Seattle

He can't see any cyclists cause they're all pancaked underneath his car

Sounds like he hasent been anywhere downtown or near any light rail stops in years if he never sees anyone riding bikes/scooters. They are all over.

Not from the area, but do your bike lanes look like this?

These types are death gulches, and are super spooky to use, since you can get people drifting in from the left and smashing into you, or someone opening their car door from the right and knocking you down into the active road.

If you don't have the type that are protected, or they are, but aren't connected to a larger network, they aren't terribly useful the same way a dirt road isn't useful for inner city traffic.

The bike lanes on 130th are pretty useless right now, they connect from nothing to nothing, but eventually they'll link the Interurban trail to the light rail station and down to Lake City, so I think they will see a lot more use when they're finished.

Bike lanes are the absolute bare minimum and suck to ride in, everyday people aren't going to ride in a bike lane. If you're saying we shouldn't install bike lanes in favor of better bicycle infrastructure like separated bike paths I'm all for that obviously, but we also shouldn't let perfection get in the way of progress. Connecting the network of bike lanes is progress, as the only thing that sucks more than riding in a bike lane is when the bike lane ends without warning, dumping you into traffic.