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
Fact Check: New York Post Has No Idea Who Planned NYC Bike Lanes
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More evidence that the Post’s campaign to vilify NYC cyclists and discredit bike infrastructure is mainly just a personal vendetta… In today’s installment of invective, the paper turns its attention to SoHo, where SUVs crowd the narrow roadbed and squeeze pedestrians onto sidewalks overflowing with foot traffic, but where Post reporters only have eyes for […]
PlaNYC 2.0 Reactions: Kate Slevin, Tri-State Transportation Campaign
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Streetsblog has been gathering responses to yesterday’s release of PlaNYC 2.0. This is the third installment. Read the first and second parts. In a phone interview yesterday afternoon, Kate Slevin, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, shared her first impressions of the city’s revised sustainability plan… On the diminished prominence of transportation compared to […]
PlaNYC 2.0 Reactions: Joan Byron, Pratt Center for Community Development
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Streetsblog has been gathering responses to yesterday’s release of PlaNYC 2.0. This is the second installment. Read the first part here. Joan Byron, director of policy at the Pratt Center for Community Development, told us the update to the city’s sustainability plan includes some promising developments on the truck traffic front. She noted that some […]
PlaNYC 2.0 Reactions: Paul Steely White, Transportation Alternatives
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Streetsblog has been calling around to transportation advocates and experts, gathering reactions to yesterday’s release of the first major update to PlaNYC 2030 since the citywide sustainability initiative was launched four years ago. Here’s our first installment, with Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely — we’ll be posting more reactions later this afternoon. White told us […]
Video: 400+ Cyclists Per Hour on the Manhattan Bridge
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New York Post columnist Steve Cuozzo, proponent of birther-style conspiracy theories about the growth of cycling in New York, might want to check out this YouTube clip that NYC DOT posted earlier this week, along with other information on how it conducts bike counts. It’s a time-lapse video of cyclists on the Brooklyn approach to […]
Eyes on the Street: NYPD’s Traffic Enforcement Resources at Work
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Here’s another story of how Police Commissioner Ray Kelly allows his scarce traffic safety resources to be spent. Reader Marc Norman took this picture after an encounter at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge bike-ped path this morning. He writes: Because I can’t help myself, I got off my bike and asked the cop parked […]
Mayor’s Office Highlights “Clean Heat Campaign” in Major PlaNYC Update
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Four years after the release of PlaNYC 2030, the citywide sustainability plan that has framed New York’s recent transportation reforms, Mayor Bloomberg is in Harlem today announcing a major update in the effort to build a “greener, greater NYC.” The law that codified PlaNYC in 2007 scheduled revisions to the plan every four years. The […]
Steve Cuozzo’s Bike Data Is Like Donald Trump’s Data on Obama’s Citizenship
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Living in this metropolis of coastal elites, it can sometimes feel like you inhabit a different universe than the America where paranoid skepticism of the president’s citizenship runs rampant, and giving people the option of getting around safely without a car is viewed as a U.N. plot to subjugate us all. But New Yorkers do […]
Eyes on the Street: The Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge Bike Approach
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Clarence sends along a few more shots from the beginning of construction season. These come from Queens Plaza, where the two-way bike approach to the Queensboro Bridge is extending eastward. The bike approach, part of a package of public space improvements to Queens Plaza, will eventually connect Vernon Boulevard and Northern Boulevard. The segment between […]
Grand Army Plaza Redesign Moves Forward Without Plaza Street Bike Lane
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Construction on a slate of pedestrian and bike improvements for Grand Army Plaza is scheduled to move forward this summer, NYC DOT announced this Saturday. The redesign includes a major expansion of the pedestrian islands at the north side of GAP and the addition of a two-way, protected bicycle connection linking Union Street to Eastern […]
Flashback: Grand Army Plaza Public Workshop, March 2007
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With Brooklyn Community Board 6 unanimously approving DOT’s modifications to the Prospect Park West bike lane, the public process surrounding this project has passed another milestone. Including committee votes, last night marked the fourth CB vote in the last two years in favor of the PPW redesign or the city’s proposed changes to it. The […]
Brooklyn CB 6 Unanimously Approves DOT Modifications to PPW Bike Lane
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In a unanimous voice vote last night, Brooklyn Community Board 6 passed a resolution supporting NYC DOT’s proposed modifications to the Prospect Park West bike lane. The changes include building raised pedestrian islands, adding bike “rumble strips” at crosswalks, and narrowing the buffer between the bike lane and parked cars at the northernmost end of […]