Sorry if this has been posted already but I came across this on my facebook page and it made me furious. Asking cyclists to pay a fee for all the pathways on the street is fine by me but his condescending tone and reasoning makes me want to punch someone in the face. Sorry.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/videog...bicycle-people

John Kass is an idiot with the IQ of a fish.

he thinks he's the reincarnated spirit of royko, but in reality he's just an obnoxious, self-important, pompous A $ $ HAT.

he should never be paid attention to.

If you allow his incoherent ramblings to anger you, then he's already won.

The fact that his words and interview are being paid attention to by other people is what really makes me mad. Not him in particular.

paid attention to by who? the last 7 people who still bother to read that useless rag known as the chicago tribune?

Interesting.. the reader response to his article thing is in the members only section. He is the original troll?

It's quite comical really. If a car blows through a toll gate without paying you take its registration. If a bike blows through without paying what do you take?

The argument about putting registration marks on a bike comes up every once in a while and is never any more practical to implement than the previous time, for all the same reasons as the previous time. So the best this fool can do is put something on the handlebars of those who can be bothered to sign up, and remember not to hit it with a club hammer, and of course who have space on their handlebars for yet another box.

I can just imagine him trying to explain why he's sent the police out after a six-year-old girl on a pink bike because she didn't pay the toll.

I whole heartedly agree with him, but why stop there?

Think of the revenue Chicago could generate if it turned all the sidewalks into pedestrian tollways too? It's about time those freeloaders paid their fair share.

It's brilliant !

As my time in Chicago has been quite limited, just how many tolls do cars have to pay there?

there is a grand total of one tollway in the city of chicago: the chicago skyway (essentially just a toll bridge over the calumet river). all of the other tollways in the area (the tri-state, jane adams, reagan, veterans, & indiana tollways) are all out in da burbs.

Seems like this sort of thing would come more from someone in Florida than up there in Chicago. FL sure does love their toll ways. I had to go through EIGHT of them from Cape Canaveral up north through the panhandle to Alabama last year, most of them in the Orlando area. The tolls ranged from 75 cents to $2. Then last week we took a trip to Destin FL and had to pay $3 to get over the main bridge across the bay, and then $3.75 on the way back across a different bridge. Ridiculous.

So he's super epic mega burly troll. More tolls for bikes then cars? ahahahahha.

What's even more comical is the way he talks about cars paying fuel tax (newsflash - bikes don't use fuel), cars generating revenue by triggering speed cameras (newsflash - the majority of bikes only very rarely break speed limits), and the whole "use the roads" line (newsflash - bikes put so much less wear on the roads you'd probably struggle to even measure it).

I'd love to know what this guy has been smoking, and whether it's available over the counter.

Why stop there? What about all those selfish people in wheelchairs who take up extra space wherever they go? Why should they get to take up twice as much space without paying more? And as for all the assorted contraptions for pushing babies and children around in, they need to be paying their way too.

In Switzerland, it is mandatory to have a permanent regsitration attached to the bike at all time (it covers insurance and other things.)

Sorry, no English available:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velovignette

it wouldn't be so hard to hook up a license plate scanner (EZ-pass for you guys) for one and record those who don't pay.

I wonder what percentage of their tollway revenue comes from tourists. I had the same experience as you when we went to Disney and Kennedy Space Center.

Yeah I guess it's because it is a "touristy" state, and they probably have a larger percentage of out-of-state cars using their roads than they do local cars paying the taxes and registrations for those roads. Perhaps other states with a large portion of GDP from tourism have lots of tollways as well.

I work with plenty of people paying in excess of $10 per day in tolls around VA and MD. When I worked in transportation policy, I met several real estate agents that were looking at $100+/wk with the new tolls going in on the Hampton Roads midtown and downtown bridge/tunnels. I feel fortunate to only have to pay tolls to go to the outlet mall (makes me think twice, too) and the beach. I could get into the realities of how difficult it would be to require every car in the US to have an EZ Pass-like device to charge a usage tax (when I lived in VA, my neighbor had one car, it was "FARM USE ONLY" and he drove it all over town - tons of unregistered cars, unlicensed drivers, etc), bikes would actually be impossible without an enormous outpouring of public funds, which won't happen any time soon.

FL doesn't really have a lot of toll roads, they just have a lot of toll booths on the FL turnpike. And yes, a few pricey bridges on the gulf coast, but we all know the alternate free routes.

Germany doesn't have any tolls.

but I have paid 50€ at a toll between Sweden/Denmark (on the bridge)

and paid 30€ to drive between Venice and Munich in Italian tolls.

what are the rates for the bike highway toll? how will they ensure that you don't join the highway later?

none of this is real. this is just John Kass pontificating once again about how perfect the universe would be if he were put in charge of it.

pompous doesn't even begin to describe the man.

lol, what a tool/toll.

I'd be happy to pay tolls for bike-only roads. That's for sure. No peds, no cars, no scooters, no stop signs, that would be biking heaven. But it ain't gonna happen.

And trained snipers for those weaving across the entire path at 5mph texting?

You are much too kind, he's nowhere near that good.

Don't forget those freeloaders pushing baby buggies. Ought to have tags on those things too.