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
Don’t Let a Few Raindrops Keep You Away From Tonight’s CB 6 Hearing
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Opportunities to make your voice heard on the city’s transportation policy don’t get much bigger than tonight’s Brooklyn Community Board 6 hearing about the Prospect Park West re-design. Your presence and testimony can help make this pivotal project permanent and show the press that local support for traffic calming and safer cycling runs deep. The […]
Politically Connected PPW Bike Lane Foes Are Fighting Their Own Neighbors
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If the goal of the Prospect Park West bike lane lawsuit is to smear the Department of Transportation and sow doubt about the city’s street safety initiatives, it’s already doing a bang-up job. The Post and the Daily News both ran pieces yesterday basically lifting arguments straight out of the plaintiffs’ complaint [PDF] without a […]
Advocates Deliver 1,700 Thank Yous to Sadik-Khan and Bloomberg
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One of the first things you learn in journalism is the adage “If it bleeds, it leads.” Conflict sells copy, and bike lane lawsuits and political gossip about the transportation commissioner are like raw red meat for reporters. Innovations that work well and get results? Not so much. Hence the press we’ve been seeing lately […]
Brad Lander and Park Slope Residents Rally For Prospect Park West Bike Lane
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City Council Member Brad Lander and supporters of the Prospect Park West bike lane rallied on the steps of City Hall this afternoon in response to yesterday’s lawsuit, filed by a group of well-connected Park Slope residents who want to rip the lane out. “A small group of opponents have chosen to bring a baseless […]
The New York Times JSK Profile: Politicos vs. Progressive Transportation
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Has the Times ever published a profile so singularly devoted to one city commissioner’s relationships with other public figures as this Michael Grynbaum story? It’s not so much a profile of transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan as a 2,500-word description of her place in New York’s political firmament. The question that drives the piece forward is […]
Bloomberg on His Transpo Commissioner: “Keep Coming Up With New Ideas”
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In his weekly radio appearance with John Gambling, Mayor Bloomberg touched on the demise of the 34th Street pedestrian plaza and gave some revealing answers about his trust in Janette Sadik-Khan and her record as transportation commissioner. In short, it seems like the mayor thinks his DOT commish gets a bum rap in the press, […]
Thursday, March 10 Is CB6’s Prospect Park West Bike Lane Finale
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I make no guarantees about the ultimate accuracy of this headline, but you’ve got to admit that next week’s Brooklyn Community Board 6 forum on the Prospect Park West redesign is shaping up to be a showstopper [PDF]. After all the rallies, surveys, Marcia Kramer segments, senatorial intrigue, threats of lawsuits, and mountains of data […]
DenDekker Withdraws Statewide Bike License Bill
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Celeste Katz at the Daily Politics has the scoop. Here’s the statement from the western Queens Assemblyman who envisioned licenses on every bike and cameras in every bike lane: I am withdrawing proposed legislation A. 5429. I introduced this bill in response to numerous complaints from my constituents regarding bicyclists who were not following local […]
City Scraps Pedestrian Plaza Option for 34th Street Transitway
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Pedestrians who navigate Midtown’s crowded sidewalks won’t get as much as they could have from the proposed 34th Street Transitway. The Times reported last night that NYC DOT will not pursue plans for a pedestrian plaza between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue as part of the project. The plaza was the focus of serialized attacks […]
Eyes on the Street: Negotiating Lafayette and Broome Sans Traffic Controls
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Some utility work apparently knocked out the traffic controls at the intersection of Lafayette and Broome this afternoon. No traffic signals, no pedestrian signals, no traffic agent telling people what to do. I had to stop and watch for a few minutes. There’s a lot of bridge- and tunnel-bound traffic here, and vehicles turning onto […]
Michael DenDekker Explains His Inexplicable Bike License Bill
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Remember last month when Council Member Eric Ulrich came out with the idea of creating a complicated new bureaucracy to register and identify New Yorkers who ride bikes, a proposal that would build an expensive and redundant personal identification system on top of our existing ID systems, opening the door to increased harassment of cyclists […]
Name-Calling Trumps Facts in the Post’s Attacks on 34th Street Transitway
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The New York Post is escalating its coordinated, fantasy-based assault on efforts to make New York a better city for transit, cycling, and walking. Check out the impressive synergies from its opinion pages: Last week, columnist Steve Cuozzo wrote a column blasting plans for the 34th Street transitway without bothering to check facts or call […]