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
Pedestrians With the Right of Way Should Always Have Protection of the Law
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Jiahuan Xu, 15, had the walk signal when she started across Grand Street in Williamsburg Friday morning. Before she reached the far side of the street, she was struck by a bus driver turning from Union Avenue and “pinned under the left front wheel,” according to the Daily News. After emergency responders rescued Xu, she was […]
New Columbus Avenue Design: Protected Bike Lane By David H. Koch Theater
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The Columbus Avenue bike lane will provide a more continuous protected route past Lincoln Center under a revised DOT proposal that got a thumbs up from Manhattan Community Board 7’s transportation committee Tuesday night [PDF]. Currently, there is no physical protection for people biking between 69th Street and 59th Street. An earlier version of the […]
Linden Boulevard Claims Another Life — Safety Workshop Tomorrow
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On Monday night in East New York, a truck driver turning left from Ashford Street struck and killed Regina Stevenson, 41, as she crossed Linden Boulevard, one of the most dangerous streets in Brooklyn. According to NYPD’s public information office, the driver was turning onto westbound Linden Boulevard when he hit Stevenson, who was crossing […]
A New Type of Streetsblog in St. Louis, Ohio, Texas, and the Southeast? Yep.
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A little more than six years ago, we launched the Streetsblog Network as a way for people across the country writing about livable streets, sustainable transportation, and smart growth to band together and share ideas. There are many wonderful things about the Streetsblog Network, but I would put this is at the top of my […]
Sneckdown Fever!
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With more than two feet of snow expected to accumulate on NYC streets in the next couple of days, this city is about to get blanketed by nature’s traffic calming. Sneckdown fever won’t be far behind. To get things started, we’re reposting the classic 2011 Streetfilm that introduced the phrase “snowy neckdown,” a concept that […]
Big Turnout for DOT’s First Queens Boulevard Safety Workshop
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Change is coming to the most feared street in New York. More than 100 people turned out last night to tell NYC DOT how they want to improve safety on Queens Boulevard. Known as the Boulevard of Death for its appalling record of traffic fatalities and injuries, Queens Boulevard functions as a surface-level highway running […]
DMV Revokes License of Driver Who Killed Allie Liao
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Chris Robbins at Gothamist reports that the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles has revoked the license of Ahmad Abu-Zayedeh, who struck and killed 3-year-old Allie Liao in a Queens crosswalk in 2013. The decision by administrative law judge Sidney Fuchs reinforces the importance of DMV safety hearings as a venue to ensure that reckless […]
Seattle Car-Share Is Growing, But Is It Cutting Traffic?
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After launching a pilot program three years ago enabling the company car2go to use on-street parking spots for its car-share fleet, Seattle is pursuing an expansion that would allow new companies to enter the market and dramatically increase the availability of point-to-point car-share vehicles. Scott Bonjukian at The Urbanist has the details about the expansion […]
What People Think of a Citywide 25 MPH Speed Limit in Decatur
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Last year, New York City enacted a citywide 25 mph speed limit, a central plank in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero street safety platform. Are other American cities going to follow suit? Outside Atlanta, Decatur, Georgia, has been mulling a reduction of its default speed limit for a few years. The results of a […]
Jay Walder on What’s Next for America’s Biggest Bike-Share Company
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Last fall, former MTA chief Jay Walder took over as CEO of Alta Bicycle Share, part of a restructuring that injected new resources and expertise into a company that had struggled to keep up with the demands of running bike-share systems in half a dozen major American cities. This morning, the company came out with […]
Jane Jacobs’ 1958 Warning About the Loss of Street Life Still Resonates
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The mistakes of the urban renewal era are supposed to be behind us. Super-blocks, blank walls, and the publicly subsidized demolition of varied buildings to make way for monolithic districts are relics of a bygone era. Right? Branden Klayko, who writes about Louisville at Broken Sidewalk, doesn’t think so. While development practices have changed in […]
New Name for Alta Bicycle Share: “Motivate”
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After new management took over in 2014, injecting capital and expertise that’s expected to turn around a sputtering operation, the company formerly known as Alta Bicycle Share has adopted a new name: Motivate. (A verb! Very active transportation-y.) Motivate operates bike-share systems in New York, DC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle, making it the […]