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
Needed: A Federal Program to Boost Transit Service
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Instead of cutting people off from opportunity, condemning households to struggle with high transportation costs, and overheating the planet, our transportation systems can advance economic fairness, racial equity, and climate action. To achieve that transformation we’ll need to run more transit service.
Op-Ed: Learning from Nashville’s Failed Transit Measure
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As Austin, Cincinnati, and San Antonio tee up similar measures, here are some pitfalls to avoid.
Uber and Lyft Are Overwhelming Urban Streets, and Cities Need to Act Fast
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Contrary to the story Uber, Lyft, and their peers like to tell, ride-hailing services are not reducing traffic in American cities. Nor will they, even if they meet their goals for converting solo passenger trips to shared rides, according to new research from transportation analyst Bruce Schaller.
New York City Councilman Challenges Safety of ‘Mixing Zones’ and Painted Solutions
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City Council Speaker Corey Johnson wants DOT to provide better protection for pedestrians and cyclists in its redesign of 10th Avenue.
What Happens When a Company That Sells Car Trips Gets Into the Bike Trip Business?
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Lyft has acquired the nation's largest bike-share company, setting up a situation where its bike trip sales will cannibalize its car trip sales.
Let’s Get Serious About Capping Car Speeds in Crowded Cities
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Sound outlandish? The barriers are not as intimidating as they might seem.
Yesterday’s Times Square Toll Was Terrible — But So Is a Typical Day of Traffic Violence
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Given the high-profile location, the number of victims, and recent instances of people using vehicles to kill for ideology, it's understandable that yesterday's crash drew so much attention. But it's important to recognize that as terrible as the Times Square carnage was for a single incident, the same human toll occurs on a daily basis on NYC streets -- it's just dispersed across the city.
Q&A With Oakland DOT Head Ryan Russo on Protected Bike Lanes in NYC
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Few people have been so closely involved in the transformation of the city's streets over such a long period of time as Ryan Russo. So between his last day at NYC DOT and his move to the West Coast, I caught up with him to get an insider's perspective on more than a dozen years of change to NYC streets.
Bike-Share as a Speculative Venture
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New York, you may have heard, is about to get invaded by a swarm of bike-share companies. Their product is often described as “dockless” bike-share: They rely on “smart locks,” not fixed stations, to secure the bicycles. But dockless systems have been operating in cities including Hoboken and Portland for some time now — it’s not […]
Welcome to the New and Improved Streetsblog
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For the first time in nearly nine years, we’re debuting a sitewide redesign of Streetsblog. The last time we overhauled the site, few people were reading news on their phones, Twitter was just finding a mass audience, and no one thought of Facebook as the world’s most important media platform. Streetsblog was a single non-profit with reporters […]
Steve Bannon Would Love to Team Up With Chuck Schumer on Infrastructure
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We mentioned it briefly last week, but Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s comments to the Hollywood Reporter about infrastructure are worth a closer look. It helps explain why Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are making a grave mistake when they line up to help Trump implement this plan. Bannon is the propagandist who entered the Trump campaign team after […]
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi Are Falling for Infrastructure Propaganda
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We’re going to see a lot of stories about Donald Trump and infrastructure in the next few months, and this reporting will be heavily influenced by a message that has been honed and perfected by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It will be important to see through these arguments and view the Trump infrastructure plan with clear eyes. Already, leading Congressional Democrats […]