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
Whose Job Is It to Fix the MTA? 3 Reasons to Point Your Finger at Cuomo
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Comptroller Scott Stringer came out with a big report yesterday about how New York City contributes more to the MTA than you might think. Add up all the fares, tolls, dedicated taxes, and public funding that originate from the city, and it comes out to $10.1 billion per year. With Governor Cuomo and Mayor de […]
De Blasio on Right of Way Law: Safety Comes First, Not Placating Unions
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Looks like the Right of Way Law isn’t going anywhere. Testifying in the state legislature earlier this year, Mayor de Blasio was compelled to defend the new city law that makes it a misdemeanor for drivers to injure a pedestrian or cyclist who has the right-of-way. The law had come under attack from the Transport […]
Like Great Transit, a Compact City Gives People Freedom
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The Congress for New Urbanism has posted a video of Jarrett Walker (of Human Transit fame) delivering a new presentation, “Learning the Language of Transit.” There’s a passage where Walker frames transit as not simply a mode of transportation, but a means to access your city and, ultimately, the freedom and opportunity to do the things […]
Q Poll: Move NY’s Toll Swap Jacks Up Public Support for Road Pricing
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A new poll released by Quinnipiac today reveals how much New Yorkers warm to the idea of tolling the East River bridges when the policy is paired with lower tolls on outlying crossings. A lot: Support for putting a price on the free bridges rises from 27 percent to 44 percent if accompanied by toll reductions […]
America’s Biggest Bike-Share Operator Now Makes Its Own Bikes
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Motivate, the company that runs bike-share systems in several large American cities, is now manufacturing its own bikes. That might explain why the timetable for Citi Bike expansion has been getting a lot firmer. When the current Motivate management team took over last fall, they inherited two big problems. Most of their systems ran on flawed software that crippled reliability […]
Get Ready for Streetsblog Denver
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I’m pleased to welcome the newest member of the Streetsblog collective: Starting Monday, you can get news and commentary about safe streets, effective transit, and walkable development in the Mile High City by pointing your browser to Streetsblog Denver. Streetsblog Denver arrives at a pivotal moment. The city is growing at an incredibly rapid pace, and it desperately needs […]
De Blasio: Everyone in This City Has to Yield to Pedestrians
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At the press event today announcing the de Blasio administration update to NYC’s citywide sustainability plan (now called “OneNYC” — more on that soon!), the mayor fielded a question about bus design and whether bus drivers can be expected to spot and avoid striking pedestrians in crosswalks. The unspoken subtext was the Transport Workers Union campaign to carve […]
Kent Avenue: A Bikeway for All Ages
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While Clarence was out this weekend taping Right of Way install a memorial to victims of traffic violence, he also got this footage of the Kent Avenue bike lane in Williamsburg. Where else but a protected bike lane will you ever see so many kids biking on the street in NYC? Not that long ago, Kent Avenue […]
NYC DOT Now Using Automated Counters to Measure Bike Trips
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There’s some neat news in NYC DOT’s 2014 bike count announcement that I missed in my haste to post about it yesterday. Last April, the agency began to use loop induction counters to measure bike trips on the East River bridges. The automated counters enable DOT to collect data more often, so we can have greater confidence in […]
Will de Blasio and Mark-Viverito Back Effort to Fully Fund Vision Zero?
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City Hall will have to double its commitment to street redesigns that prioritize safety in order to dramatically reduce traffic deaths on NYC’s most dangerous streets in our lifetimes, advocates say. That level of spending could be accomplished with a relatively small shift in resources in the city’s total capital budget. Transportation Alternatives has drafted a […]
3 Big Takeaways From NYC DOT’s 2014 Bike Count [Updated]
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NYC DOT has posted the 2014 screenline bike count [PDF] (after some prodding from us last week), showing a 4 percent increase over the previous year. Following double-digit percentage growth every year from 2006 to 2010, this marks the fourth consecutive year without an increase of 10 percent or more. The screenline captures bike trips across […]
Streetsblog Retains BlankSlate to Strengthen Our Bottom Line
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Earlier this year, I wrote about the imperative for Streetsblog to generate more revenue from our website. With so many unsold impressions, ads were a clear opportunity to put Streetsblog’s sizable reach to use strengthening our bottom line. Today I’m pleased to announce that we’ve retained BlankSlate to help us sell ads and make good on that […]