That is a strange way to look at it. Question I am asking is not whether biking should be made safer instead I am asking why biking should be considered a form of transportation at all that needs to be funded by taxpayers? This is a serious question try to answer without getting emotional. Should we have another lane for skaters? How about hand walkers?
Cycling is the most energy efficient mode of transportation, ever. More than walking, more than skating, more than motorcycles, more than gliding birds, and yes, more than the subway.
That on top of its health benefits, relative safety to those hit by bikes, its traffic efficiency, parking space efficiency, benefit to retail...
You bring up taxpayers. It is far, far cheaper to subsidize a bike lane than a new subway tunnel. And the bike lane is open more hours of the year, with more entrances and exits, more interchanges to other lines, a shorter distance point-to-point, with drastically lower maintenance costs. Taxpayers should be rioting over the costs spent on trains and traffic relative to bikes.
Just about every cyclist means a car taken off the road. they take maybe about one-sixth the roadspace of a car and that's not factoring in the additional distance heavy and slow-breaking cars need between them to drive safely at speed. which means each extra cyclists reduces congestion which helps drivers especially in congested cities. so it stands to reason it's net-positive to have more cyclists relative to drivers. subways also become more useful when decently fast last-mile options are available. having bikes on pedestrian lanes is unsafe and unattractive and having them on driveways is also unsafe and unattractive, so both of these options lead to less cyclists, more cars and hence a terrible driving experience.