who spoke to the Tribune.<\/a> O\u2019Neil swerved to avoid the door, but still made contact with it and was thrown to the street, sources said, where the driver of a large truck ran him over. <\/p>\nO\u2019Neil was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was 35, police said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chicago police said it had issued four citations to a 31-year-old man on the scene, including for the unsafe opening or closing of a door, prohibited parking, driving on a suspended license and operating an uninsured vehicle. <\/p>\n
On Saturday, the Cook County medical examiner\u2019s office ruled\u00a0O\u2019Neil\u2019s death an accident, attributing the cause to multiple injuries from a collision with a semi-truck. <\/p>\n
The medical examiner\u2019s office had not yet identified O\u2019Neil publicly, but Chicago\u2019s Transportation Department confirmed he was the victim in the crash. <\/p>\n
People who knew O\u2019Neil, a planner and project manager for CDOT, described him as a devoted public servant who loved biking and cared deeply about improving Chicago\u2019s public infrastructure. Advocates for bicycle safety described his death as a painful injustice \u2014 and a preventable tragedy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neil had devoted his life \u201cto making cycling better and safer,\u201d said Joseph Schwieterman of DePaul\u2019s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development.\u00a0<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neil attended graduate school at DePaul and later served as a post-graduate fellow at the Chaddick Institute, according to his LinkedIn profile. <\/p>\n
About a decade ago, Schwieterman remembered, the Chaddick Institute took a trip to Milwaukee. Everyone else took Amtrak to Wisconsin, Schwieterman said. O\u2019Neil rode his bike.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s \u201cdisheartening,\u201d Schwieterman said, that society \u201cseem[s] to accept bicycle deaths as an unavoidable part of life.\u201d <\/p>\n
O\u2019Neil worked as a \u201ccherished member\u201d of the Transportation Department\u2019s Complete Streets team, according to spokesperson Erica Schroeder. <\/p>\n
Complete Streets is a city program focused on making Chicago\u2019s streets safer, particularly for bicyclists and pedestrians. Work done under the program includes installing protected bike lanes and other infrastructure improvements intended to improve traffic safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before working with Complete Streets, Schroeder said, O\u2019Neil led the city\u2019s bike parking program. <\/p>\n
CDOT assistant commissioner David Powe posted about O\u2019Neil on social media Saturday morning, calling him \u201cthe most passionate and caring colleague I\u2019ve ever had.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHis love for biking, transit, and infrastructure was contagious. He never met a person he couldn\u2019t immediately connect with and get excited about making Chicago better for biking, walking, rolling, and riding,\u201d Powe wrote in a post on Linkedin. <\/p>\n
Powe called for Chicagoans to refer to bike racks as \u201cRiley Racks\u201d in O\u2019Neil\u2019s memory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur hearts are broken, but we want to make sure his legacy lives on,\u201d Powe wrote. <\/p>\n
In a statement, Schroeder said CDOT was \u201cdeeply saddened by the loss of our beloved colleague, Riley,\u201d and extended condolences to his family and friends. <\/p>\n
Schroeder described O\u2019Neil as \u201ca dedicated public servant who devoted his career to making Chicago\u2019s streets safer and more accessible for everyone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHis loss is being felt deeply across the department, and he will be greatly missed,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Tribune could not immediately reach O\u2019Neil\u2019s family on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chicago police had not made any arrests as of early Saturday afternoon, and declined to provide the name of the person cited at the scene. Detectives were still investigating, the police said. <\/p>\n
Advocates for bicycle and pedestrian safety described O\u2019Neil\u2019s death as demoralizing and preventable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Christina Whitehouse, founder of the advocacy group Bike Lane Uprising, described O\u2019Neil as someone who \u201cgenuinely cared.\u201d She called his death a \u201cpoetic injustice.\u201d <\/p>\n
Better infrastructure is needed to prevent deaths like O\u2019Neil\u2019s, Whitehouse said. So too is better education for drivers, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bike lanes in the area near where O\u2019Neil died are painted, not protected by a physical barrier. Bike safety advocates criticize unprotected lanes, saying they aren\u2019t sufficient to protect bicyclists from car drivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Chicago, some efforts to build more protected bike lanes have sparked organized pushback<\/a> from people who say they are concerned about the loss of parking spots and ease of driving for car users.<\/p>\n\u201c[O\u2019Neil\u2019s] death was preventable, and is a painful reminder that these tragedies are a result of policy choices and political will,\u201d said Kyle Lucas of the advocacy group Better Streets Chicago in a statement. \u201cOur elected officials must say enough is enough, and commit themselves to building the kind of infrastructure we know works to save lives.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThis wouldn\u2019t have happened in a protected bike lane,\u201d Lucas added. \u201cBut elected officials are more concerned about prioritizing parking over safety.\u201d <\/p>\n
Through April this year, 10 pedestrians and four bicyclists or motorized scooter users had died in Chicago traffic crashes, according to CDOT data. No bike or e-scooter deaths had been reported during the same time period in 2025. Pedestrian deaths were stable year-over-year. <\/p>\n
Chicago\u2019s Transportation Department has said its efforts to reduce traffic deaths are working. In a recent interview with the Tribune, CDOT assistant commissioner David Smith said there had been an approximately 35% drop in traffic fatalities since 2019, even as the number of cyclists had surged.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mayor Brandon Johnson issued a statement following O\u2019Neil\u2019s death, calling him a \u201cvalued colleague and dedicated advocate whose work touched communities across Chicago.\u201d O\u2019Neil\u2019s death is \u201cfelt across City government,\u201d the mayor said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cChicago is grateful for his service,\u201d Johnson added. <\/p>\n
Chicago Tribune\u2019s Tess Kenny, Sam Charles, Allison Kiehl and Jake Sheridan contributed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bicyclist killed in a fatal Bridgeport traffic crash Friday was a Chicago Department of Transportation employee who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,299340,69156,3,6145,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-689336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-bicycle-fatalities","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-news","tag-transportation","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}