Complete Streets planner Riley O’Neil died in a paint-only bike lane. Protesters say we must value people over parking.

This month, safe streets advocates in Chicago have been mourning one of their own.

On Friday, June 5, Riley O’Neil, 35, a Complete Streets planner for the city’s transportation department, was pedaling home to the South Side’s Bridgeport neighborhood. He was riding on Halsted Street, one of the Chicago’s busiest bike commuting corridors, in a non-protected bike lane. A driver in a parked car suddenly opened his door in O’Neil’s path. The skilled urban cyclist tried to swerve out of the way but clipped the door, and was thrown under the rear wheels of an oncoming semi, losing his life.

“Riley O’Neil led Chicago’s bike parking program for several years and completely transformed it,” his coworker and good friend David Powe wrote in a eulogy soon after the tragedy. “More recently, he was helping lead both CDOT’s school zone safety work and bus priority projects. He cared deeply about making biking, rolling, walking, and riding better for everyone.”

A few days after his passing, on Monday, June 8, hundreds of livable streets advocates, including several City Council members, gathered in Bridgeport for a memorial ride and “die-in” protest at the crash site, which happened to be next to a police station. The event was organized by Chicago, Bike Grid Now!, a grassroots group that is pushing for 10 percent of Chicago’s streets to be transformed into low-stress, pedestrian-and-bike-priority routes.

Specifically, Bike Grid is demanding that the City improve safety on Halsted Street. “We’ve talked about Halsted being [an issue] for years… and every single time CDOT leaders and City leaders say, ‘You’re right, we really should do something about that,'” said CBGN! organizer Chris Buie-Gentry during a recent speech. “I don’t want to wait until I’m 55 to have safe streets.”

A proven way to make main streets like Halsted safer is protected bike lanes. Building these facilities involves relocating the bikeway curbside, with a physical barrier such as concrete curbs and/or parked cars to shelter bicycle and e-scooter users from moving traffic.

That’s been done on Halsted in other parts of town. If O’Neil had been riding in a protected lane in Bridgeport, instead of just stripes of paint on the road, he’d still be alive to continue his important work. As shown in the photo at the top of this article, during the recent Bike Protest for a Bike Grid event led by CBGN!, a participant wrote in chalk that paint-only lanes on Halsted in the neighborhood are “Not Protection.”

Residents of cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Mexico City, Bogotá, and most recetly Paris eventually understood that creating walkable, bikeable, transit-friendly streets is worth reallocating some space used for moving and storing large metal boxes. But in the U.S., that’s generally a foreign concept.

Even in Chicago, a relatively bike- and transit-friendly American city, there’s a battle going on between progressives who support CDOT’s Complete Streets projects, and less forward-thinking residents who insist that no car parking or mixed-traffic lanes be converted. In recent months, there have been weekly dueling rallies by these factions during the Monday PM rush in two different neighborhoods.

Supporters and opponents last December at the launch of six-plus months of weekly competing rallies in Brighton Park, on Chicago’s Southwest Side. Photos: John Greenfield

Dueling rallies last April in West Town, on the North Side. Photos: James Porter

It’s become increasingly obvious that some of opposition to these initiatives is being organized by “moderate-to-conservative” politicos, who are cynically trying to turn lifesaving infrastructure into a wedge issue to win votes. I’m sure this disturbing phenomenon isn’t unique to the Windy City.

Like all Chicago alderpersons, Bridgeport representative Ald. Nicole Lee (11th) has de-facto veto power over transportation projects in her district. She’s a moderate who may see herself as being stuck between a rock and hard place here.

Some of her constituents are demanding that no more human lives be sacrificed on the altar of convenient driving. But, as in other communities, many neighbors will surely argue that replacing curbside parking spots with protected lanes will doom small businesses. That’s not just due to shady politics, but also sincere, but inaccurate, beliefs about how many customers drive to businesses.

When I spoke with Ald. Lee at the June 8 memorial, she sounded undecided about the parking-versus-protected-lanes issue. “We’re going to continue to listen to everybody in the wake of this tragedy,” she said.

But there were signs she might to be open to persuasion by Complete Streets supporters. She told me a negligent driver recently injured her nephew while he was biking in nearby Chinatown. “It’s going to take all of us working together to get physical infrastructure that protects people better,” she said.

On the following Monday, June 15, dozens of bike riders gathered in Bridgeport again to lobby the alder for safety improvements on Halsted and other streets in her ward with CBGN!’s “Bike Protest for a Bike Grid.” Organizer and Bridgeport local Chris Buie-Gentry kicked off the event with commentary. Here’s a transcript of part of his speech near its conclusion, and you can watch the rest in this video by Ellen Steinke when you have a chance.

“We’re here today to remind our City leaders that we deserve safety,” Buie-Gentry said. “20-something percent of this neighborhood doesn’t own a car. Over 25 percent are in households that have one car when there’s two people living there. A lot of people need to get around our community, they need to get groceries, they need to go to school. And they can’t afford a car, don’t want a car, can’t use a car.”

“And those people deserve the right to go to work, to get groceries, to pick up their kids, without the fear of becoming yet another death on our streets in the city,” he added. “And that’s why we’re here today: to make sure that all of our leaders know that we’re not going to look away. Because we lost someone in our city who was fighting to make that city better. And we’re here to make sure that we finish his work.”

With that, the crowd mounted up, and made their way on Halsted to the 11th Ward Democratic Party building, the historic headquarters for the dynasty of mayors Richard J. and Richard M. Daley. There, participants provided feedback on the street redesign issue to Ald. Lee and passers-by via chants, a petition, Post-It notes, signs, and crash-fatality-themed chalk markings. Here’s a gallery of images from the ride, all of which I shot.

The chant started with “What do we want?” “Bike Grid!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” and ended by honoring the five people killed by drivers while riding bikes and e-scooters in the city of Chicago so far in 2026: Roman Hevelka, 63; Violet Harris, 15; Damian Gomez, 18; Astrid Carrillo Noguera, 17; and Riley O’Neil.

A GoFundMe has been launched to support Riley O’Neil’s partner.

The Riley O’Neil Memorial Fund has been launched at Chicago’s DePaul University to help fund the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development’s “initiatives related to sustainable urban development and the creation of safer cities.”

Clarification 6/17/26, 4:45 PM: After receiving feedback from Chicago, Bike Grid Now! organizer Nik Hunder (also a Streetsblog Chicago contributor), I’ve edited the previous sentence, “Specifically, Bike Grid is demanding that the City install protected bike lanes on the entire length of Halsted Street” to “Specifically, Bike Grid is demanding that the City improve safety on Halsted Street.” I’ve also added a quote from Chris Buie-Gentry to that effect; explained that protected bike lanes would achieve that goal; and edited a couple other statements in the piece to keep things a bit more open-ended.

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