Most Roadways Aren't Multi-Modal

After someone can be made to recognize that a corridor where cars occupy 99% of the space and have (effective) priority at all conflict points, and admits that cars are being prioritized, they will then attempt to weasel their way out. After several years arguing with goons on Twitter, this usually consists of series of disputable claims:

All Roads are Multi-modal!

Dream on. If it was actually multi-modal, it would have a dedicated lane for that mode, and design standards that reflected all modes, and managed conflict between them.  If I design a home for horses, no one tries to pretend it's for humans, even when humans can use it. There are no 45mph humans, so no road with a 45mph design standard is designed for humans.

Sidewalk, Curb, Gutter, the park-strip and 'Safety Area' are Multi-modal!

Bunkum. Curb and gutter exist to funnel water aware from the road, to ensure that water flowing off the road doesn't undermine the roadbase* that supports the asphalt. Even if you didn't need to have a sidewalk, a road would still need to build it. And the 'Safety Area' between the right-most travel lane and the curb and gutter, which gets used for bike lanes? It's for car safety. Older highway manuals will still give it the proper name, which is "recovery space", and "obstacle free zone" and it was intended to give an out-of-control car time to recover before it ran off the roadway and crashed. In urban areas, it's been coopted for on-street parking, resulting in lots of crashes. The 'park strip' is also a misnomer, because it's actually where obstacles get put--telephone poles, traffic cabinets, bus stops, and sometimes some grass and small, bedraggled trees**. These things would be fine to have in the 'safety area', except cars. So, for your standard arterial, that's four lanes of auto traffic, one turn lane, two 'recovery space' areas, curb and gutter, the park strip, and two 5' sidewalks. Which means 95% of space is getting devoted to cars. 

Curbs exist to Protect Pedestrians!

Nonsense. I drive an SUV, and I drive over the curb every time I try to parallel park. For an out-of-control car, a curb is barely a speedbump. Bollards, now those protect pedestrians. I can offer no better evidence than 7-11, which clearly understand that stopping a moving car requires a massive metal pole reinforced with concrete, embedded four feet into the ground. 

*roadbase: specialized compacted soil that can hold up heavy weights. Often a mix of crushed rock, gravel, pea gravel, sand, and maybe some clay. Largely free of organic matter (which is why street trees die). 

**Not by accident. Trees get planted in roadbase, which is basically free of any kind of nutrient, so they don't grow. Which is fine for highway enginneers anyway, as they  don't want roots disrupting the road base. (Many state codes require cities to put trees in concrete boxes to constrain roots. And as trees are as large above as they are below, a 5'x'5 concrete boxes creates a 5'x5' canopy above.