Ben Fried started as a Streetsblog reporter in 2008 and led the site as editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2018. He lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with his wife.
Ben Fried
Recent Posts
Citi Bike Will Start Rolling Out 139 New Stations August 10
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Hard to believe it’s only been two years since bike-share launched in New York. After a tumultuous start roiled by software bugs and the bankruptcy of a key supplier, the city’s bike-share system is finally on a more even keel and ready to expand. Today NYC DOT and Citi Bike announced a firm date when the next batch […]
The Real Reason Uber Traffic Matters in NYC
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For a moment yesterday, it seemed like the big clash between the taxi medallion industry and app-based car services, framed in terms of Uber’s effect on snarled Manhattan traffic, might veer into unexpectedly brilliant territory. There was Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris in the Daily News, telling the MTA that City Hall would consider the Move NY traffic […]
Uber Makes the Case for NYC Cyclists to Download Lyft
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It’s hard to make livable streets advocates take the same side of an issue as the taxi medallion industry, but Uber’s general manager in New York, Josh Mohrer, is giving it his best shot. In a Q&A with Kevin Roose about Uber’s clash with City Hall, Mohrer completely flubbed his chance to make a pitch for […]
Eyes on the Street: The 158th Street Connector
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The paint is down on what will be a short two-way bike lane on 158th Street in Washington Heights, part of a package of DOT improvements [PDF] to make biking and walking safer between the Hudson River Greenway and the recently reopened High Bridge linking Upper Manhattan to the Bronx. This segment runs between the Henry […]
Transpo Funding Intrigue in Washington State
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Here’s a look at what’s happening around the Streetsblog Network today… Washington Governor Jay Inslee may go ahead and swallow the “poison pill” that Republican legislators insisted on including in a state transportation package, reports Frank Chachiere at Seattle Transit Blog. That would mean Inslee will go ahead with a low-carbon fuel standard for the state, which will […]
Will 2nd Ave Get Its Protected Bike Lane After Subway Construction Wraps?
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As the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway wraps up sometime in the next two years, the largest construction zone in the city will turn back into a functional street. Those 40 blocks of Second Avenue on the Upper East Side won’t be the same as before, though. Back in 2010, the city laid out a plan to […]
A Thousand New Yorkers Call for Action on Vision Zero
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A crowd estimated at 1,000 people strong gathered in Union Square yesterday evening to remember victims of traffic violence and call for preventive action at the Vision Zero Vigil, organized by Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets. The message was simple: Traffic crashes and the suffering they cause are preventable. We can’t accept life-altering injuries […]
DOT Finalizes Weak Bike-Share Station Maps for Manhattan Expansion [Updated]
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DOT’s bike-share expansion maps for the Upper West Side and Upper East Side are now final, and they’re not any better than the draft maps that showed a thinned-out network of stations for some of the city’s densest neighborhoods. The final maps shift a handful of stations around but don’t add any (here’s the UWS final […]
MTA Report on Fatal Bus Crash Doesn’t Say What the Post Says It Does
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The Post ran a story today blaming the death of 64-year-old John Lavery in the Bronx last October on a broken street light, not the bus driver who struck him. But the very report cited by the Post, obtained by Streetsblog [PDF], reveals that the MTA’s internal investigation ruled the collision was preventable, and that driver Theresa Gallagher failed […]
When Transit Goes Down at the Polls, Here’s Some Advice on How to Regroup
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Last week, voters in the Vancouver region rejected a half-cent sales tax to pay for a package of transit infrastructure and service expansions necessary to handle growing demand. Even in the city of Vancouver, the measure fell shy of a majority. Polling revealed that most “No” voters didn’t trust the regional transit agency, TransLink, to make good […]
Killing a Transit Project Isn’t Going to Fix Your City’s Parking Crunch
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Yesterday we ran a post from Michael Andersen about how Newark fixed the glut of parked cars on Mount Prospect Avenue, the first street in New Jersey to get a protected bike lane: Instead of letting people park in the bikeway, the city started charging for parking. With a price on parking, people stopped storing their cars […]
Motivate and DOT Squabble, Jeopardizing Success of Bike-Share Expansion
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A dispute between NYC DOT and the company that runs Citi Bike threatens to rob New York City’s bike-share expansion of the very quality that’s made the existing service so useful. The key issue is station density, and whether the stations where Citi Bike expands will be within easy walking distance of each other like in the rest […]