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
Why Is Summer Streets So Rare?
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The forecast for Saturday is bleak — 100 percent chance of rain, lasting just about all day. Tomorrow also happens to be the first Summer Streets event of 2014 (as well as the first during the de Blasio mayoralty). Good thing the main attraction is in a tunnel. But since there are only two other […]
Eyes on the Street: Slower Speed Limits Coming to Broadway, Southern Blvd
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A Streetsblog reader sent in this NYPD flyer posted in the lobby of his apartment building on the Upper West Side, and another reports getting the same notice via email yesterday. The citywide 25 mph speed limit enacted by Albany this session is expected to go into effect in October. In the meantime, the de […]
Eyes on the Street: Carving Up Morningside Avenue for a Road Diet
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Morningside Avenue Road Diet 1st cut! @PedestrianTom @MLSESSOMS @transalt @MarkLevineNYC @StreetsblogNYC @HarlemHCL pic.twitter.com/b2tdNNkc4d — stevemiami (@stevemiami) July 28, 2014 After a breakthrough vote from Community Board 10 in May, DOT crews are out remaking 10 blocks of Morningside Avenue as a safer, calmer neighborhood street. This morning, @SteveMiami captured this circular saw operator at what looks […]
The Citi Bike Deal Is Great News for Other Cities Too
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Andrew Tangel at the Wall Street Journal had an encouraging update this week on the Citi Bike buyout plan first reported by Dana Rubinstein in Capital New York. It looks like the city is days away from announcing a deal in which REQX Ventures, an affiliate of the Related Companies and its Equinox unit, will […]
Tell the City Where You Want Street Safety Fixes — The Clock Is Ticking
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If you haven’t visited the Vision Zero feedback map and flagged locations where you want the city to make streets safer, get it done soon. The website will be taking suggestions for street safety fixes through July 31, then city agencies will figure out what to do with those ideas. The city launched the map at […]
Watch the NYC Bike Network Grow and Evolve Over 120 Years
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Prepare to be mesmerized. Betsy Emmons has mapped the history of New York City’s bike network using the platform MapStory, where she’s currently a summer fellow. Watch the city’s greenways, bike lanes, and bridge paths expand over 120 years. You can see the first designated bike routes — promenade-style parkways designed by Olmsted and Vaux […]
July 25: Meet NYC’s New Ultimate Utility Bike + Benefit Streetsblog
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Come out to DUMBO next Friday for a bike design party where all proceeds from beer sales will benefit Streetsblog and Streetfilms. The new bike at the center of the party is the NYC entrant in Oregon Manifest’s 2014 Bike Design Project. Allow me to explain a bit more: The non-profit Oregon Manifest is putting […]
Center-City Bike Counts Rose 8% in 2013. Now, What About the Rest of NYC?
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Bicycling in the New York City core continues to rise, according to the latest counts from the city. But the methodology NYC DOT uses to measure year-over-year changes in cycling is also showing its age. To get a clearer picture of citywide cycling activity, DOT will have to start doing annual counts in more places. […]
The Case for Center-Running Bus Lanes on Woodhaven Boulevard
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The proposal to improve bus service on Woodhaven Boulevard and Cross Bay Boulevard in Queens is the most exciting street redesign in the works in New York City right now, with the potential to break new ground for bus riders and dramatically improve safety. With as many as five lanes in each direction, Woodhaven Boulevard […]
Which Precincts Are Making Progress on Vision Zero in Queens?
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The advocates at Make Queens Safer have put together this handy visualization of NYPD enforcement trends in Queens using data scraped from PDFs the department posts online. You can see the big increase in failure-to-yield summonses, a smaller but significant bump up in speeding tickets last month, and a mild uptick in red light tickets. […]
Eyes on the Street: New Bike Connection Over Sunnyside Yard
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Looks like DOT crews are making progress on the neighborhood bike plan for Sunnyside and Long Island City that Queens Community Board 2 approved last year. Clarence took this photo of the new bike lane on the 39th Street bridge over the Sunnyside rail yard. He says it got striped a couple of weeks ago. […]
Proposal to Turn Car Storage Into Human Housing Hits Brooklyn CB6 Tonight
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Just a reminder that today at 6 p.m., Brooklyn Community Board 6 will hold a public hearing about the conversion of a 230-car garage on Union Street into a mixed-use building with housing and retail. While traffic on Union Street is bound to improve without all that car storage generating car trips, some nearby residents […]