I love reading these sort of takes. It really is AND/AND. Yes, have your car, do all the car-things. But it _also_ should be safe and convenient to ride a bike. These things are not in opposition, especially since roads are so wide in most american cities, there is so so much space to really have our cake and eat it. It really pains me, looking at the downtown streets in my city, 4-6 lanes dedicated to cars, barely used, and seeing the odd bicyclist scurrying like a rat, on&off the sidewalk, hoping not to get hit by a car going way too fast, just because of all that wide open buffer space. All it takes is paint and a few bollards. And it's just too much. It takes years, if it does even happen.
From all that I've heard, an effective change requires far more than that.
For example, the bollards do make it one step higher than a "bike gutter", but how does the city clean leaves and trash, or snow, from the lane if the normal street sweeper and snow plow can't get in due to the bollards? Instead, you'll need specialized equipment for the lane (or bike lanes which are wide enough for cleaning/clearing equipment), and the political will to not prioritize cleaning the car lanes first.
You can't have bollards at intersections, so you'll end up with drivers using the bike lane as a turn lane, and turning across a lane without noticing that a cyclist is there. With a road redesign you can build in affordances which encourage better interactions than you get with mere paint.
