Did anyone read this article in the Sun-Times? Drivers are the New Smokers in City

This isn't in the opinion section, it's under the news section.

 

Sun-Times Link here.

 

While driving home Tuesday along the Mayor Emanuel Bike Path — formerly known as Kinzie Street — a chubby guy on a bicycle wearing plaid shorts swerved from his “protected lane” in front of my car. I honked. He extended a certain finger in my direction. I got a bit riled up.

I did not give in to road rage and run him down with my station wagon.

Still, that moment was extra irritating because the goofy street reconfiguration project championed by our new bicycling mayor — who probably uses it as a shortcut to the posh East Bank Club — has bugged me for weeks.

From the curb there’s a wide bike lane, then a barrier of flexible plastic posts, spots for parked cars and, finally, a skinny lane for moving automobiles. At the Kinzie and Milwaukee stoplight, there’s a section of green painted concrete for cyclists to wait out red lights. And it’s in front of cars so drivers have to wait for the pedaling to begin.

The whole thing is awkward, if not unnecessary, and probably just as dangerous as cycling on a street without the elaborate and hideous markings.

Besides, the new bike lanes ruin a driving shortcut through River North. This particular stretch of Kinzie now gets inexplicably backed up with cars while a handful of folks on two wheels zoom by unaffected. Parking used to be prohibited on this stretch of Kinzie during the evening rush — 4 to 6 p.m. — so drivers could use both lanes to escape downtown for the expressways.

Now, Kinzie is a parking lot with bike lanes during those hours.

What’s worse is that the Mayor Emanuel Bike Path seems to have empowered cyclists with a sense of lane entitlement. What happened to sharing the road?

The worst of the cyclists — daredevil bicycle messengers, antique Schwinn-riding hipsters and arrogant office workers on hybrid mountain bikes — fly through stop signs, narrowly miss gastro-wagon patrons and swerve instead of stop for pedestrians.

And that’s just while I’ve been watching.

I’m not just being a crank about a minor traffic jam and a jerk on a bike. What worries me is what the great bicycle takeover of Kinzie Street might mean for the future.

Last week, city Transportation Department spokesman Brian Steele put it this way: “The goal behind this is to reduce the amount of vehicle traffic and increase the amount of bike traffic.”

I’ll put it another way: Drivers are the new smokers.

City and state leaders want to snuff us out, too. First with increased fees and taxes, and now with restrictions on where we can drive. Sound familiar, smokers?

In the last few years, the fees for city stickers, license plate renewal, gas taxes and even moving violation fines — which help pay for paving and repairing roads — have significantly increased. If you drive an SUV in Chicago, for instance, the price of your city sticker went from $75 to $120. Now, starting with this section of Kinzie, nearly a third of the road has been set aside for a pesky pedaling minority who take to the streets for only a part of the year.

Radical bicycle-riding advocates certainly will push to expand Emanuel’s segregated Bike Path system — and ruin every side-street shortcut for city drivers.

Some bicycle commuters are drooling at the prospect of a side-street bicycle takeover.

“Give me an entire street and I’ll be happy,” a rabid bicyclist pal of mine said. “They should put these lanes on Elston, Blue Island . . . and every diagonal street.”

What a nightmare that would be for everyone else on the road — commuters, truckers, little ol’ ladies going to the Jewel and guys like me.

Emanuel has said the new bike-path configuration makes riders safer on city roads. I get it. It is dangerous riding a bicycle in the big city. I once got “doored” on the North Side by a ditzy Jeep-driving woman from Ohio. Wear a helmet.

Urban cyclists have a right to co-exist with car drivers. And that’s how it should stay.

But if cyclists want sectioned-off lanes snaking through every part of the city, then the rules must change. They shouldn’t be able to ride freely through stop signs and pedal on the wrong side of the street anymore. Hit a pedestrian, go to jail. And heck, if cyclists need their own lanes, they should pay for it — maybe by requiring a bicycle sticker tax for commuters. And officers on bikes, Segways and ATVs should pinch more rogue cyclists who break the rules of the road.

Because if cyclists got treated more like the rest of us on the road, I might not get so honked off the next time a guy on a bike flips me the bird from his precious bike lane.

Maybe, but I doubt it.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Active Transportation Alliance on July 5, 2011 at 11:20am

We'll be submitting a response letter to the editor tomorrow and we'll also post it here (regardless of whether or not it gets picked up).

 

Ethan Spotts, Active Trans

Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on July 5, 2011 at 11:31am
Thank you ethan. If you need anything from us, like a letter or email campaign, just holler


Active Transportation Alliance said:

We'll be submitting a response letter to the editor tomorrow and we'll also post it here (regardless of whether or not it gets picked up).

 

Ethan Spotts, Active Trans

Permalink Reply by Melanie K on July 5, 2011 at 11:37am

Maybe Mr. Konkol needs some exercise and should ride a bike himself sometime? And where does he get the idea that he should call anyone else chubby? I know I shouldn't be name calling but I just couldn't help it. I already sent an email letter to the editor and Mr. Konkol regarding the article.

 

Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University (left), presents the 2011 Local Reporting prize to (l-r) Mark Konkol, Frank Main and John J. Kim of the Chicago Sun-Time

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on July 5, 2011 at 3:20pm
Like the Nobel, the Pulitzer jumped the shark a long time ago.  

Cameron Puetz said:
Hard to believe that this troll won a Pulitzer.
Permalink Reply by Duppie on July 5, 2011 at 3:48pm

Ah yes, John Cassidy. Poor fella... He must not have seen it coming. The rebuttal was swift and merciless: New York Times tore down the article, as did The Economist, the Washington Post, and of course and my personal favorite: BSNYC


Peenworm Grubologist said:

There was a similar article in the new york times not long ago whining about how the bike lanes robbed a dude of his convenient free parking.
Permalink Reply by in it to win it 8.0 mi on July 6, 2011 at 2:15am

So Konkol took the NY article, changed the names to Chicago and published it.

Original...



Duppie said:

Ah yes, John Cassidy. Poor fella... He must not have seen it coming. The rebuttal was swift and merciless: New York Times tore down the article, as did The Economist, the Washington Post, and of course and my personal favorite: BSNYC


Peenworm Grubologist said:

There was a similar article in the new york times not long ago whining about how the bike lanes robbed a dude of his convenient free parking.
Permalink Reply by spacemodular on July 6, 2011 at 2:39am
The majority of comments are by people who support protected bike lanes. Some good links to programs of other cities too!

Peenworm Grubologist said:
It's just as well to not follow the link because I'm pretty sure columns like this exist mainly to troll people into boosting their site traffic
Permalink Reply by Carly on July 6, 2011 at 2:41am

If one quote from the article made me angry it's this:

 

Emanuel has said the new bike-path configuration makes riders safer on city roads. I get it. It is dangerous riding a bicycle in the big city. I once got “doored” on the North Side by a ditzy Jeep-driving woman from Ohio. Wear a helmet.

 

I hate that.  Too me, its almost a slur- wear a helmet.  A helmet has nothing to do with the issue at hand.  It's like yelling "get a job!" at a homeless person.    

 

I believe that it's important to condition the city for alternative forms of transportation NOW so that when fossil fuels run out/become extraordinarily expensive in a few generations the city will still be useful to us LATER.  No one really knows how much oil we have left on earth, but it is a finite resource that WILL dry up sooner or later.  We should prepare for the sooner, yes?  

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on July 6, 2011 at 2:46am
Exactly -like wearing a helmet is some sort of magic force-field and one is invulnerable to injury and the stupid careless behaviors of other road-users while wearing it.   It is as if it is the responsibility of the bicyclist to wear his invulnerability talisman and this, in turn, makes it OK for the car-driving public to run us over or throw large chunks of metal into our paths without thinking.

Carly said:

If one quote from the article made me angry it's this:

 

Emanuel has said the new bike-path configuration makes riders safer on city roads. I get it. It is dangerous riding a bicycle in the big city. I once got “doored” on the North Side by a ditzy Jeep-driving woman from Ohio. Wear a helmet.

 

I hate that.  Too me, its almost a slur- wear a helmet.  A helmet has nothing to do with the issue at hand.  It's like yelling "get a job!" at a homeless person.    

 

I believe that it's important to condition the city for alternative forms of transportation NOW so that when fossil fuels run out/become extraordinarily expensive in a few generations the city will still be useful to us LATER.  No one really knows how much oil we have left on earth, but it is a finite resource that WILL dry up sooner or later.  We should prepare for the sooner, yes?  

Permalink Reply by Michelle S on July 6, 2011 at 4:11am

A commenter on the Sun Times article linked to this very sad story from NYC about a 68-year-old cyclist (the sister-in-law of attorney Alan Dershowitz) killed while riding through a dark underpass this past weekend. She was hit by a postal truck, who didn’t stop because he thought he had hit a crate.

 

This quote from the article is further proof of a misperception that a helmet is some kind of magic protection talisman:

 

“She was hit by a 7-ton truck, and though she was wearing a helmet, died shortly after being transported to Bellevue Hospital.”

 

Really?  Her helmet didn’t save her from injury when she was under the tires of a 7-ton truck?!?

 

Permalink Reply by Sebastian Baptiste on July 6, 2011 at 4:57am

As unfortunate and uninformed as Mr. Konkol may seem, he at least correctly compares driving to smoking. But I don't get the accompanying photo either—where's the jam? I see traffic every day backed up on the Kennedy, LSD and the other X-press ways—that's old news—, but where are the bikes that caused those?? Could it be Critical Mass is up to no good again? Ghost-bikes creating havoc? Or perhaps Mr. Konkol's poor old ladies in their Bonnevilles who on their way to piggly wiggly took the wrong exit?

Permalink Reply by millenial removing Bernie tattoo on July 6, 2011 at 6:35am
Kinzie blows, protected bike paths blow.  You're never going to have Amsterdam in Chicago, get over it hippies.

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