@milesmcbain That is a great way to put it, although unfortunately that's not how it's usually framed. There are too many bike proponents that are like the type of vegans who choose not to eat meat and other animal byproducts, but who also think that the world would be a better place if they could force everyone else to adopt their choices. And when you try to force people to make a choice they don't want to make there is almost always some form of backlash.

But I do agree that you'd probably get a lot more bike paths built (at least in places where they aren't openly antagonistic to them) if all the bike path proponents took your approach! The minute someone starts saying "people should use bikes to get to work or school" the antagonism starts to form. Even people who love riding a bike for excercise (or whatever) generally don't want to be forced to rely on them in the middle of a blizzard or a pouring rain.

By the way, just because some people CAN carry a bunch of stuff on a bike doesn't mean that most people want to do that. When I was younger I used to ride a motorcycle and even with that it was a pain in the butt to transport anything at all bulky. Yes, maybe I COULD figure out some way to break it down and/or strap it to the motorcycle, but it took a lot of time and effort and every time I did it I'd think about how much more convenient it would be just chuck the item(s) into the trunk of a car. And that was on a motorcycle - I can only imagine how much time and effort people would have to spend preparing larger or numerous items for transport on a bicycle!