There’s a lot of examples of cities spending huge sums of money on cycling (SF has spent far more than a billion on it), and none of them have been successful in drivingcycling adoption.
Also the only studies that show road building as ineffective are looking at cities that have many years of population growth where road spending didn’t even remotely keep up. People don’t materialize out of thin air to fill up new roads. You’re using neglect of infrastructure to justify further neglect of infrastructure.
This is wrong.
Biking is popular in Copenhagen and Amsterdam, it's popular in Munich, it's recently gained popularity in Vancouver, it's popular in Davis, CA, it's popular in Tokyo. Believe it or not, those cities don't all have the same climate.
Geography is more of an issue, but it's becoming less and less of one over time thanks to the steadily increasing popularity -- and steadily decreasing cost -- of ebikes.
Also, you claimed SF spent many billions on bike infrastructure. Where's the source?
Hills are becoming less of an issue due to ebikes (and electric bikeshare). The other possible solution is installing bike lifts, but, well, most cities still treat biking as a toy, and are unwilling to spend significant sums on it.
Wrong. Vancouver, for example, built a network of protected bike lanes in a few years, and saw bike rates skyrocket. Bike commute mode share is now 10%, despite having much less than 10% of available road space, making bikes highly land-efficient.
> There are no cases in the world where cycling infrastructure has been successful in having a measurable impact on congestion.
That's because the number of cars increases to fill the amount of road space. But if you look at Amsterdam or Copenhagen, plenty of people are willing to bike when there's good bike lanes and paths for doing so.
In contrast, cities like SF or Seattle have a bare handful of protected bike lanes, a smattering of walk/bike trails, and they hardly connect to each other. It's hardly a surprise that most people don't want to bike in those conditions.
> which is where I believe SF is at after all of the billions they’ve invested in it
If SF had spent "billions" the city would be covered in protected bike lanes. Needless to say, it isn't. This is a made-up figure.