Changes to Ann Arbor That You Liked or Disliked the Most
Mates,
I'm old and am now in the time of my life when I take my kids back to AA. When we wander the campus I naturally notice and point out changes. For instance, when I was there in the '80's there was exactly one (that I recall) apartment building of any significant stature, the one on S. University a couple blocks down from East Engineering.
You had the Campus theatre right there on South University also. And Village Corners is now a giant apartment complex. I can understand the need for such things, but I don't have to like them. There are many more changes in the intervening nearly 40 years (when did I get so ancient?), and many of those I have not seen or noticed.
Two questions today:
1. What changes have you noted in AA that most impacted the city, whether good or bad?
2. If you were King/Queen for a day, what changes would you make to the city that would make it more pleasing to Your Highness?
Hope you are all well,
XM
put a lower cap on the number of out of state students admitted as the percentage of out of state students has also increased over the years.
We should note that while the percentage of in-state students has gone down over the last two decades (from about 70% of undergrads to 55%), the total number of them has actually increased slightly over that time. Out-of-state enrollment has skyrocketed, but not at the expense of in-state students. There are just a lot more people enrolled, period. (Here's a breakdown of enrollment growth from 2017-21.)
March 30th, 2023 at 11:31 AM ^
Removing OG Blimpy Burger will always hurt my heart.
March 30th, 2023 at 12:20 PM ^
This might make you "feel better," https://www.blimpyburger.com/ while still hurting your heart (according to your cardiologist)
Yes I know they are open in a new location but the old one was very nostalgic with some good childhood memories even pre college (I had a buddy who started working there at 14[!!] so I would get free food often).
March 30th, 2023 at 11:33 AM ^
Haven't been back in a while but I wasn't a fan of the big swanky new apartment towers over by South U and on State, north of campus.
Did they tear down that ugly LSA Building yet? That thing was heinous and I thought they were planning on doing away with it...
March 30th, 2023 at 12:59 PM ^
It's still around, but has been partly remodeled.
March 30th, 2023 at 11:33 AM ^
Get off my lawn, XM!!!!
Kidding.
March 30th, 2023 at 11:34 AM ^
Overall, I don’t like how opulent the campus life has gotten over the years. I suppose every campus is the same in this regard. But I enjoyed the charm of roughing it in college. Seems like everything is brand new with the best amenities on campus.
Indeed. Don't poor kids go to college anymore?
I remember living on basic dorm food, pizza, McDonalds, and dime beer nights. All that fancy stuff was for when your parents came to visit and they took you out.
Actually poor kids don't go to college--at least to Michigan. I'm sure there are plenty of kids from working class families who attend but it is so expensive, even from in state, that you have to have superior entrance stats to get considered and then figure out how to pay for it.
Amen to that! I remember all the ways I learned to stretch a dollar and still have fun. It gave me anxiety at first, but once I learned the skill it was actually fun to boast to my friends on how I did it.
March 30th, 2023 at 11:38 AM ^
change i don’t like - i moved away
change i like - brown jug still exists
yes and yes. I don't really miss any of the stuff that's gone away in the last 25 years. It feels sad that there's no longer a Mitch's slinging dollar pitchers on Mondays (and Wednesdays) but I wouldn't be doing that anymore and students must not have been doing it enough for it to close down. So not a big loss apparently. Similar sentiment about other things that haven't survived.
As long as I can still go to the jug on gamedays after a Michigan win, I'm happy (also enjoy darts at the blind pig friday before a game, breakfast at angelos or zingerman's, etc etc which is all still possible)
And I like a lot of the new stuff:
Frita Batitos is outstanding as is Spencer, Mani and others.
March 30th, 2023 at 11:42 AM ^
Back in the 60s there was a bar near campus called Mr. Flood's Party. Wednesday night was a big night there with people lined up outside and up the sidewalk just waiting for a seat. Many of the seats were real old church pews and the bathroom walls were painted black. Chalk was provided so that we could right on the walls. The walls were cleaned every day providing plenty of chalk board space for the new crowd. All kinds of people went there from profs to students to plain old city folk and everyone got along. It was a pretty awesome place.
March 30th, 2023 at 11:44 AM ^
Ace being off the blog has been fantastic, does that count?
March 30th, 2023 at 11:46 AM ^
I wasn't the biggest Ace fan, but the fact that he lives rent free in some people's heads on this board is frankly odd
March 30th, 2023 at 12:01 PM ^
What did he do? I must have missed something... dramatic? Interesting?
March 30th, 2023 at 12:09 PM ^
I don't think we really need to get into it because he hasn't contributed on here for probably 2+ years now, but he rubbed a bunch of people the wrong way for a variety of reasons and now some people just bring him up unprompted to take shots at him. It's weird energy
March 30th, 2023 at 12:42 PM ^
It counts. He’s still on Twitter though, unless you’re one of the many thousands he’s blocked.
If he's so annoying on Twitter why don't you just....unfollow him? Or mute/block him? That's one of the few good things about Twitter, you don't have to see anybodies tweets that you don't want to see.
Y'all are just fucking weirdos
Not sure that this is the place for this discussion but I do miss having a more dedicated and knowledgable basketball writer. Especially since Brian isn't doing regular basketbullets anymore.
We used to get a lot better analysis, including the hoop lens data (which is understandably outside of the blogs control).
Matt D's contributions in-season are great, but there was only like one or two posts this season about the play of the current team. I don't really care that much for the recruiting stuff. More interested in the analysis of the actual team and players that are playing and we have had a decreasing amount of that.
March 30th, 2023 at 11:47 AM ^
Encore Records moving from Liberty to Kerrytown is a shame. Their original location was a cluttered mess, but still organized, which was exactly how a record store should be. Glad the State Theater (where I worked for 3 years) is still around, although I hear it's been remodeled inside. I graduated 20 years ago and when I come back to visit, I still get the awesome vibes that made me enroll in the first place, so I'm glad that hasn't diminished. Also, shout-out to the NYPD posts. Went there last time I visited and it held up nicely.
March 30th, 2023 at 11:54 AM ^
The original Pretzel Bell. My children got older and I’m getting older too.
March 30th, 2023 at 12:11 PM ^
It's been a Landslide of changes in AA.
What do you did there, I see
Funny you mention that, because I just went into their new location for the first time yesterday. It's MUCH smaller than their old space on Liberty, and their collection seems to have suffered for it (especially their classical collection). It is indeed a shame.
March 30th, 2023 at 11:54 AM ^
The Ann Arbor News sucked, but considerably less than not really having a local newspaper.
March 30th, 2023 at 11:54 AM ^
Some things that I like:
- The roundabouts have been significant improvements in every place I've travelled them, and some of those intersections are ones that I used to navigate every day.
- I haven't lived in A2 since Skyline opened, but a new high school was unquestionably necessary and it balances things out just fine. Still, they should lean into Pioneer's identity as the original "Ann Arbor High School" and that should be its name in all athletic competitions. "Pioneer" is a great team nickname except when it is also the name of the school.
- I generally favor making more streets two-way. State should be a two-way and now is.
Some things that I dislike:
- Concur with a couple of others, way too much restriction of cars in some places. I don't oppose bike lanes--I think they're a big plus in corridors like W. Liberty and such--but some of the willful harm to the larger number of people who use cars for the smaller number of people who use bikes and have good routes available to them is unnecessary.
- Ann Arbor has always had its "meta" issues but the reality that, now more than ever, you need to be quite well-to-do to live in town while they are actively restricting reasonable housing development of various types is rather off-putting. When I was 2 our family built a <2000 sq ft house near Liberty & Stadium with interest rates that now get invoked in current statements of "we haven't had rates this high since 1981" and my dad supported the family on a below-median salary. That house sold 7 months ago for $360k.
- Nothing you can do about this because it's just the way the world is, but I sure do miss a lot of the small businesses that used to be mainstays that have faded away. And, in some cases like Fingerle, the big box competition isn't even convenient to get to from the places that I am from, so it's a double loss. Stadium hardware is still plugging along, at least.
Some things that are the same that I appreciate:
- The food. Foodie heaven, of course.
- The trees. We have a lot of trees in Duluth. Lots of parks and space. But, man, getting into Ann Arbor is jarring after you've been away. "Tree City" is not just something we say, it's real.
- The athletic facilities. Obvs.
March 30th, 2023 at 12:08 PM ^
"willful harm" hits me as such an incredible phrase from an otherwise so-thoughtful person. That's really how drivers feel though, isn't it? I'm personally attacked by the transportation planners of this city! I must have my 30 extra seconds back!
You know, if we did away with some of those barely used sidewalks in the neighborhoods, we could fit another lane in a lot of places, too.
March 30th, 2023 at 12:23 PM ^
I mean, I cycle and walk with some frequency and like things to be usable for that. I also drive a personal vehicle and moonlight as a bus driver. And I've been a part of planning meetings for transportation corridors.
And there absolutely is an element of "let's make life worse for drivers" from some people contributing to the planning and development of transportation, and I know it is a real factor from some elements in Ann Arbor because I'm familiar with people involved.
People who work at the restaurants and businesses in many parts of Ann Arbor can't afford to live near where they work, which means they need to drive or they need to spend an hour on a bike each way in miserably cold weather and oppressively hot weather (hope your small business can afford space for a locker room and showers for the bike commuters!), or they need to drive, and some of the roads are actively designed against them.
Cycling is fun, good exercise, and a good way to get around. It's a good commute option for some people, and there are some reasonable accommodations for those people. I'm even good with some specific, bigger corridors in specific spaces for that; Duluth is developing such things, and two-way lanes like on William have value (even if, when I was driving it and waiting multiple light cycles at single intersections because there were no left turn lanes, there weren't any actual cyclists in those lanes). But most people do not have the time and the work situation and the extra time in their day to make it a realistic every-day option. Most need to drive. And actively making the large number of roads harder to drive is more than a 30-second inconvenience for them.
March 30th, 2023 at 12:42 PM ^
and good luck to the single mom on the way home from work who needs to pick up groceries on her bike in the sleet/snow so that the kids can eat.
Very true since despite all of these new high rise dwellings, there aren't any grocery stores nearby, meaning the downtown and Central Campus corridors. The nearest Kroger is at least 2 miles away on the near west side. The big Meijer chain is just south of I-94 and Ann Abor/Saline Road. Likewise, the nearest Whole Foods is just north of the I-94 and Ann Arbor/Saline Road. For those who are Costco members, they must drive to where the Ann Arbor airport is, south of I-94 and west of State Street on Ellsworth.
Kerrytown Market is a small grocer, not a large box but it has some high quality essentials
and so mom (or dad), who hopefully is in excellent shape and the weather is great, bikes her tail off after work to get to the grocery store. s/he has to feed 2 kids, but because it's a bike and she has to peddle those kids, she really just picks up a pint of milk and a couple of frozen dinners, bikes to school/day care, then gets home in time to feed them, do homework, get them to bed, etc. sure. totally practical. says nobody with children, ever.
bike lanes are a really good idea, but not in all contexts or places. nuance and moderation should be the michigan difference, too.
otoh, with the money she'd save not paying for a car payment, fuel, insurance, etc she could have her groceries delivered and rideshares when needed still probably have money left over
contrary to our usual consumerist culture of buy, buy, buy, less is often more
my family went from two cars to one when I started biking to work everyday and it was amazingly liberating. a benefit of progress (rideshare, grocery delivery, etc) in urban areas is car ownership is once again, not really necessary and often a burden
granted going from two to one is easier than one to zero. I did live with zero in chicago and it was great but that was before I had kids and with Chicago's excellent public transport. It's tough with kids that need car seats (thanks regulators) but once they can go in and out of a rideshare or bus, there's really no limit.
I would also be in favor of offering need-based transportation credits (similar to food stamps) in urban areas that implement changes that make commuting more difficult for folks that can't afford to live near where they work. Seems like a no brainer to help the single mom specifically instead of feeling like the whole city needs to be about accommodating her instead of the people that live there (if those needs and desires are at odds).
virtually anyone with children, unless it's a true high-urban area like a NYC/philly type of place, can't make it work. there is no tube to take. you can't bike the little ones. and tell me how mom/dad is going to, say, wait for the bus, get home, get the kids from school and/or to football/dance/soccer practice, etc.
i will make the bold guess that nearly all who have been the most vocal in this thread supporting bike lanes are young, single, male, and have no children, or at best, no children living with them full time. and you are a very small demographic punishing those amongst us for whom the bike lane is folly: the weak, aged, disabled, most women, parents, etc.
You get it, of course. Thanks.
My knees quit biking many years ago ...
this isn't a promotion of bike lanes per se but reducing traffic lanes for bike lanes does not impact auto commute times as shown by study after study. So complaining about them is just complaining for the sake of complaining without actual data on how the changes impact people (largely because the people that can commute alternatively do and then it's just as easy for people that have to drive and park to do so). You are not being punished at all.
My comment was more in response to your suggestion that a mother can only get groceries by driving her own car and parking. But that's not true in any modern urban area, Ann Arbor especially.
You live in very rural UP as I understand it, but there are a lot of very easy alternatives to car ownership in modern urban cities and they're cost neutral or even more affordable when people actually do the math and consider the true cost of car ownership.
Again, I have kids and reduced my car ownership after doing so.
first, i appreciate our pleasant and thoughtful discussion about this. second, i have lived in urban places, LA for instance, the place that the author claims to be. third, because of that i can laugh about the 'wired' article and how they are using statistics (not casting aspersions at you). multiple lanes carry more traffic just like a bigger pipeline carries more water. you don't need to be a physicist to know that and the problem is confusing/conflating 'more cars, more traffic' with more lanes either somehow caused that or didn't alleviate it. correlation is not causation. i've been in plenty of places in socal and here in michigan where the added lanes had a huge positive effect on driving/commuting.
the alternative hypothesis such as in the 'wired' article is like saying there will be no slow downs when we neck I-75 down in traffic. of course that's not true. and the other part of all of this is that seriously, only single, healthy, childless males are riding bikes on most any day and anyone who lives more than, say, a mile or two from destination is not going be biking, especially in AA weather.
bike lanes serve a tiny percentage of the population at great cost and inconvenience to the vast majority of others impacted by it. and the lanes sit mostly empty for weeks and months at a time. that is unwise and wasteful.
FWIW, i ride hundreds of miles/year, albeit on a mountain bike. as least once in a while i'm on 55 mph roads so i am sympathetic to bikers in general.
Multiple lanes do carry more traffic, yes, and as such they do not reduce commute times is the point. Because with the added cars any reduction in commute times gets quickly eliminated as more cars choose that route and travel method. Study after study of commute/travel times show this. Same in reverse.
To your point about necking down I-75. Might initially slow things down but will quickly return to the previous pace as people take alternate routes, choose different travel times, etc. That might be considered inconvenient, but the travel times don't change.
I live on the westside of LA and the city took Venice Blvd down a lane to add a bike lane a couple years ago. There was a lot of initial pushpack and a campaign to oust the city councilman in the area. Then it was implemented and everyone realized, oh, yeah, no impact. It's a big city with lots of streets so I can Waze the optimal route and literally my commute time has not changed. Doesn't matter that you take Washington instead of Venice. No one complains anymore. And the data support that commute times didn't change so they're adding to it.
If you're making an argument that your anecdotal experiences disprove mountains of data...ok. What's more likely happening is that when you have a smooth commute you attribute it to expanded lanes even if your average commute time didn't change or that after a road diet is implemented any traffic gets blamed on the bike lanes when there was always traffic. Our individual brains are very bad at processing information as vast as this and our experiences are not representative, which is why I trust the data on things like this. Studies of actual commute times of a bunch of people.
I've read through this thread and there are many, many current residents here saying, huh, I haven't noticed a difference (and yes one resident that complained about it - Basking in the Glory) so anecdotally, it seems the feeling supports the data that, eh, no meaningful impact to the negative.
March 30th, 2023 at 11:27 PM ^
let's try real life and not pie-in-the-sky. when i was single (and younger) i lived in the topanga state forest. i had two jobs. i worked in santa monica during the days, i bounced at a night club in downtown LA a few nights/week, getting off between 3 and 5 in the morning. how is that going to work out on the old bike? oh yeah, i wore slacks and a sport coat, sometimes a tie, and no shower at either place - and as you would know it can get hot in socal.
have you ever ridden up 27 regardless of the traffic or time of day? PCH an easier ride, but gosh, unless we make traffic go 25 mph that is pretty sketchy at best. how many hours would that bike ride have added to my day, maybe 6 or 8, at a minimum? i mean, your solution is so impractical that my only real thought is to tell you to go ride that, at those hours, and let me know how it works.
and again you fail to recognize the difference between correlation and causation, your 'data' is a joke. but at some point maybe you just don't want to know the difference and you are married to impracticability. but again, go ride my old commute for, say, 3 years and see how it goes.
now imagine a single parent doing that and actually wanting to parent. now how about someone who is 40, 50, 60, disabled, a woman, someone who's obese (granted, biking 6-8 hours/day would change that)?
you know you are proposing silliness to make you and others feel good. please, folks are pretty smart here, and even a lunkhead like me can figure this out as nonsense. bike lanes aren't a bad idea, in general i'm for them, but don't be a fool about them, you lose all credibility.
none of my post had anything to do with bike riding, it had to do with lanes on roads and their impact.
your "real life" scenario is good for you. you have an anecdotal experience (that you didn't even measure) and think is represents the "real life".
The data is real life. And it's logical when you think about the consequences of adding or removing lanes. The flow of traffic does not remain constant. It adjusts in response and keeps commute times effectively the same. The effect is that traffic flow changes and keeps commute times the same. Time after time. Study after study. Cause and effect is very clear here. Seems counter-intutive but you're failing to consider how people react to street changes and what the alternatives are.
March 31st, 2023 at 10:19 AM ^
Imagine it: here we are in the 21st century still dealing with logical positivism.
otoh, with the money she'd save not paying for a car payment, fuel, insurance, etc she could have her groceries delivered and rideshares when needed still probably have money left over
Believe it or not I really don't want to get into the weeds here and this is certainly thread drift, and I understand you're not trying to be heartless or anything, but:
C'mon. This is a pretty clear example of how a lot of this stuff both doesn't work and builds resentment. You advocate for pretty significant changes that suit your lifestyle and preferences, and when those changes negatively impact other people, your solution is... that they should make the same changes and endure significant inconvenience because when you did it it's not that bad.
Your proposal that a young mother just forego owning a vehicle, think of all the money she'd save, might theoretically be an economic wash...
But it's not a personal wash for her. Not at all. Grocery delivery has its advantages but it can also be a really tough way to regularly acquire food, the store keeps substituting products for stuff you don't want, you can't compare produce for quality, you never get to walk through an aisle thinking "what kind of birthday cake do I want to bake for my daughter?" Rideshares sound nice, but they take time to get there, don't suit you well when you realize you're missing that one ingredient and need to make a quick run, and naturally discourage you from unnecessary trips, making you feel much more trapped in your local area. Want to take the kids out to the lake for an afternoon on a whim? Tough rocks. Want to get a babysitter and catch a game or a show in Detroit? The rideshare costs more than the tickets and the food.
And moving a family around in rideshares? With four kids I got quite good at installing car seats, but it is an ordeal, and the need to install and remove one from the back seat of a strange car just to take a trip to my kid's school for a parent-teacher conference would be a serious deterrent to doing those things.
What you propose is a significant hardship for this hypothetical person. It's not a wash at all. Now, some people may *choose* to make those tradeoffs, with an eagerness and ability to make it work. But when people are *forced* by social engineering decisions to consider those tradeoffs, we are in very different territory here.
And that's a big part of my beef. Different people choose to adopt different practical lifestyles. That's good! It's what America is all about. XM raises livestock, for example. Other people live in dense urban areas and barely have a back yard and love it.
But when one starts changing the rules to suit only their preferred way for everybody, that's a big negative. It would be unjust for XM to push through a series of laws that would allow him to raise cattle comfortably in town at the expense of the quality of life of most citizens ("All road frontage must remain unmowed to facilitate free-range grazing") and it is unjust for people who have particular preferences for transportation to engineer the city for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many.
to engineer the city for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many
where is the evidence of this? These are elected officials making these decisions, correct? Presumably they are acting on behalf of the constituents that elected them and implementing initiatives that they campaigned on. Why shouldn't a city do the things its residents want?
I think you have it entirely backwards as evidenced by all the comments of people that actually live in Ann Arbor.
You and XM and (it seems) the other people complaining are out of towners and you don't even have the context to know whether it actually made a difference (study after study shows it doesn't make a difference to auto commute times). But yes, if this is indeed wildly unpopular amongst the people that live there, they will elect people to change it back.
I think it's interesting that you and XM who each have a ton of kids and live in small rural areas, which is great, I love that for you guys, are projecting your desired lifestyles on the people of modern Ann Arbor. You're totally correct that people live in areas that accommodate their preferred lifestyle. Ann Arbor residents are choosing an urban design that suits the preferred lifestyles of the majority of them.
I'm not going to get into all your specific complaints about grocery delivery or ridesharing but I don't know many people that like grocery shopping. Most are very happy to outsource that and it also frees up a lot of time to spend with ones kids, work to make more money, whatever. What do you even mean by not getting to walk through the aisle and wonder what birthday cake to make? You can scroll through the often more abundant option on your ordering app. You realize most delivery services are just personal shoppers shopping the same store you would right? Also, for the record, I love to cook and hence enjoy grocery shopping to pick out my produce and food, etc. But almost no one that I know does this (I'm 40 with two kids) and I'm glad they don't so the streets are more clear for me. Where I shop, there are as many Instacart or Prime "shopping" as regular citizen shoppers like me.
And yes, rideshares take time to arrive but they drop you off at the door so you don't have to look for parking or walk from a parking spot, etc.
Complaining about these conveniences is like complaining about the fact we don't make our own clothes anymore and have to buy what's on the rack. Sure, you give up some flexibility but what you gain is liberating, tremendously time saving, and often economically advantageous. But you can still make your own clothes if you want!
So, I'm not advocating anyone be forced to adopt these innovations. The fact that many people do adopt them, enables those who don't to still drive their car around without any added commute time even with fewer lanes. For the very small number of families with 4+ kids (I have two so my family can fit in regular sedans, etc), they can still do what they need to do!
March 30th, 2023 at 10:11 PM ^
These are elected officials making these decisions, correct? Presumably they are acting on behalf of the constituents that elected them
New to politics?
all the comments of people that actually live in Ann Arbor.
Some of the comments by some of the people that live in Ann Arbor.
My mom, who lives in Ann Arbor, as an example, can't ride a bike; she had a stroke recently. She needs a vehicle to travel anywhere, as does her husband.
live in small rural areas,
XM does. I do not. I live in a denser neighborhood than any of the A2 neighborhoods in which I grew up. City isn't quite as large, but it is roughly the same scale with some of the same political trends. Including an excessive emphasis on bike lanes that nobody uses whose presence actually makes the roads they impact more dangerous (source: weaving through a busy street in a school bus made much narrower and causing close calls due to a bike lane taking up 25% of the right-of-way) Though, like others, I did also spend four years living and commuting in the LA area.
Much of your repeated efforts to persuade people that, yes, giving up one's freedom for online ordering is actually superior, is fine, if you are trying to persuade. But engineering a city to those ends is not persuasion. It is using the power of the state to induce behavior *instead* of persuading.
March 30th, 2023 at 10:39 PM ^
My mom, who lives in Ann Arbor, as an example, can't ride a bike; she had a stroke recently. She needs a vehicle to travel anywhere, as does her husband.
And have her commute times increased? Has she clocked it out? Of course she needs to drive and she can! No is asking everyone to ride a bike, that's absurd. No one is even asking her to increase her commute times and it almost certainly hasn't happened because it usually doesn't as the mountains of data support.
You're right not all the residents said they haven't noticed a difference in commute times or traffic. The one exception was Basking in Glory. But count them up, it's pretty lopsided. I did.
Neighborhood density is irrelevant (and also comparing to AA many years ago is irrelevant) to my point. It was about the lifestyle and desires of the cities residence and all the services available and Duluth =/= Ann Arbor but ok, it also is not rural. I stand corrected.
New to politics?
Nope. Politicians usually do what will get them re-elected. It's a very effective system we have, this democratic republic.
giving up one's freedom for online ordering is actually superior
Ha, huh? You're usually a reasonable poster but that's a curious interpretation. I'm saying having the option is absolutely superior.
You were simply waxing on about what you personally like about grocery shopping and projected those likes on this hypothetical person. I love grocery shopping too but most people don't and benefit greatly from grocery delivery, parents especially, single parents even moreso, because it's brutal trying to take kids through a grocery store (part of the reason I like it is the "break" but when I'm solo parenting? Awful. Much better to order).
And again, the option for grocery delivery is what's amazing. You don't have to, but to the original point, if you can't go to the store as was the hypothetical presented by XM, delivery is an option. You have more freedom with the option. People aren't tethered to and dependent upon their automobiles as they once needed to be.
It's not likely this imagined person is driving and parking downtown on the street anyway. If they're working for UM, they are almost certainly busing to and from the orange lots (unless they are paying the $1000 per year for a spot in a blue lot). If they're not working for UM, they're still not likely relying on street parking. Regardless, it's unlikely the bike lanes are meaningfully impacting their transportation lives (though perhaps they feel that they are if they in traffic with lots of other cars).
ultimately its much more simple than that. at least in AA you have to admit that the bike lanes are useless for months at a time and/or make life worse for far more people than they might help. and remember, unless you are a healthy male (or a pretty extraordinary female) with no child care responsibilities biking to work is not ever going to work. what do you say to the old, infirm, disabled, the parents, etc? tough luck? talk about misoginy.