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Yes! It's our turn!
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
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Lol why would I make this up? They communicate their opposition through back channels. Or at least that's what city staff are telling us when we ask why they haven't included safer designs when they're doing street work.
I'm just randomly reading along and I don't think YOU would make this up, but I could totally see the city staff making shit up to cover their laziness and incompetence. Even if the fire department is seeing safety access problems with, for instance, safer bike lanes, it seems to me that's an inadequate design proposal by the city planning office. It's even possible it was designed to fail, in order to avoid spending money on it. Getting some cyclists and firefighters to work together would probably produce a better solution. No need to include a specific motor vehicle representative, we all have a certain degree of car-brain. But you should include someone who knows about disability access.
Fire departments have been known to oppose bike lanes because they can't get through to emergencies when lanes are given to bikes and there's nowhere for cars to pull over. The solution in the rest of the first world is to use smaller trucks that can fit on and take advantage of car-free bike lanes but the car-brained North American fire departments refuse to give up their gigantic trucks and so here we are.
Well obviously we just need to make them Fire/Police/Bike Lanes and size them appropriately!
Where the cyclists are making their mistake here is ignoring that gigantic opportunity for generously sized lanes and a strong lobbying team. The cops and firefighters already know the cars can't/won't get out of their way, and bikes would be much easier to pull over. Especially because if you were on your bike and heard a siren you would be certain that vehicle is going to be coming down your lane.
I haven't thought this through, but maybe the Emergency Lane should run down the center, bright red and wide enough for two fire trucks to pass each other in case they're going in opposite directions. Then the cars could have their traffic jams and parking etc. in what's left. If the bike lane was a narrow white strip in the center of the Emergency Lane, you might be protected enough by the extra width and red paint that you wouldn't need much physical barrier, so pulling out to the curb in the middle of a block wouldn't be hard as long as you made sure the cars saw you cutting through their lanes. And you could pass each other by momentarily veering into the red.
"This city needs Emergency Lanes with no cars allowed, for our brave Firefighters and Police Officers to save lives!" "But a lot of the time the Emergency Lane will be empty!" yell the car people. "Not if we put the bike lane inside it! Get the spandex squad out of your lanes, and let them be the ones who have to skedaddle, while you drive peacefully along playing games on your phone."
Psychology.
My friends on the volunteer force were upset about bike lanes too, I asked if they ever even get to drive the rig. They don't.
Now the roundabout, that's gotta be tough in the big ass fire engine. It's hard enough to go 270° with a trailer on.
Stoned side note: ya ever consider that in a roundabout you do a complete 360° circle to go the opposite direction? That's a 180 man!
Roundabouts are easy.
I think the really long hook&ladder trucks can have a second driver and turnable back wheels to help make sharper turns. But getting one of those would require funds, and that all goes to the cops.
We're pretty rural so we don't have them fancy city trucks! But yea the cops get new cars every 3-4 years and our firefighters are volunteers...
That's because in roundabouts you have an extra turn to the left and then right (or I suppose right and then left in America?) so you're adding 90 degrees twice to your 180 making it a 360. The math adds up at least
*subtracting 90° twice
(In the US) You would make a 90° turn to the right to enter the roundabout, a 360° turn to the left (putting you back in the same spot as when you entered the roundabout), then another 90° turn to the right to exit.
our fd mandated no speed bumps on a street that was becoming really popular with shitbags racing up and down saying they would destroy firetruck suspension.
we're 4 blocks deep in a neighborhood why they want to race around here is beyond me in the first place. and the city didn't have a problem with the same street having a speed bump on the other side of the green-belt... it's so fucking arbitrary
Speed "cushions" are designed specifically for this purpose, the wider chassis of emergency vehicles can fit around them so they don't have to slow down, whereas consumer vehicles will always have at least one tire hit a bump so they have to slow down. These are all over the place in my city.
I'm a school bus driver and I love these fuckin things. It's so much fun to sail over them at full speed and watch the tailgating asshole behind me go airborne.
do they slow down speedin' cretins?
if it works fuck yeah
Are these “back channels” in the room with us now?