Chitown_Mike

The only thing the money is going towards is budget holes. And it is potentially this or raise taxes on cable/satellite users which everyone is up in arms against yet would be only a few dollars extra per year for a luxury. This is also the same city that if your vehicle is parked in the city for a certain amount of days out of the year and you don't have a Chicago city sticker they will ticket you for not having one. Even if you live in the burbs and have your car registered out there as well.

Nothing to do with safety, despite them trying to make it out as such, but everything to do with money and poor budgeting.

FBinNY 

I agree. This has nothing to do with the merits, or bicyclists per se. It's simply a way politicians stay in office by spending for you, while taxing the other guy.

Once you accept that it has nothing to do with making bicycle owners pay their so-called fair share, then we can focus on the issues of how much it'll raise after collection/processing costs, and the enforcement issues. IMO it's a fail on that basis.

Chicago Al 

This is one of those zombie topics that keeps coming up.

There is no such fee or tax.

There never was, and probably never will be.

It was never an ordinance, never voted on, never considered by the City Council, never even proposed there.

All there was was an idea floated by a single, rookie alderman. The reaction from all quarters to it was: : Shut up and sit down. This includes the all-powerful mayor, who is indeed trying all kinds of things to plug budget holes, but said he absolutely did not want police trying to enforce such a fee.

There are many reasons to be against it, starting with the obvious fact that it would not even justify its own cost, as the administration would be such a hassle.

People wasting time worrying about it must not have jobs, families, school, significant others, hobbies, laundry to do, or anything else going on in their lives.

You'd think with all the cycling, folks here would have good cardio fitness and would not hyperventilate so much.

CB HI

Fairfax County VA has a law that if you park any car not registered in the county overnight for even one night (except at a hotel) you have to pay the county their vehicle property tax.

Because I had one car registered in the county, they ran a computer search and found out I had another car registered in Hawaii. The jerks tried to tax me for a car in Hawaii, when I told them no, they sent their lawyers on me who threatened to put my picture in the local newspaper as a tax dodger and then arrest me.

I told them to try it and see how much money they lost when a court told them they were illegally going after our military members.

They kept blustering and I kept challenging them to follow through with their threats. Not sure if I ever made the local newspaper.

I-Like-To-Bike

I heard that someone somewhere proposed an ordinance to place a yearly tax on bicycle helmets and that wearing one in public without the appropriate tax stamp affixed could land the scofflaw in jail. No exceptions for age. The fine would be doubled if the scofflaw wore the untaxed helmet while in a store or any other public place when off the bike for public indecency.

B. Carfree

A small group that I belong to is planning to approach our city council to get them to ban the striping of door-zone bike lanes. I think we may have to change our proposal to the one you heard about. Something really must be done about all those helmets in the grocery stores. Safety will have to take a back seat to decency.

I-Like-To-Bike

Right, someone could bust a gut laughing at those silly willys wearing their foam hats indoors; triple fines if the fashion eyesores are also wearing spandex bibs.

Dave Cutter

Books? I am an old guy.... so I remember such things as paper books and steel bicycles. But I think words are downloaded in PDF format or some such thing now-a-days. Library.... is modern term meaning: Public bathroom for homeless men.... do they have reading material for them too?

CB HI

Well, then can use the library computer to constitutionally view their porn.

Dave Cutter

LOL... true. I guess I got lost in my explanation and forgot the point I was making.

Even grand old noble ideas like access to books, knowledge, and entertainment are changing with the times. library's are being closed, and/or scaled back in all but the most corrupt of cities. Newer [BETTER] ways to market and distribute the same materials have been around for YEARS now.

Bicycle paths, standardize width railroad tracks, obstruction free walk ways, and streets made of brick, concrete, or asphalt were all great for bringing in the 20th century. [And the advancement of penny farthing high wheels.] After all.... before the end of the 19th century... the canal system was overwhelmed as a transportation system for moving goods. The advancement of cities already depended on the giant wheel houses that rerouted trains.

Todays modern populations are no longer dependent on many of the old infrastructures that was once synonymous with modern life. Chicago needs people.... but people don't need cities like Chicago. Most of todays "popular" solutions... remedy problems that only live in the minds and memories of the nostalgic.

unterhausen

and on that note, I think we're done here