On June 5, Chicago city employee Riley O’Neil was killed while riding his bike on Halsted Street through the Bridgeport neighborhood. As a seasoned cyclist and member of the Complete Streets team at the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT), O’Neil knew how to navigate the streets safely on a bike. But the lack of safe infrastructure meant a careless mistake by a driver opening their door into O’Neil’s path had fatal consequences.
Tragedies such as this are preventable. Each year, dozens of people walking and biking are killed on Chicago’s streets. Thousands more are seriously injured. Drivers and people riding in cars are likewise killed and injured in crashes that can be prevented by better infrastructure designs and more robust investment.
While Chicago has made progress reducing the number of fatal crashes on our roadways, the harsh reality is that they remain stubbornly high because of a lack of committed action.
As elected leaders, it is our responsibility to ensure the public safety of our residents. Alongside more than a dozen of our aldermanic colleagues, we endorsed a set of policy recommendations geared toward ensuring tragedies such as what befell O’Neil become a thing of the past.
Every day, we partner with residents, local businesses, city agencies and other stakeholders to plan and implement roadway projects in our wards. We know what works. A city free from serious injuries and fatalities on our roadways is within our reach.
To this end, we are committed to pursuing the following immediate actions — each of these items could have prevented O’Neil’s death if enacted sooner.
1. Ensure adequate staffing and resources for CDOT: We should exempt CDOT from the city hiring freeze and allow vacant positions to be filled immediately. In particular, we must increase the number of budgeted traffic engineers, the lack of which is a bottleneck that delays all traffic studies and road improvements. Overall, we must maintain — and, wherever possible, grow — CDOT and capital improvement project funding levels during the upcoming city budget process.
2. Share additional bike safety information through the city clerk’s office: We are committed to collaborating with the clerk’s office to share road safety information as part of existing processes with residents, including information on the Dutch reach, a step that drivers can take to prevent dooring, as part of the annual renewal of residents’ vehicle stickers.
3. Expand equitable traffic enforcement: The City Council should pass an ordinance this fall making the Smart Streets Pilot Program permanent with a path toward expanding the program citywide. Furthermore, we should recommit ourselves to working toward passing the recommendations provided by the Equity in Enforcement working group.
These three groups of immediate actions are just a first step in what needs to be a long-term, committed effort by the City Council, the mayor, the city clerk and city agencies to address preventable traffic crashes, injuries and fatalities. We have shared these recommendations with these key decision-makers in advance of the council’s work on the 2027 city budget.
Working together, we can bring about the city O’Neil dedicated his life to building — a city with safe streets for all Chicagoans.
Ald. Daniel La Spata represents the 1st Ward. Ald. Matt Martin represents the 47th Ward. Ald. Julia Ramirez represents the 12th Ward. Ald. Desmon Yancy represents the 5th Ward.
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