I've grown up cycling in a historically cycling-hostile city, I'm used to it, and several years ago when the city jumped on the bandwagon and got serious about

I've grown up cycling in a historically cycling-hostile city, I'm used to it, and several years ago when the city jumped on the bandwagon and got serious about cycling infrastructure, I was all like 'I don't need those', for mostly the reasons cited in the article. But I was just being one of those assholes radiating his toxic masculinity. The lanes have a strong signalling effect, that's the real reason for them. They grant cyclists legitimacy in their minds, and in the minds of drivers. As in 'fuck you, I've got a lane now, I'm riding here, You can't fuck with me anymore!'. They're working. Whatever myths and superstitions are running through the minds of tentative new cyclists, the lanes get them out riding and not driving. The number of cyclists commuting in and out of the core has visibly doubled each year for the past 4 years, and there is safety in numbers, one thing the studies all agree with. Otherwise I agree, except on the last point - that lanes make drivers more hostile to cyclists. Driver tolerance of cyclists goes up when they perceive cyclists to be legitimate, and that's what the lanes do.