This, again, comes to the cars popularity: laws and regulations "prioritize" cars because people who make them drive cars. The anti-car crowd to me looks as same as the anti-shoes types (there are people who insist on walking barefoot, I know a few) if[1] they started to insist that there is a vast conspiracy to prioritize footwear and only that holds off construction of heated sidewalks and prohibition of the "no shirt, no shoes, no service" signage.

1. To clarify: none of the barefoot walkers I know does that, they seem to be pretty content with the status quo and are not militant about propagating their lifestyle to everyone hence "if".