City ‘Bogus’ Bike Report: Barriers Do Impede Businesses

New bike lane installed on Archer avenue in front of The Pants Box (above)

By Don DeBat

Chicago was once known as a “city that works.” It was a transportation-oriented hub, but now is run by clout-happy, Democratic-Socialist politicians who appear to be kissing the bicycle lobby’s sprocket.

City Hall has erected concrete barriers and roadway-blockers on key arterial streets all over the city’s transportation grid in favor of privileged bike paths. The bike-crazy trend really started during the rule of former Mayor Rahm Emanual, when Divvy Bikes were introduced.

In August of 2025, a record 995,000 Divvy Bike rides were booked. That high mark came after Mayor Johnson cut a deal with Lyft, the system’s operator, to reduce fees and add more Divvy stations.

Mayor Brandon Johnson (left)

Today, the taxpayer-funded bike lobby is wrapping a chain around Chicago’s neck and strangling business owners’ ability to conduct commerce. The suicidal elimination of commercial street parking is literally is killing businesses.

Metered street parking that turns over quickly is a critical infrastructure need for every neighborhood commercial district, and the city is eliminating it an alarming rate.

At a taxpayer cost in 2025 of an estimated $17 million, Mayor Johnson, an avid biker, bragged about constructing 100 miles of new city bike lanes, mostly on the North and Northwest sides. Changes include: marked concrete curbs with metal or plastic barriers, neon-green painted cycling paths, bus-loading “islands,” and raised pedestrian crosswalks.

Last year, the city installed more than 12 miles of protected bike lanes, expanding the reach to nearly 70 miles citywide and covering over 15% of the city’s on-street cycling network.

A big part of the problem is that Chicago Dept. of Transportation (CDOT) has no adult supervision. There is very little oversight or outside scrutiny on their spending. Federal and state grants and make up the vast majority of CDOT’s budget. Grants account for approximately 70% to 75% of the funding, while fuel taxes account for another 5% to 6%, while local funds make up only 13% of its proposed 2026 appropriation.

And CDOT gets a lot of taxpayer cash. The 2025 budget was over $12 billion. For most of the previous decade CDOT was the third-highest funded city department, followed by the Chicago Police and Aviation departments. 

According to the Johnson administration, Chicago now has a 500-mile “Bikeway.” That includes bike lanes, off-street trails and “neighborhood greenway” streets that are designed to slow cars and prioritize bicycles. Anti-bike critics and irate motorists say the expansion plan is an example of bad city planning run wild.

“Rampant bike-lane construction is causing massive traffic congestion on diagonal arterial streets such as Milwaukee Ave., Lincoln Ave., Clybourn and Grand Ave.,” complained Mr. Zak, a Lincoln Park resident. Mr. Zak also is an irate Archer Ave. businessman, who recently was impacted by a new Southwest Side bike lane.

“Local businesses along Archer Ave. have lost hundreds of free and metered parking spaces, hurting Chicago’s economy and draining millions of dollars from the sales tax base,” said Mr. Zak, who told this reporter weekly net sales at his clothing store in Brighton Park recently plummeted to $100 a week from former annual sales of $600,000-plus a few years ago.

Bike lanes don’t hurt businesses?

Last month, the Chicago Dept. of Transportation published a “report” on the economic impact of bike lanes on six commercial corridors with bike-lane projects. The report surveyed the change in sales tax revenue, commercial property vacancy and employment, as well as safety and bike usage data.

According to the survey results and data gathered in the report, “the bike-lane projects have not hurt business activity after their installation,” although the study does not assert that the lanes themselves improved an area’s economic outlook.

The jury is still out on whether or not bike lanes promote safety. The number of crashes involving bicyclists remained the same prior to, and after, bike- lane installations. There were nine crashes in 2018 and 2019, and nine crashes in 2021 and 2022, the study said. The surveyed corridors include bike lanes in two key North Side neighborhoods:

• Lincoln Park. The bike lane on Clybourn Ave. between Division and Halsted streets was constructed in 2015. To make room for the new protected and painted lanes, on-street parking was moved to one side of the street.

Sales tax revenue along Clybourn declined 28% after the bike lane was installed. However, city researchers said it was unlikely the bike lane caused the drop in tax revenue, noting that many of Clybourn’s largest retailers have dedicated parking lots.

• Logan Square. Protected bike lanes were installed in 2020, along Milwaukee and Armitage avenues between Western and California avenues. Plastic posts eliminated 100 parking spaces on Milwaukee and moved them to side streets and nearby arterial streets, the transportation department said.

The Milwaukee Ave. bike-lane report was released as the business strip is wrestling with a high level of vacancies, according to a comprehensive report by The Block Club. Loading zones and parking alongside the bike lanes were eliminated. Couriers were forced to double park or drive into the bike lane.

The former Gillman Ace Hardware at 2118 N. Milwaukee closed three years after the bike lanes were installed. The owner blamed the loss of parking as a primary factor behind his declining business.

Other North Side neighborhoods in the bike-lane survey were Andersonville, along Clark St. between Lawrence and Edgewater avenues, and Humboldt Park, along North Ave. between California and Central Park avenues.

Is city bike report ‘bogus’?

Critics question the credibility of CDOT and say much of the positive vibe in the city bike-land report is “bogus propaganda” and carries about as much weight as a flat bike tire.

One vocal opponent of the on-going Archer Ave. bike-lane project is Southwest Side Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th). The new Archer Ave. bike lanes were not part of the city study.

Alderman Ray Lopez (left)

Lopez said the notion that bike lanes do not harm economic activity was a “lie,” citing what he has heard from businesses such as The Pants Box on Archer in Brighton Park, and elsewhere. Construction on the project remains ongoing, as does a Dept. of Water Management project that has resulted in unrelated, temporary street closures.

“There are 77 communities in Chicago, and 100-plus different neighborhoods—all unique,” Lopez said. “You can’t expect what works in Uptown to work in Englewood or Little Village.”

Slats Grobnik’s bike report

To gain clarity about nearly eight decades of historical knowledge on the world of bicycling in the Windy City, The Home Front column recently hosted a séance with Slats Grobnik, the alter-ego of the late Mike Royko, famed Pulitzer-Prize winning Chicago newspaper columnist. Royko’s Slats was a comically stereotyped working-class Polish-American Chicagoan. If you are too young and uninformed about “Mike and Slats,” google Mike Royko’s Wikipedia file.

“Chicago is not as bike-crazy as Amsterdam in Holland. The city’s erroneous bike-lane report obviously is hokum brought on by the legalization of marijuana,” noted Slats Grobnik, while rolling his eyes and puffing on a Pall Mall.

If Grobnik were running for Mayor of Chicago in 2027, here is an outline of his commonsense bicycle-transportation plan for the Windy City:

• Eliminate bike lanes. Remove all bike lanes on busy arterial streets in Chicago. As a motorist who always drove run-down beaters as a teenager, Slats avoided expressways and only used arterial streets because it was easier to change a flat tire. Plus, under the current set-up, the concrete barriers make it impossible for drivers to “pull to the right for sirens lights.” Emergency vehicles also are trapped in CDOT-created traffic jams, as there is no path to the curb on streets barricaded by concrete like East Berlin was during the Cold War.

• Remove landscaped parkways. Popular during the Mayor Richard M. Daley era, Slats believes landscaped parkways on wide, four-lane arterial streets such as Irving Park Rd., Clark St. and Peterson Ave. cause accidents and cost millions of tax dollars to maintain.

The widest lane on Clark St. in North Edgewater today is not for transportation, but is reserved for grass and trees.

With parkways removed, an extra lane of traffic would be added. The speed limit leading to the Kennedy Expy. and Lake Shore Dr. could be increased to 45 miles per hour.

• Expand parking. Slats believes the bike-lane expansion has created a huge, dangerous, and costly traffic and parking problem. Therefore, his plan is to restore hundreds of desperately needed street-parking spaces, especially in front and near neighborhood saloons.

• City-owned meters. Of course, any reenvisioned parking-space plan should be metered and owned by Chicago under a new city-controlled program that cuts out Chicago Parking Meters LLC, the financial investors that fleeced the city with a 75-year lease that cost them only $1.15 billion. The parking deal now is worth an estimated $3 billion.

Plus, the city is quickly refunding that #1.15 billion annual “true-up” payments to Chicago Parking Meters LLC. Through 2025, the city already has paid a total of $246 million in penalties to our parking landlords.

• Softball parking. An avid 16-inch slow-pitch softball player, Slats’ master-parking plan also calls for metered diagonal “nose-in” parking on both sides of Columbus Dr. near the famed Grant Park ball diamonds. On week day game nights, players should be charged $5 or less for two hours of softball parking.

And, Slats says the valley diamonds at Grant Park should be renamed “Mike Royko Field” in honor of the columnist who promoted “Chicago’s Game” better than any politician.

American writer Mike Royko (left)

• Recreational biking. In the interest of safety, only allow recreational biking in Chicago along Lincoln Park’s paths, expanses of the North Side and South Side lakefront, in public parks across the city, and in Cook County Forest Preserves. However, for personal safety, Slats recommends that recreational biking only be done in Chicago during daylight hours. Bikers should report to the nearest saloon after sunset.

• One-way bike lanes. Always willing to compromise with the politicians, Slats’ backup plan is to remove only half of the city’s bike lanes, especially on the North Side. According to the tax-payer funded non-profit Active Transportation Alliance, bikes and scooters make up only a paltry 1% to 2% of daily commuters.

So, it’s not much to ask devoted bicyclists to wheel north on the east side of Lincoln Ave. And ride south on the west side of Clybourn Ave. Then, peddle north on the east side of Milwaukee Ave. and south on the west side of Elston Ave.

With half the bike lanes removed, hundreds of diagonal “nose-in” revenue producing, city-owned metered parking spaces would be reinstalled on the side of the streets without bike lanes.

• Increase biking revenue. Slats believes bikers should pay their way and not get a free ride. All bike owners must register their wheels and pay an annual $100 licensing fee, similar to the $150 automobile owners pay for an annual city sticker in Chicago.

Motorized electric bike owners should pay $125. Slats may not be a Democratic Socialist, but he would allow electric golf carts to use the bike lanes for the same $125 bike-sticker fee. When Royko wasn’t playing softball for the Chicago Daily News and the Sun-Times, he was on the golf links.

For additional revenue, Chicago Police Dept. bicycle cops should police the bike lanes and streets to hand out traffic tickets to bicyclists who break the law, especially those who gleefully peddle through traffic lights and stop signs regardless of traffic.

Maybe insist that bike and scooter riders wear trackable air tags so they can be ticketed by Chicago spy systems for every rule of the road violation they commit.

• Electric auto fees. Drivers who choose to sit in bumper-to-bumper, rush-hour expressway traffic, should not pay to park. However, to help defray the cost of expressway repaving every five years, Slats’ Road Revenue Plan calls for electric car owners—who do not pay our lofty city and Cook County gasoline taxes—should be billed an annual fee based on their vehicle’s annual milage.

With at least six candidates running for the mayor of Chicago, let’s hope they are taking bike-lane and city parking notes from Grobnik.

Slats says the first candidate who announces they want to roll back the concrete-biking barriers and roadway obstacles will get his vote.Bottom of FormTop of FormBottom of FormTop of FormBottom of FormTop of FormBottom of Form

For more housing news, visit www.dondebat.biz. Don DeBat is co-author of “Escaping Condo Jail,” the ultimate survival guide for condominium living. Visit www.escapingcondojail.com.