot of crazy ideas and have executed on approximately one of them in 20 years.
Many other cities are heads and shoulders ahead when it comes to rolling out proper separated bike lanes. Nobody is looking to NYC for leadership on anything in this field.
NYC faces problems at a scale that make it much more difficult to get done than in a lot of cities. It's not ridiculous to suggest they try, but it also doesn't naturally follow: NYC and Des Moines are not solving the same problem.
"It's not ridiculous to say the urbanest area should try to set an example for other urban areas" - yet, OP says if NYC can't set an example then we can't expect other cities to have good examples either. That's false. We can expect good examples everywhere no matter what NYC does.
How is it a special place to expect decent infrastructure, when NYC of all places has it for driving, walking and public transit?
The cumulative investment in each of those has gotta be 100x as much as for biking, and you're accusing bikes of getting special treatment?
For the cost of a mile of new subway, you could probably coat most of NYC's arterials with protected bike lanes across the whole damn city. Not that I'm opposed to subways, but bike infrastructure is extremely cost-effective, redirecting money away from it is ridiculous.
This is about transit safety. Cyclists are in a lot more danger than pedestrians, because unlike peds, they don't have special infrastructure set aside from them for the most part.
Why must we accomodate the needs of drivers? Why do they hold a special place? Can we instead invest in bike infrastructure?
So, here's my personal opinion. For the record, i live in a bike-friendly mid-sized central-european city, do own a car, walk a lot (if the bike is not an option) and use public transport - but whenever possible, i use my bike. For me it's the superior mode of transportation. It's the cheapest option after walking, healthy, fun, efficient and for 90% of my day-to-day transportation needs it's also the fastest option. The overhead of finding a parking spot (twice) is mostly nil and there are pretty much no bike traffic jams. I shop every day and carry the groceries in my backpack (upside: fresh produce every day, don't need as much storage space). Car usage is mostly limited to longer distances (i.e. visiting relatives) and transporting unwieldly stuff - i wouldn't even own one if i hadn't gotten this one for free. The same applies to pretty much all of my friends. If the infrastructure is there, they all prefer riding a bike.
That said, as a young adult (early twenties), my car was part of my male identity. All of my friends believed they were good drivers and could be promising race drivers if they wanted. That's all gone now; my car is not a status symbol anymore, but a utility. And i don't respect someone just because they drive a fast car, that usually just means they were willing to invest a bigger share of their income in that particular hobby. My previous car had 60hp and that was plenty enough for my needs. Cars never made me really happy; they meant long commutes, road rage due to other bad drivers and congestion and terrifyingly dangerous situations aplenty, even though i'm a careful driver.
So, back to the discussion. In my opinion, the biggest problems for cyclists are:
1. Infrastructure: It's not that we're unjustly taking away from the drivers to give to the cyclists - cyclists have been neglected for decades and what happens now is just that they get a little bit of what should have been theirs from the beginning. Cars take a bigger share than they deserve. There was a time where cars weren't welcome in the cities too, i took a huge marketing campaign and lobbyists to change that.
2. Infrastructure: bike lanes mostly suck, because they're crammed into existing spaces that were planned for cars and pedestrians; spaces where they just don't really fit. They're often too narrow, of disastrous quality (ever wonder why road bike cyclists without shock absorbers prefer the road even if there are bike lanes present? That's even legal around here!) and sometimes feature unnecessary stops that could have been avoided if the street had been planned with cyclists from the start.
3. Drivers: some drivers hate cyclists for no apparent reason. Luckily, this is not a huge problem here as almost everyone spends time on a bike, but the stories i have to read on reddit ... some cyclists are probably victims of carelessly attempted manslaughter (i.e. drivers throwing full cans at cyclists).
4. Storage: bike theft is a rampant problem almost anywhere (for several reasons, afaik there's no easy solution). You really shouldn't leave your bike outside overnight if it's worth anything (disregarding rust as this is a problem for cars too). But secure bike storage options are pretty rare if you don't happen to have the option of storing it in your flat.
You should try riding a bike. It's fun, it's healthy and you'll mature as automobile driver as you'll learn to get more perceptive. Don't get angry if you have to stay behind a cyclists for a couple of seconds until it's safe to overtake - you're actually losing only an neglectible amount of time. If you live in a city, try a bike commute; depending on the distance you might be faster than by car. In my case, due to traffic jams and searching for parking it'd probably have taken me three times as long to commute by car. My previous city has one of the best public transport systems in the world and still i was faster by bike).
And you should support biking, even if you drive a car: more people on bikes means less traffic, less congestion. Parking spots will probably be reduced, but there won't be as many car owners, so there's that - and you can easily fit 10 bikes on a single car parking spot. Less pollution, less noise, healthier people are probably reducing costs on public health care, but i don't know how true that'd be for the U.S. with a privatized system. Old people on e-bikes means fewer old people driving their cars at half the allowed speed.
That is a strange way to look at it. Question I am asking is not whether biking should be made safer instead I am asking why biking should be considered a form of transportation at all that needs to be funded by taxpayers? This is a serious question try to answer without getting emotional. Should we have another lane for skaters? How about hand walkers?
Cycling is the most energy efficient mode of transportation, ever. More than walking, more than skating, more than motorcycles, more than gliding birds, and yes, more than the subway.
That on top of its health benefits, relative safety to those hit by bikes, its traffic efficiency, parking space efficiency, benefit to retail...
You bring up taxpayers. It is far, far cheaper to subsidize a bike lane than a new subway tunnel. And the bike lane is open more hours of the year, with more entrances and exits, more interchanges to other lines, a shorter distance point-to-point, with drastically lower maintenance costs. Taxpayers should be rioting over the costs spent on trains and traffic relative to bikes.
Just about every cyclist means a car taken off the road. they take maybe about one-sixth the roadspace of a car and that's not factoring in the additional distance heavy and slow-breaking cars need between them to drive safely at speed. which means each extra cyclists reduces congestion which helps drivers especially in congested cities. so it stands to reason it's net-positive to have more cyclists relative to drivers. subways also become more useful when decently fast last-mile options are available. having bikes on pedestrian lanes is unsafe and unattractive and having them on driveways is also unsafe and unattractive, so both of these options lead to less cyclists, more cars and hence a terrible driving experience.
