BALTIMORE—Cities’ drive to expand bike lanes keeps running into a wall of opposition—even in bike-friendly places like Seattle or Boulder, Colo.

In Baltimore last week, residents of the upscale Roland Park neighborhood beseeched city transportation officials at a boisterous public meeting to remove a roughly mile-long protected bike lane that opened about two years ago along a major thoroughfare.

When the city’s transportation director called it a “complex situation,” several people in the crowd of more than 100 responded with shouts of “No, no!” and “It’s very simple!” and “Put it back the way it was!”

“This is tearing us apart as a community,” said Claudia Diamond, one of the residents asking the city for a “reset” and renewed planning process.

Baltimore is hardly alone. Similar fights have broken out from Philadelphia to Seattle, Boulder to Brooklyn. At issue are protected bike lanes that use barriers like parked cars or bollards to separate bikers from moving cars. Creating such lanes often requires eliminating parking or a lane for cars, changes that affect people’s daily lives.