chimpanzee said:
Serious cycling as a hobby doesn't really fit into a crowded city. You're too fast for the sidewalks and too slow for the streets. The infrastructure can be built to accommodate you, but there are not nearly enough people interested in it to pay for the bike lanes/paths, it has to come from someone else that isn't going to benefit.
If the bike path network were fantastically planned, it would be really expensive and would get about three cars out of everyone else's way in this swamp city full of people that would only voluntarily raise their heart rate to run to a free cheeseburger.
See, this is where I think the County was EXTREMELY short sighted and actually shot themselves in the foot. They HAD a good network of roads out on the west side of town where people were fine riding their bikes. But under Steve Raddack's leadership, every time one of those roads was going to be "improved", and cyclists put in comments to TXDOT about cycling users needing to be accounted for in the design, Raddack's office instead pointed to all of the "bike paths" they had built in the park and their belief that cyclists didn't belong on the road. So the roads were built in ways that had no room for cyclists...not even a paved shoulder. But at the same time, the "bike paths" became more and more crowded and the county's language started referring to them as "multi-use paths" and eventually "pedestrian trails" or sidewalks. Walkers and joggers were prioritized over cyclists, and that is how we got to where we are now. If we had just added paved shoulders or real bike lanes to those roads in the first place, the incremental cost would have been much more reasonable and manageable. But now, trying to add such an accommodation within and/or around existing infrastructure is a much more expensive proposition.
And you are wrong about how much use a system would get...I would ride my bike to work down in westchase in a heartbeat if I could do so safely and get a shower once I got to the office, and I know quite a few others who would do the same. I am not some lefty dreamer who believes it would make a meaningful impact on traffic...it won't. But it would get more use than you think.