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
Get Your Early Bird Tix to Our Annual Benefit Tonight — Before It’s Too Late!
| | 1 Comment
If you live in NYC and read Streetsblog, there are two thing you really ought to do today: vote in the public advocate run-off, and get tickets to our annual benefit, the Streets Ball. Every year our event committee outdoes themselves, and this is going to be the biggest and best bash yet for Streetsblog […]
Informed of Safety Benefits, Most NYC Voters Want Protected Bike Lanes
| | 24 Comments
A poll released by Transportation Alternatives today [PDF] sheds some new light on how NYC voters feel about street redesigns and automated enforcement when the policies are framed in terms of safety benefits. Opinion polls by Marist, Quinnipiac, and the New York Times have consistently shown that New Yorkers support bike lanes by a large margin. […]
Support Streetsblog Tonight: Party With ARTCRANK at Bike Habitat
| | No Comments
The global bike art celebration known as ARTCRANK is whirling through NYC today and tomorrow, and we’d love to see you at the opening night party at Bike Habitat’s Soho store (250 Lafayette Street), starting at 6 p.m. If you haven’t been to an ARTCRANK yet, seeing Bike Habitat transformed into a gallery filled with […]
NYC Bike-Share Subscribers Vastly Outnumber Weiner Voters
| | 12 Comments
Here are a few fun facts about turnout in yesterday’s NYC primaries, framed in relation to the number of annual NYC bike-share members. As of primary day, there were 79,532 annual Citi Bike members. That’s equivalent to… about 30 percent of the votes amassed by the leading Democratic candidate, Bill de Blasio about 40 percent […]
Big Winners on Primary Day: de Blasio and StreetsPAC
| | 24 Comments
Yesterday, New York City Democrats chose the candidate who’s campaigned as the anti-Bloomberg. But on issues of traffic safety and surface transit, Bill de Blasio, despite some wavering, has pledged to build on the current administration’s progress while tackling the unfinished business of reforming the NYPD’s approach to traffic violence. And with several City Council […]
Election Results Open Thread
| | 13 Comments
The polls closed a few minutes ago, and the Times is reporting exit poll results in the Democratic mayoral primary that closely track the polls we’ve been seeing the past few weeks. Bill de Blasio is flirting with the 40 percent threshold to avoid a run-off. If de Blasio doesn’t clear 40 percent, Bill Thompson […]
Primary Day Open Thread
| | 8 Comments
Today is NYC’s most momentous day of voting in 12 years. When the results come in later tonight, the sprawling mayoral field will be narrowed to a handful of contenders, and we’ll have a very clear picture of the next City Council. We’ll know with near certainty who will be the next comptroller, and the […]
City Council Primaries: Where Your Vote Counts the Most
| | 4 Comments
If you’re a registered Democrat in New York City, tomorrow is one of those rare occasions: an election where your vote carries a lot of weight. This is especially true in the City Council primaries, where winning candidates typically need just a few thousand votes to represent districts of more than 150,000 people. The margins […]
Streetsblog’s Guide to the Democratic Mayoral Candidates
| | 41 Comments
The September 10 primary is just a few days away, and over the course of this grueling campaign the candidates have had plenty of time to lay out their vision for New York City’s streets. Transportation Alternatives and StreetsPAC both put together detailed candidate surveys and compiled responses from the leading Democratic candidates. For Streetsblog’s guide to the Democratic mayoral […]
Flashback Friday: 2002 Brooklyn Greenway Ride With Schumer and de Blasio
| | 10 Comments
In the final installment of this summer’s “Flashback Friday” series, featuring musty digital footage from the Streetfilms vault, we present these clips from the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative’s 2002 bike tour of the waterfront near downtown Brooklyn. If you’re like me, you might find yourself rewatching this video artifact a few times over the long weekend. A […]
NYC’s First Speed Cameras Will Go Into Effect When Kids Head Back to School
| | 79 Comments
Mayor Bloomberg joined Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and NYPD Chief of Transportation James Tuller outside a Crown Heights high school this morning to announce the impending launch of the city’s first automated speed enforcement program. Cameras issuing fines for drivers who exceed the speed limit by 10 mph or more will begin operating on September […]
They’ve Got Metrocards in Their Pockets, But Transit’s Not on Their Minds
| | 15 Comments
In New York — the most walkable city in America, where millions of people ride trains and buses every day — transit and street safety tend to be second- or third-tier issues in mayoral elections. At last night’s Democratic mayoral debate, none of the candidates seemed inclined to change that. With 90 minutes and seven […]