Well. If people start to invest into public Infrastructure and Busses, Trams, trains. The quality will increase and more people will use it. The same thing with dedicated bike lanes. Not for every scenario. But it helps the people. The low and middle class and that is the best we can do. Help those who don't have the money.
I'm not the parent and I don't have any data, but I think he is saying that he thinks people in lower income areas tend to not be supportive of efforts to support bicycling and/or bicyclists.
Just based on my personal experience, I think there may be some correlation, possibly due to the fact that bicycle commuters tend to be from higher income brackets, and that lower-income folks often see efforts to support bicycling as both a symptom and cause of gentrification that does not do anything to help them personally as they are less likely to be bicyclists themselves.
> bicycle commuters tend to be from higher income brackets
In the United States, the income segment with the highest rate of bicycle commuting (1.5%) is those individuals earning $10k/year or less [1]. Workers from households earning under $35k/year are 10x more likely to bike to work than workers from other households [2].
Of course, this doesn't directly imply that bicycle commuters tend to not be from higher income brackets, but if you examine the US household income distribution [3], it seems probable; as of 2014, a third of US households have an income below $35k/year. The Census Bureau provides some data tools which one could certainly use to break down bicycle commuters by income category, but their interface gives me trouble.
Ironically, between the poor weather, the hills everywhere, the high traffic and the poor road surfaces, bike lanes are the last thing that Seattle should be worried about.
At a given intersection downtown per cycle, you will see dozens of cars and people, and MAYBE one bike. Almost all of Seattle's bike infrastructure is very underutilized. But Seattle cyclists are loud when it comes to local politics, because most seattleites think of themselves as temporarily inconvenienced cyclists.
