I totally agree with you. If you are re-doing a road, that's the best time to build a bike lane. But I'm personally not convinced that it's necessary on every new road. I lived on a side street in Cambridge that saw maybe one car every twenty minutes. I was lucky to have a private driveway, but my neighbors would have been pretty angry if you took away their street parking to put in a bike lane on a street with very little traffic. In my opinion, there should be some additional criteria, such as needing a bike lane on any new street with expected traffic of more than one car every minute (or some reasonable time frame). As a biker when I lived in Cambridge, I always felt safe on side streets where I could just bike in the middle of the street and move over for the occasional vehicle, but I was much more afraid on major (or even minor) thoroughfares.
I personally would love to live in a world where fewer people own cars in the first place because public transportation is so good, but that's an ideal that we are no where close to achieving, so a lot of people need to own cars.
I personally would love to live in a world where fewer people own cars in the first place because public transportation is so good, but that's an ideal that we are no where close to achieving, so a lot of people need to own cars.