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The thing is that even with segregated infrastructure nearly everyone agrees that people will still need to cycle on un segregated roads.
Yes, I agree with that too. Even if we start building it now it would take decades to build all the segregated infrastructure that could be useful. So at least in the short-term (and very likely in the long-term) people will still need to share the road.
So the segregation will not solve the problem. However tackle the source of the problem (poor driving ignorance and intolerance) and the roads would become a much nicer place. This would encourage more cycling, reducing the volume of cars and then freeing up more space to create segregated space.
The segregation alone will not solve the problem, and I agree that things like strict liability, social unnacceptability of driving like a douche, and better driver training regarding cycling will make the roads nicer and mean that fewer places will need segregation. But segregation is exactly what is needed to solve the problem in those places where, even if all the vehicles are driven perfectly, traffic is simply too heavy and too fast to be a nice cycling environment. Most potential commutes suffer from this problem: 90% pleasant side streets, 5% horrific rat-runs/dual carriageways, 5% badly designed junctions. That 10% is plenty to put the vast majority of people off cycling to work.
I'd be more convinced if you could give an example of a high-traffic-volume, non-segregated mass cycling city.
The thing is that even with segregated infrastructure nearly everyone agrees that people will still need to cycle on un segregated roads.
So the segregation will not solve the problem. However tackle the source of the problem (poor driving ignorance and intolerance) and the roads would become a much nicer place. This would encourage more cycling, reducing the volume of cars and then freeing up more space to create segregated space.