On the St. Paul city government website, I read about the proposed plan to make Cleveland Avenue more amenable to bicycle use by adding bicycle lanes between Summit Avenue and Highland Parkway. Cleveland will apparently get a resurfacing between Summit and Randolph avenues, which is a good thing, because you can throw a dart at the map of St. Paul, and where it sticks will be a street that needs resurfacing.

And I suppose as long as there is going to be a project of that scope, the bicycle lanes are being touted as important connections between existing bicycle facilities on Summit and Jefferson avenues, and the campuses of St. Thomas and St. Kate’s.

From the website: “The city’s Comprehensive Plan promotes the development of streets for all users of the transportation system, and the proposed changes will make Cleveland Avenue a safer and more accommodating street for all.”

No, it will make Cleveland Avenue a safer and more accommodating street for bicyclists.

Mom, in her minivan, with three kids? Not so much.

Because mom is not going to have a place to park.

To bring about the bicycle lanes, all existing parking on the west side of Cleveland between Grand and James avenues must be removed, except for parking bays south of Grand and St. Clair avenues. Parking spots must also be removed on the east side of Cleveland between James and Randolph.

The website provides a link to a study of parking along Cleveland during representative time periods to capture data on parking utilization. I am not sure I understood the chart. It looks like what the parking observers observed was that nobody parks on Cleveland anyway. That is not my experience. There are businesses and restaurants all up and down Cleveland between Summit and Highland Parkway. I called the project’s engineer, Reuben Collins, and left a message.

Mom and the kids come to mind because it seems that bicycle-lane planning does not take into account families. Bicycle-lane planning takes into account, exclusively, 22-year-old bicyclists who quite possibly do not have families and might never, based on studies that show what a narrow bicycle seat does to the old sperm count.

Maybe I have missed a significant demographic shift in St. Paul, but I don’t think so. The blocks on either side of the proposed bicycle lanes on Cleveland are populated by young families with children. Go down to the Ford Little League fields on any night of the week and the parking lot is full of minivans. Or drive by, slowly, Groveland School Elementary, at Cleveland and St. Clair, or Nativity of Our Lord School, on Stanford Avenue a couple of blocks east of Cleveland. Kids as far as the eye can see. Kids mean families.

Do the proponents of more and more bicycle lanes think that the city is held together by bicyclists? I would argue that the city is held together by families, so much so that even though St. Paul is led by central-planning progressives and has punitive property-tax rates, the city’s neighborhoods are strong and flourishing, miraculously.

But we lose a little parking here and a little parking there every time the bicycle coalition gets a new bump-out or a roundabout or a narrowed lane that reduces the flow of traffic, all of which conspires to make mom’s job a little more harrowing.

Instead of always pandering to the 22-year-olds — nothing wrong with being 22 and riding a bicycle — all planning should start with a consideration of the family first. Those families are paying the city’s bills. Those families are keeping the neighborhoods healthy and strong. Those families should not be inconvenienced to the greater cause of whatever it is bicyclists think is the greater cause.

Without those families, we would have nothing — certainly no future.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474. Soucheray is heard from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays on 1500ESPN.