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
Nearly 3,000 Survey Responses Show Brooklyn Wants to Keep PPW Bike Lane
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The results are in from Brad Lander and Steve Levin’s survey about the Prospect Park West bike lane, and the data depict widespread support for the re-designed street among Park Slope residents and Brooklynites in general. Of the nearly 3,000 submissions from Brooklyn residents, 78 percent expressed support for the current two-way bike path configuration […]
Road Pricing Still the Big Missing Piece in MTA Funding Puzzle
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It’s been 20 months since the state legislature passed an MTA funding package with a conspicuous missing piece. In early 2009, the transit agency was reeling from the recession, and straphangers were about to get walloped by deep service cuts and a 23 percent fare hike. Albany responded by enacting just a partial fix: a […]
Park Slope Civic Council Names Prospect Park Gateway Design Comp Winners
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The Park Slope Civic Council announced the winners yesterday in its design competition for the Third Street entrance to Prospect Park, which has sported rickety metal barricades since it was closed to cars in April 2009. In addition to designing a better gateway to the park, the entries had to be movable, to allow for […]
Next Week: Testify at City Council About NYC Bike Policy
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Heads up on an important calendar item for next week. On Thursday, the City Council Transportation Committee will hold an oversight hearing on bike policy, which is expected to focus on bike lanes and how they’re implemented. The public is invited to testify, so if you can spare the time to help explain to council […]
How the Taxi of Tomorrow Can Make Cycling Safer
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More than 13,000 yellow cabs ply NYC streets, carrying more than 600,000 passengers each day. That’s a lot of chances for a familiar risk to city cyclists — car doors opening in traffic. The city’s Taxi of Tomorrow competition promises to select a single design for the entire yellow cab fleet. In the process, the […]
NYC Agencies Take Home EPA’s Top Honors For Smart Growth
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NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden were down in D.C. yesterday to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s annual “Overall Excellence in Smart Growth” award. The EPA highlighted four PlaNYC-related initiatives for recognition: NYC DOT’s Street Design Manual, the city’s Active Design Guidelines, City Planning’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH) […]
Dov Hikind Demagogues Against Safer Streets
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Via Gothamist, here’s Assembly Member Dov Hikind railing against the new pedestrian refuges on Fort Hamilton Parkway at a Brooklyn Community Board 12 meeting last week. Hikind apparently can’t comprehend a program to install street safety amenities that reduce crossing distances in parts of town where lots of seniors live. His 13-minute tirade followed City […]
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It’s fair to say that we live in rather interesting times for NYC transportation policy. In the past week alone, the City Council transportation chair endorsed the idea of 20 mph speed limits, automated enforcement went live on East Side bus lanes after years of advocacy effort, and NYC DOT came out with the first […]
Good Gov Groups, Transit Advocates Call on Cuomo to Stop MTA Raids
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Albany’s repeated plundering of the MTA’s dedicated funds has robbed transit riders of more than $140 million in the past year alone. With a $9 billion budget gap looming, straphangers could end up paying again very soon. An impossible fix, you ask? I know the subject is Albany and we’ve all been conditioned to think […]
NYC DOT Seeking 10,000-Bike System From Bike-Share Providers
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New York City’s plans to implement a public bicycle system should accelerate rapidly with the official release today of a document asking potential providers to submit bids to operate the program. The request for proposals that bidders will be responding to has been posted in the city register, giving a sense of the scale of […]
City to Pursue “Large-Scale” Bike-Share for the Big Apple
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After a long and tantalizing build-up, New York City will officially declare its intent to pursue a public bike-share system tomorrow, when it releases a request for proposals to potential operators, the Times reports. At a sufficient scale, the introduction of bike-sharing here promises to open up cycling to huge numbers of New Yorkers by […]
Bike Lane Cranks Get Star Turn in Times Bicycling Feature
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The Times devoted a feature story today to NYC’s new bike lanes and the people who dislike them. Hard to argue with the timing of the piece. The separated lanes that went in on the East Side, Park Slope, and the Upper West Side this year are highly visible, they shake up the way the […]