The Status Quo Has a Cost in Human Lives

The following is a Letter to the Editor of the Chicago Tribune in response to: this editorial whining about bike lanes

The Tribune's concern for driver convenience and business loading zones on Archer is understandable, if predictable. But calling Archer "a bizarre candidate" for bike infrastructure misreads the geography entirely. The neighborhoods Archer passes through — Brighton Park, Gage Park, McKinley Park, and Archer Heights — are threaded with rail lines, an interstate highway, a canal, and intermodal yards that make movement on foot or bike among these neighborhoods nearly impossible except along Archer itself. It isn't one option among several. For many residents, it's the only continuous surface route connecting their neighborhoods. The question was never whether to put bike infrastructure there — it was how.

The editorial accuses cycling advocates of "moral righteousness," and the charge may be fair in some cases. What it misses is that the other side of this argument has a body count. Fifteen pedestrians and cyclists have been killed along this very corridor in recent years. Each of those deaths is a policy outcome, not an act of God. When we treat the conditions that produce that toll as the baseline against which "improvements" are measured, we've already made a moral judgment; we've just made it quietly. Disagreeing about parking spaces while that death toll stands unchallenged is not a position above the fray. It's a choice — and one worth owning honestly.