Sprocket man: Degreasing Don DeBat’s anti-bike tirade in the Loop North News

When you saw headlines like, “[Secretary of War Pete] Hegseth announces new policy to test troops for low testosterone,” it seemed likely his impersonator Colin Jost would use that as fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit, right?

Likewise, any Streetsblog readers who noticed the anti-Complete Streets screed in Loop North News by Don DeBat, “Bike lane boom or business bust? Critics push back on Chicago’s cycling grid,” probably expected I would eventually get around to deconstructing it.

I mean, the first sentence of the op-ed is, “Chicago, a city that once was a transportation-oriented hub, now is run by clout-happy Democratic-Socialist politicians who appear to be kissing the bicycle lobby’s sprocket.”

Well, here at SBC, we’re proud to be card-carrying members of the “all-powerful bicycle lobby” a term coined in this infamous 2013 video opinion piece by then-Wall Street Journal editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz.

So let’s get to work debunking DeBat’s brickbat.

“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,” DeBat writes. This piece also ran in the local Inside Publications “Not In My Backyard” newspaper chain, which coined that ridiculous phrase “privileged bike lanes” when discussing protected bike lanes.

DeBat and Inside Publications’ reasoning is that bike riders are getting special treatment because motorists aren’t supposed to travel or park in PBLs, although they often do. By that logic, we should call lanes on DuSable Lake Shore Drive and the Dan Ryan Expressway “privileged driver lanes.”

DeBat says bikeways are being built “mostly on the North and Northwest sides.” That statement is easily dispelled by a glance at the Chicago Department of Transportation’s “Chicago Bike Facilities” map. It shows that, while the South Side needs more bikeways (and will be getting more in the future thanks to the agency’s “Neighborhood Bike Network” community feedback program), in recent years, many new cycling facilities have been installed on the West Side.

“Today, the bike lobby is wrapping a chain around Chicago’s neck and strangling business owners’ ability to conduct commerce,” DeBat writes. He quotes “Mr. Zak,” who owns a business on Archer Avenue in blue-collar Brighton Park, but lives in upscale Lincoln Park. The entrepreneur complains that “rampant bike lane construction is causing massive traffic congestion on diagonal arterial streets” like Archer.

In reality, severe traffic jams on Archer nowadays can largely be blamed on a massive, longtime water and sewer line reconstruction in Brighton Park, which happens to be the same neighborhood that is getting a Complete Streets project with protected lanes. The utility work spans many blocks, and has converted that portion of the street to two narrow travel lanes with no turn lanes or car parking.

The utility project on Archer west of Rockwell Avenue, looking southwest. Photo: John Greenfield

“The jury is still out on whether bike lanes promote safety,” DeBat claims, a statement that simply doesn’t hold water. CDOT’s annual Chicago Traffic Crashes report, last published in fall 2025, reported that as local bikeway mileage increased between 2021 and 2024, the number of bike crash deaths dropped by 30 percent, and serious cycling collisions dropped by 18.5 percent.

DeBat also notes that Gillman Ace Hardware, 2118 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Logan Square closed after some car parking spaces on the street were converted to make room for protected bike lanes. “The owner blamed the loss of parking as a primary factor behind his declining business.” Another possible factor not mentioned in Loop North News: The owner reportedly blasted anti-immigrant talk radio shows inside his store in a heavily Latino community.

The Loop North News piece notes that Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) has called a recent CDOT report that found while bikeways improved safety on business corridors, they didn’t reduce sales, “a lie.” Last February Lopez gave a nearly 10-minute diatribe against the Archer project, and Complete Streets in general at a meeting the City Council’s Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee. That turned out to be a rather transparent strategy to help elect 12th Ward aldermanic challenger Claudia Zuno, who announced her candidacy a week later.

After ranting against the Archer project, Lopez greeted Zuno on his way out of the room. A week later, she announced she was running against 12th Ward incumbent Ald. Julia Ramirez, a project supporter. Image from a video of the proceedings.

Lopez should stop opposing projects that help prevent serious and fatal traffic crashes, and start supporting them. Sadly, within the last three months, two different drivers killed pedestrians in collisions (one was probably intentional) a block away from each other on Western Avenue in his ward, a five-lane road that encourages deadly speeding.

DeBat ends his long column with a “séance” with the late Tribune columnist Mike Royko’s character Slats Grobnik, who makes several nonsensical proposals to make it easier for people to drive conveniently, i.e. dangerously. These include “eliminate bike lanes,” “remove landscaped parkways,” and “expand parking.”

Like Lopez, DeBatt should spend stop worrying about whether Complete Streets projects are “strangling” business, and start worrying about the fact that so far this year drivers have killed at least 21 people walking, biking, and riding e-scooters on Chicago streets.

Read “Bike lane boom or business bust? Critics push back on Chicago’s cycling grid” here.

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