John Kass

The home of the Tribune's former anti-bike troll, currently for sale, is in a surprising bike-and transit-friendly location.

If Huppke actually cares about keeping bike riders safe, he should instead lobby for infrastructure, laws, and enforcement that prevent crashes.

After a series of anti-bike columns in the Tribune, designed to tick off cyclists and rack up pageviews, John Kass crossed the line last May with a piece that implied motorists shouldn’t be expected to watch out for bikes before opening their car doors. Dustin Valenta, who sustained a cracked skull, fractured pelvis and shoulder blades, 23 broken ribs, a punctured lung and a lacerated shoulder after he was doored by one driver and then run over by another, responded to Kass with a statement on Streetsblog Chicago:

I’ve long considered the Chicago Tribune’s Jon Hilkevitch to be one of Chicago’s best transportation writers. He works fast, gets his numbers straight and often gets the scoop on important stories, usually writing from a pro-walking, biking and transit perspective. For example, I always enjoy re-reading a brilliant article he wrote back in 2005, skewering the Daley administration’s pro-car policies. I appreciate that he provides a level-headed foil to his colleague columnist John Kass, a notorious bike-baiter.