Our friends at Streets.MN have expertly examined these arguments in a recent article on bike transportation and the high cost of auto-infrastructure that is so assumed and taken for granted in our towns. (Read about their other recent, related article, "Yes, Bicycle Riders Should Pay Their Fair Share.") Adam Miller, a Streets.MN writer, explains the response to a proposed bike lane in Minneapolis (which is happening in conjunction with a routine chip sealing) when neighbors found out it would eliminate a little on-street parking in order to create a safe buffer space for bike riders:

Personally I’m looking forward to using [the bike lanes] to get my daughter to school at Hale Elementary in a few years (among many other uses).

But not everyone is happy and you’ll never guess why (actually, you’ll totally guess why if you ever pay attention to bike issues). [...] That’s right, the evil bikes are out for our parking again.

As Adam explains, "All of the usual anti-bike lane arguments have come up (biking is seasonal, there are other routes, why can’t they take the back streets, nobody bikes there anyway, don’t we have better uses for this money, etc.)" but, while he address these at the end of his article, that's not his focus. Instead, he dives into the concrete numbers that demonstrate whether there's a real demand or need for parking in this area.

His conclusion? There isn't. Not by a long shot. He counted the number of occupied and unoccupied parking spots on the blocks in question at 8am and 5pm on a Friday to get an idea of the typical on-street parking use. He found lots of open spots. And this is in a neighborhood that is mostly residential where alley and garage parking is available on almost every property. So it's not an issue of there being enough parking at all. Adam writes: