I'm not arguing in favour trying to preserve status quo versus change, and apologies if that's the intent. My comment is intended to explain WHY there are barriers to change, and why I have issues with your point on biking not reducing "standard of living".

I'm saying that, rightly or wrongly... hell, let's agree on "wrongly"... biking would indeed be perceived as reducing standard of living in many contexts. By saying that it doesn't, it sort of... sidelines the challenges. Instead of addressing them.

Even if objectively it shouldn't be seen as a lifestyle hit, it is seen that way by a significant number of people. And that's a barrier for change, and I don't think ignoring or trying to explain away that challenge is helpful.

Edit: I mean, basically what you get is policymakers telling the public "use fewer cars", and a sizeable portion of the public staring back and going "fuck you". Unless policy and industry direction addresses the concerns of people, OR if there's broader social changes to our expectations, we're not going to see the takeup that you or I might prefer.

First, I want to clarify that I'm personally in favour of not trying to use cars (or for that matter, air conditioning), I'm just trying to explain why it's an unpalatable proposition for people, speaking from my local and regional context.

First, yes, where I live there absolutely is an expectation that many people are commuting in from wherever, to a workplace, entering a climate controlled environment, and then often not leaving until they go home. Is that a healthy or sensible expectation? Hell no. Are we talking first world or rich city folk problems here? Yeah. But I've been snarked at by people in a professional setting for having the sheer audacity to wear short sleeves and breathable shoes rather than long sleeves, a blazer, and faux-leather footwear, so you see what's going on here. Realistically, we should be assuming everyone can dress down for temperature, we should accept some sweating as a daily routine problem. But it's frowned upon in practice. So the problem arises when you're trying to walk for part of your commute, or cycle, and still need to maintain these (admittedly artificial) standards of appearance on the other end. I'm not trying to defend this as right, I'm saying this is fucking stupid, but the point is convincing people you can go car-light, yeah? And at this point your average person is still "shit, gotta take an (uber-equivalent) to the meeting, can't let the clients see us dripping wet", or "can't turn up for work stinking, the customers will complain".

Ideally it should be acceptable to just, you know, accept the realities, but folks don't. Which means that people who do persist in walking part of their commute or biking are taking some kind of sacrifice in practice - not just in discomfort but in what's needed to maintain socially acceptable standards.

Second, yeah, I'm in Asia, not the US - which might help in contextualising some of the above, I realise. Anyway.

Realistically there should be more bike parking in my city (or other nearby ones). There's space. In practice? Bike racks are only common in residential neighbourhoods, and even then it isn't enough if we assume everyone should have a bike, it's only serving current less-than-full utilisation. For the most part you're not going to find a lot of bike parking in commercial areas, for example. Now, that's a solvable problem, absolutely, but it isn't a solved problem yet. Which means that for the short to medium term, it presents an obstacle for someone trying to bike to work. Some of my coworkers have ended up lugging their bikes up the stairs or elevator and into our premises, which, y'know, fine, we're chill and nobody is gonna bat an eye when someone's doing that. But if your boss doesn't approve? We don't have bike racks nearby, and it's technically illegal to chain a bike to something that isn't a rack or designated space. Enforcement is spotty, but you're running a risk if someone decides to be an asshole.

Apologies for this comment, in advance, because it may come across a bit nitpicky. I agree wholeheartedly with your points in this post and others, in general, but the thing about bike use not reducing standard of living bothers me a lot.

I live in a tropical area on the equator, in a country where it's hot and humid year round. There are a lot of efforts here to encourage cycling for mobility. The issue is that it's impossible to cycle anywhere in the day without building up a considerable sweat. Which causes problems when you want both working folks and students to cycle, and yet it still isn't socially acceptable to, well, let's say, be wet and pungent.

And while there are efforts to create free public showering points, those would only be in newer or recently renovated buildings, so in practice that's rare. If you're lucky, maybe there's a gym or something in the area, but that still requires cost and access.

So the people who are cycling places are definitely taking a significant hit in comfort, convenience, time expenditure, and so on. Are these acceptable tradeoffs for sustainability? Yeah, probably, but it is a tradeoff.

And I'm not even getting into the question of where you can even safely park your bicycle at your destination. Granted, that's a more common worldwide universal infrastructure issue which can be solved. Technically the shower thing can be solved too. But I'm just trying to point out that there's a host of inconveniences here, and I would say going car-light does represent a reduction in standard of living and quality of life. It's just that, from my perspective, this may be a necessary sacrifice.

A lot of sustainability messaging is soft-sell, we're trying to convince people that we can achieve climate aims with little or minimal sacrifice and disruption to their existing lifestyles. That's meant to make it more palatable, but there's limits to that narrative.