Another note about fire trucks. There has been a large private equity roll up of fire truck manufacturers resulting in longer lead times and much higher prices. [1]
I was surprised when I specifically checked on Pierce that they are owned by Oshkosh and publicly traded. [2][3]
It really is insane how much prices have increased. Now granted, I've been gone from the fire service for a while (20+ years now) but still. The last new engine I helped spec out back about 1999, cost less than $250,000. The one prior to that (about 1994) cost somewhere around $150,000 IIRC.
Now departments are, from the scuttlebutt I hear, routinely paying more than $1,000,000 for an engine. Of course there are differences (engines are not fungible) but broadly speaking, the idea of any normal fire engine costing more than $1,000,000 just leaves me gob-smacked. Even $500,000 would seem outlandish to me.
Also, yes, lead times have gotten nutty. I recall chatting with a battalion chief from Chapel Hill (NC) FD one day a couple of years ago, and he was telling me they had two new trucks on order (since delivered) that were going to wind up taking somewhere on the order of two years from order to delivery (I don't recall what the exact timeline wound up being, but I'm pretty sure it was not "earlier than expected").
I believe parts for repairs have been impacted in a similar fashion. No hard evidence on that point, but again, going from scuttlebutt and random conversations with friends who are still involved in the fire service.
Do you think the custom-build approach predominant in the U.S. (where engines are designed to specific local needs) is a key factor behind the steep price hikes and lengthy lead times, as opposed to the more standardized, off-the-shelf models that seem common in Europe? Do you support the custom-build approach?
Consolidation leading to long lead times sounds like an efficiency / queuing theory thing. The closer capacity gets to demand, the longer it takes for any slight bumps to work their way out of the backlog.
is a key factor behind the steep price hikes and lengthy lead times
I'm not sure I have an opinion on that. Again, I've been away from the fire service for a long time, and there's a lot of issues that I'm probably not fully up-to-date on.
Do you support the custom-build approach?
I have mixed feelings on that, and always have. On the one hand, I do believe that local needs vary a lot from place to place. For example, a rural farming community in Iowa probably genuinely needs things different from, say, San Francisco. But does each department really need to specify every little detail of how their truck is configured? I'm a big proponent of standardization and I sometimes think that people spec'ing fire trucks get too caught in believing "our case is special" when maybe it's not that special after all. So... uh, yeah. I hate to waffle, but it's hard to say for sure.
Judging by this article, in a country with fairly standard vehicles the lead time is at least 6 months. The price is lower though, £350,000. I saw recent prices from £250-650k while searching, depending what was purchased.
Is that the rule of thumb? I never knew. I guess you only really notice it big-time on large-ticket items that are purchased infrequently like fire trucks. Maybe a car or something, but I never buy brand new cars, so that's probably another reason I haven't been in tune with the degree of inflation.
The historical-average may not be worth internalizing now, given current events.
Namely, a new Republican administration dropping chaos-bombs on the US economy and trying to seize direct control of the banking-infrastructure, which in turn would put Trump's little hands onto the levers for interest-rates.
Probably important to know what percentage that fire truck is of the overall fire department's budget. Has that budget increased with inflation at a comparable amount?
Funding for Firefighters in the US is usually on the county level. The vast majority of counties in the US are poor as dirt, and can't pay for anything.
Don't ever use an "average" to look at the US. From education to sewers to courts to elections to the DMV to land zoning, the US is 50 different countries. They do wildly different things, have wildly different results, and generally are hard to compare.
Then add the Rural/Urban divide and things become even more bleak. Rural fire departments are usually partially or mostly volunteer forces.
So while Urban fire departments probably pay alright (ignoring that the job is "Run into that burning building and maybe die"), do not mistake that for "Firefighters (in general) get paid well"
> any normal fire engine costing more than $1,000,000 just leaves me gob-smacked. Even $500,000 would seem outlandish to me
No, they said 500k would also be outlandish. But the commenter correctly caught that 500k would in fact be exactly the same price, inflation adjusted. This makes a big difference.
Seems like when they buy a new engine now its never your bog standard diesel ladder truck. Its some hybrid or electric beast that looks like a hot wheels designer made it. I can’t imagine that is saving money over a simple diesel truck platform but I can understand why its worth paying that cost too as these old trucks are certainly unpleasant to anyone near them in noise, smell, or air quality.
How many times have we heard this story? How many times has it been a good outcome?
Private equity is the "misaligned AI" we were warned about, only less powerful. If we can't even defeat private equity, what hope do we have?
We shouldn't be war-gaming how we can defeat malicious AI. A more enlightening and realistic scenario is to war-game how we can defeat PE armed with AI.
jeez, from housing to red lobster to veternarians to handymen and HVAC businesses, now fire trucks. Is there anything left that private equity isn't consolidating and squeezing?
Somewhat related, Not Just Bikes / Jason Slaughter talked about how large fire trucks create the need for wide roads, which enables normal car drivers to go at dangerously high speeds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ (27m24s) [2024-08-11]
They open with the sharp increase in pedestrian deaths and zero in on fire trucks. Weird.
Firetrucks haven’t changed since 2010. Pickup truck expansion, embracing poor driver controls and visibility, and the abandonment of traffic enforcement has.
I think a shuffle of fire department equipment may be warranted as EMS has overtaken fire calls, but accommodation of these things is one of a list of many factors.
Poor visibility is partly regulatory driven partly consumer driven. Gotta have those fat A pillars and high beltline with low seating position to max out that crash test rating.
>Itself triggered by poorly thought out public policy.
No. There was no policy that required Ford and Chevy marketing to encourage customers to associate "8 ft high front end" with "better truck".
Pedestrian deaths are related to vehicle grill height, not weight. We could have the same modern monster trucks with a lower grille and have fewer pedestrian deaths.
Absolutely the height of truck's hoods has increased dramatically over time. I say this as the owner of a pickup truck (and a cargo bike).
My 2000 2500 has a hood approximately at my belly button. Most current 1/2 tons have a hood height at my nipple (I'm 5'8).
A Pillars have gotten significantly thicker too, making it harder to see pedestrians at corners.
Then there is the expanding cab and shrinking bed. The visibility in a standard cab truck is phenomenal, you are surrounded by glass. Higher beds are also harder to use, which doesn't matter for most truck buyers because they buy them as a statement, not for utility.
Have you ever actually ridden with someone under the influence? In contrast to alcohol (or caffeine, among other things) they're generally much less prone to road rage, much less prone to hurried or reckless behavior, and often somewhat paranoid. At least in my personal experience they're more likely to drive under the speed limit than over it.
I strongly suspect that it increases road safety on the whole.
I would accuse that article of serious problems due to potentially very misleading statistics. The entire claim comes down to a single unsubstantiated quote.
> The odds of being involved in a motor vehicle crash when driving ‘stoned’ are approximately double those of sober driving, but significantly less than the 10 to 15 times increase when driving with a blood alcohol concentration of approximately 0.1,
That statistic doesn't account for conditional probability. At any given time of day, the set of people consuming recreational drugs have a significantly different distribution of group membership than the inverse of that set. I am reasonably confident that it constitutes a fatal flaw in this case.
> during the pandemic, fatally injured and non-fatally injured drivers “have demonstrated significantly higher overall drug prevalence.”
That doesn't tell us anything since what we would need is the numbers relative to trips without incident normalized for historical driving behavior of the individuals queried. (I realize that would be a nearly impossible dataset to obtain. That doesn't make the presented statement correct though.)
Something very strange to me in my urban setting is the dichotomy between motorists and everything else on the road.
You can really rely on everyone driving a motor vehicle to obey practically every traffic law every time. That is, they stop for red lights, they stay in lanes, make legal/safe turns; they generally stay near the speed limit and don’t egregiously violate it. And they know that driving is a privilege and that violations can cost them their license, which will cost them their job, their freedom and a lot of things.
On the other hand we’ve got cyclists, pedestrians, scooters, wheelchairs: all sorts of other conveyances on the road, and they basically ignore every traffic law imaginable. Most of those don’t need licensing, and I’m really not clear on the consequences for breaking laws, but often none at all. It’s not like a judge can revoke your privilege to walk on the sidewalk if you’re a jaywalker, and the state wouldn’t ever financially ruin somebody with court fines, for breaking traffic laws on a bicycle or scooter anyway.
So it’s a really crazy situation, for me as a pedestrian, because I can count on motorists to obey laws, but everybody else is absolutely Lord of the Flies / Critical Mass around here. It’s a college town, and so there’s lots of young adults and/or foreigners, and they don’t know the laws, and they don’t care, and they walk wherever they want, and they scoot wherever they want, and they bike whatever direction they care about. And traffic laws be damned.
Personally, I’m the slowest and smallest thing on the road, and I eagerly defer to everything else that’s bigger and faster than me. It often confuses motorists when I permit them to enter a driveway rather than walk in front of them. Many motorists are extremely over cautious about pedestrians, and it’s nearly always difficult to convince them that I’m yielding my right-of-way— on foot— and permitting them to do what they want.
I greatly appreciate vehicles that signal properly and manifest their intentions so that I can anticipate them, because I often find myself directly watching tires and other external controls, in order to get the best signal for a driver’s intentions, regardless of how they're blinkers are working— especially BMWs...
> You can really rely on everyone driving a motor vehicle to obey practically every traffic law every time. That is, they stop for red lights, they stay in lanes, make legal/safe turns; they generally stay near the speed limit and don’t egregiously violate it. And they know that driving is a privilege and that violations can cost them their license, which will cost them their job, their freedom and a lot of things.
Where do you live that this is your observation? This is not what I observe in the United States. Speeding is rampant. Distracted driving is rampant. People roll through stop signs and run red lights enough that everyone should watch out for it.
> It’s a college town, and so there’s lots of young adults and/or foreigners, and they don’t know the laws, and they don’t care, and they walk wherever they want, and they scoot wherever they want, and they bike whatever direction they care about. And traffic laws be damned.
I'm curious what the traffic laws actually are for pedestrians and cyclists in your town. I imagine almost all of them are in regards to interactions with cars, since a pedestrian running into another pedestrian is rarely a life threatening scenario so having a law to enforce pedestrian only traffic isn't a big deal.
>It often confuses motorists when I permit them to enter a driveway rather than walk in front of them. Many motorists are extremely over cautious about pedestrians, and it’s nearly always difficult to convince them that I’m yielding my right-of-way— on foot— and permitting them to do what they want.
In many places the traffic law is to give pedestrians right-of-way over vehicles at otherwise uncontrolled junctions. Motorists are confused because you're asking them to break the traffic laws.
> You can really rely on everyone driving a motor vehicle to obey practically every traffic law every time. That is, they stop for red lights, they stay in lanes, make legal/safe turns; they generally stay near the speed limit and don’t egregiously violate it. And they know that driving is a privilege and that violations can cost them their license, which will cost them their job, their freedom and a lot of things.
What utopia do you live in? There's a major wreck at least once each year a couple blocks away when too many people speed while blowing the stop sign at the same time. There's a motorcyclist routinely going 115mph+ through our 25mph neighborhood, and despite having gotten the police to give him stern warnings on three separate occasions he still hasn't stopped (has slowed down to ~80 most days). The median minimum speed at stop signs is 10mph, which might sound safe, but it's faster if you happen to be crossing the crosswalk at the same time because they have to make sure they can get in front of you -- usually misjudging and requiring me to jump away. And you're right that people usually stay in their lanes ... on straight segments ... on curves I have to be prepared to take evasive action as some pickup truck inevitably borrows half my lane while I'm beside them.
Sure, cyclists usually brazenly flaunt traffic stops, speed limits, and the requirement to share the road, but it's not anywhere near as bad as what the cars are doing.
You make a good point about cyclists, some of whom are only surpassed in misery by swimmers.
But the focus on cars is a risk calculus Probability*impact. If the bike guy hits you, you’ll fall and maybe get hurt. If a car hits you at 30, you’re dead or hospitalized. We rightly empathize threat to life over lower chance of relatively minor injury.
Cars and pedestrian/bikes are an apple to oranges comparison. Its like comparing how we regulate cars to private planes. They just have completely different potential to hurt other people. Placing such a heavy burden on pedestrians/cyclists is just disproportionate to the threat they pose. There is no reason to expect a level play field relative to cars because they are just so different.
And to be clear people should be careful and look after their own safety. But that does not mean they have some moral obligation to help drivers limit the threat they pose. Nor is it reasonable to expect pedestrians to be perfect 100% of the time. Getting drunk, glancing at your phone, being distracted should not be a death sentance.
After reading this comic and understanding its real-life implications, I always avoid signaling any motorist to take action now. I simply indicate hesitancy to them, or I just turn around and loiter on the corner, looking in the opposite direction and indicating with my entire body that I have no intention of walking into their path. It is always a pedestrian's prerogative to stop, to wait, to not move forward nor backwards, unless we're in the middle of the street or something, you know? I can even sit down on the curb, and take 5 minutes to breathe, if there's no bench available. Completely legal.
So this happens at green-light intersections as well as driveways and other junctures. At a residential driveway, I'll carefully check for vehicles intending to pull in or out, before I start crossing it. Because I'm often walking down stroads that are 35mph+. I would rather hang back, take a rest from walking, and allow traffic to smoothly exit that stroad, than insist on my own legal right-of-way.
So no, I'm not requesting or requiring any behavior at all from other motorists or road-users. I'm simply standing still and turning aside and failing to plow through a shared space, OK?
Now I live in Metro Phoenix and Tempe is a college-town. So I see all kinds of traffic hijinx. So people may certainly break traffic laws, but motorists really don't do it much at all, in proportion to the heavy traffic that plagues all our streets here.
Motorists seldom surprise or shock me by doing really crazy maneuvers. Yes, I've seen cars drive the wrong-way on a stroad for like, 1/4th block. Yes, I've seen cars make left turns that are technically illegal. But in general, they definitely stop for red lights (because the cops patrol them and so do the cameras take photos and mail them tickets!) and they definitely do not drive 100mph in a 35 or anything crazy, all things being equal. I frequently ride Veyo, taxis, Uber, and Lyft, and all those drivers are quite safe. I also ride public transit so much: those are the safest operators on the road, bar none. They are hired for their clean records and excellent prudence. I trust public transit with my life, whether I'm in the bus, or crossing the street.
Out on those stroads I feel extremely safe as a pedestrian, crossing the street legally, or in a crosswalk, or just strolling down the sidewalk. If motorists routinely broke traffic laws, I wouldn't feel safe and I'd be expecting surprises! But generally motorists act completely sane, even if they're staring at their SMS!
Now it is possible for a single pedestrian, a cyclist, or a scooter to really cause a big fuckin' accident. I contend that any surprise from a person on foot will mess up the flow of traffic. I have seen middle-school students throwing drinks at one another on the sidewalk, one of them runs into the road to avoid getting drenched, and they're right in front of an oncoming bus going 20-25mph. Holy crap. People have definitely walked right under the light rail and been literally dragged for yards and yards, before the operator could apply the brakes, and the first-responders could pry their dead corpses out. I personally leapt out in front of a Waymo going 35mph once, just to see if it would dodge me (it did but I was crazy).
I have caused a significant amount of road-range and honking and really angry pedal-stompers by riding a manual bicycle and an electric scooter in the traffic lanes (35-40mph limits). The scooters can go max 17mph and it's 100% legal for me to take such a traffic lane, and I play it extremely safe, but still the motorists become enraged and they engage in risky behavior. If I weren't so safe I could cause a major pile-up with that scooter and harm myself in the process, as well.
There are comprehensive laws on Tempe's books for people who operate bicycles and eScooters. I read some of them. If an eScooter is riding on the sidewalk, they can't go past 5mph and they need to yield for everyone (like pedestrians and wheelchairs). There were so many restrictions on sidewalk-riders, I decided that riding scooters and bicycles in the street is far more straightforward (can go up to 17mph rather than 5 plus frequent stops!)
So your assertion that pedestrians can't hurt anyone is false. All a pedestrian needs to do is leverage a lot of momentum by surprising the operator thereof. And then all hell can break loose.
Walking on the sidewalk, I routinely encounter illegal scooters, illegal powered cycles, really aggressive wheelchair users, and all sorts of idiot behavior. You simply can get away with murder, literally, on any sidewalk around here, because there's nearly no accountability for violations, compared to motorists on the roads. Last week there was a pack of 3 boys wearing helmets and BMX gear, riding their bicycles down the sidewalk (and up onto lawns and boulevard strips, commanding as much width as possible), and clearly intending to disrupt and annoy passengers on the bus who were boarding and disembarking. They were able to maintain the exact pace of the bus I rode w.r.t. all its designated stops, and they were really determined to be entitled little jerkoffs, sticking it to the poor man.
Motorists can be held accountable for everything by means of traffic laws, driver licenses, vehicle registrations, and insurance policies. There is a huge amount of legal leverage over any driver on the road that simply never applies to peds or cyclists or riders of scooters or narcocorridos or coyotes around here.
Therefore I feel 100% justified in being courteous and giving deference to everyone else. Defensive driving translates to "defensive walking" or "defensive scooting" for me, these days. I'm 53 years old, and I expect to see 54 with all my limbs intact.
I’m American, but currently in one of those European places with delightfully narrow roads. In my opinion, it’s more dangerous because people drive just as fast, with less margin for error. Having experienced both, I think “narrow roads are safer” is an anti-car meme from people who wouldn’t mind if driving was as miserable as possible.
It feels more dangerous, but that sense of danger is what improves safety. It's when people, especially drivers, feel comfortable that accidents increase; they let their guard down.
The US has dramatically higher rates of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities and injuries than Western European countries, both per capita and per kilometers walked and cycled, and that's presumably with those countries having more narrow roads.[1] See, e.g., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5227927/ Japan falls somewhere between the US and EU. But since the elderly are at far higher risk of both injury and especially fatalities, the larger elderly demographic might have something to do with it.
That sense of danger is it's own legitimate issue, though, and as someone with two small kids I'm definitely a proponent of separating pedestrian and cyclist traffic from cars, and even cyclists from pedestrians.[2]
[1] The lived density in the US isn't that different from Europe. There's plenty of analysis showing that. But I haven't seen rigorous data and analysis comparing road layouts, traffic patterns, and their association with pedestrian and cyclist accidents rates writ large (as opposed to local studies), thus the conjecture.
[2] Cyclists in the US are incredibly aggressive. I've never been hit by a car, but I've been hit twice by cyclists while crossing the street, and nearly a third by one going so fast I definitely could have been killed. (It does happen--cyclists killing pedestrians, albeit usually the elderly.) Two of those three incidents the cyclist was going the wrong way down a one-way, and while ever since the first crash I habitually look both ways crossing a one-way, the third incident happened just as I was turning my head to look in the reverse direction while stepping off the curb--they were flying down the (flat) road the wrong way while also hugging the curb. (FWIW, I was crossing at a busy crosswalk downtown, not jaywalking.) While drivers are liable to be negligent, cyclists of all ages seem much more often to be wantonly reckless.
> It feels more dangerous, but that sense of danger is what improves safety.
I think that’s the idea. Well in Europe they may not have a choice in an old part of town. But in US I’ve seen a municipality replace a two lane street with a one lane plus a median. It was specifically done as a traffic calming measure. The wide street somehow made people drive too fast. It worked pretty well I think. It was just unusual as typically we love to expand roads not shrink them.
It's absolutely nuts to me that US cities (like in Sunset in SF with 50 foot wide roads) accommodate giant fire trucks in addition to both sides having street parking (and driveways and garages!) instead of having narrower roads with smaller trucks (like in Netherlands and Japan, which were discussed in that video).
NJB also has a video※ about Japan's tiny streets (relative to USA) that elaborates on how a single factory (street width) can improve so much about a place.
San Francisco’s plan was built wide to accommodate streetcars and to reduce the spread of fire. The city was razed by fire after the 1906 earthquake, with several reasons (including a lunatic army contingent that built “firebreaks” by blowing up buildings and the fire chief getting killed in a freak accident early on) contributing. There’s a great book called “San Francisco is burning” worth reading.
My dad was a fire chief for decades in a city department. They only cared about street width in central business districts or other areas where certain types of aerial ladders were required for rescue companies. If they can’t get a ladder up, they need more firemen to respond to certain calls. Cities are insured and firemen DNGAF if they smash up cars on narrow streets, I suspect they find it fun.
On the other hand San Francisco has these giant articulated aerial ladder trucks. European trucks reach the same ladder heights on much smaller trucks by having more telescoping segments on the ladder.
I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of it is a feedback loop: wide streets mean fire trucks can be big, big fire trucks mean streets have to be big (even if only the streets the fire department cares about)
Edinburgh's new town (designed 1776) has some very wide streets. When cars were invented they became handy because two cars could be parked nose to nose across the middle of the street plus the usual curb parking on both sides, still leaving room for four lanes of traffic. Traffic calming and pavement|sidewalk widening measures in recent years have reduced this to one vehicle across the middle, curb parking and one lane each way.
Check out the Village Homes subdivision in Davis, CA.
It was designed with narrow streets and off street parking so that trees could more effectively shade the pavement. Also, the paved streets alternate with bike and walking paths between rows of houses.
One result of the shaded streets and increased greenery is ambient summer temperature that is noticably cooler compared to other nearby neighborhoods.
The original planners worked with the local FD to make sure their trucks could turn around in the cul de sacs.
Just to point, and as the video say, it's not the trucks that create the need. Just because your city have some large trucks to send where hydrants are rare, it doesn't mean you need to design the entire city so they can fit.
The video states at 1:37: "Baltimore was supposed to install 10 miles of new bike lanes downtown, but the fire department said that would make the streets too small for its trucks and aggressively fought against the plan."
This is false. The residents of Potomac Street (the visual example given in the video) aggressively lobbied against the bike lanes because they would take away parking spots. The residents involved the Fire Marshalls. The Fire Marshalls noted that the street would be 19 feet wide and the fire code called for 20 foot streets and, enforcing the law, they said the project needed to be paused until an exemption was granted.
I even aligned the streeview image to extremely close to the exact position the video showed at the timestamp where the narrator said "was supposed to install".
I knew they were wrong about Baltimore because while I am not a BFD employee I am a both a volunteer firefighter in an exurb of Baltimore and a cyclist, so I followed the development of bike lanes in the area very closely.
I figured that if the video was wrong about Baltimore, they probably just googled "fire department oppose bike paths" and used the article titles as references so I looked up the Peekskill story.
The narrator states at 2:12, explicitly including the Peekskill Esther Place pedestrian mall, "all of this potential progress WAS LOST".
Also, there is no evidence of the fire department raising any objections to it except for a strongtowns.org blog post, and the youtube channel and the website appear to be the same entity.
So now I'm like "is the entire video bullshit"?
edit: I must be trippin because I know that European cities with narrow medieval streets have smaller fire trucks, but the dimensions for the Scania P460, a common euro-spec fire truck and MAN TGM (a fire truck used by a Dutch volunteer fire company youtube channel I follow) and a Pierce Saber (a normal, typical US-spec fire truck) are damn near identical except for a custom variation in length with US trucks being about 5 feet longer-- hardly a radical difference.
Consider at front and rear axle loads, not how your eyes perceive their sizes.
Even this article cites the fire department objections.
It's a shame that Not Just Bikes didn't seem to catch that the lane _did_ get built, but his point seemed to focus on FDs objecting to bike lanes, and I think that Baltimore story is a prime example of that.
> The Fire Marshalls are required by law (and oath) to enforce the laws.
This isn't what they were doing. To quote from the baltimoresun article linked above
> She then detailed several incidents, including an alleged assault on May 14 at the Baltimore School for the Arts at a meeting to discuss a bike lane.
> Baltimore City firefighter Charles Mudra is accused of assaulting Austin Davis, a Baltimore city employee who attended the meeting and who lives on Cornish’s block. Mudra has a court date scheduled for Aug. 13. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There is no legal obligation to criminally assault people you disagree with.
> Then, a bicyclist says a fire department employee cut her off with his pickup truck and screamed, “I still hate you!”
This is harassment, bordering on criminal (driving offences if not assault)
> Ford [the fire chief] said he was aware of the two incidents of physical confrontation involving members of the fire department
There is no legal obligation to engage in physical confrontations
> Ford said his opposition to changes to the fire code comes from concern for public safety, not animus against bike lanes.
There is no legal obligation to oppose changes to the fire code.
> The council held an oversight meeting Tuesday to question the agency as members consider stripping regulations from the fire code to make it easier for protected bike lanes and developments to be built — a move the fire department is lobbying against. Fire officials do not want the city to replace International Fire Code requirements with National Association of City Transportation Officials’ Urban Street Guidelines.
There is no legal obligation to lobby
> Liz Cornish, director of the advocacy group Bikemore, is alleging that fire department brass sent large vehicles in front of her house while making a video about how protected bike lanes impede firefighting.
This is not something that they are possibly required to do.
> Fire Chief Niles R. Ford said Tuesday he had no intention of intimidating Cornish when fire officials parked in front of her house to film a video to support their argument. He said he wanted to show how much-needed fire equipment has trouble fitting down streets made narrow by bike lanes.
There is clearly no legal obligation to
1. Film videos supporting their desire to have wide streets
2. Make public comments that they need wide streets.
This isn't even close to a case of them "just enforcing the law".
Not Just Bikes and Strong towns are different organizations that employ different people. They are pretty closely aligned ideologically and collaborate frequently, but they aren't the same entity.
>There are plenty of sources in that article though?
There are no mentions of the fire department in that article except one in the last paragraph.
>“We’d love to talk to the fire and police departments and figure out a way to address safety concerns while keeping this corner a permanent fixture of the city,”
There are no other easily findable references on the internet.
All of this ignores the fact that the narrator of the video implied that the pedestrian mall was removed due to fire department interference, when it obviously wasn't and this conversation thread will not stray into any tangents and will focus on the fact that the narrator implied that the pedestrian mall was removed due to fire department interference, and that was a lie.
> The Fire Marshalls noted that the street would be 19 feet wide and the fire code called for 20 foot streets and, enforcing the law, they said the project needed to be paused until an exemption was granted.
This is missing the forest for one particular tree. The fire code calling for 20 foot streets is because that's what the fire departments asked for. It's not a requirement that came out of nowhere, or that they aren't (morally) responsible for.
CAL FIRE has their own specialized fire trucks.[1] California has a huge number of wildfires, all over a big state.[2] CAL FIRE has about 3,000 pieces of equipment.
Current CAL FIRE trucks are 4 wheel drive off-road heavy trucks. They're shorter than municipal or airport trucks, for dirt roads with tight turns. They use a 500 gallon tank with a foam system.
It's curious that even when length is a concern they still went with bonneted trucks instead of the cab-over-engine design that dominates Europe because of length and maneuverability considerations.
> Oshkosh Corporation (current; won rebuy competition)
and that's part of the private equity consolidation of emergency vehicle manufacturers from another comment [1] in this post. Perhaps that means there could be more compact, maneuverable, cabover designs of commercial fire trucks!
No thoughts on this maneuverability debate and totally respect the firefighters in every country, but just chuckling that the trucks on that french page literally look like cute little toys.
The photos might have some tilt-shift-like effect going on.
Proportionally they're fine when you look at window and door sizes. They're just short wheelbase 4/8 tonne trucks with a dual cab. You see them fairly often here in .au driven by tradies who actually understand what they need to use for work and entertainingly smaller, easier to park, and have a cargo capacity larger than the shitty utes that all the accountants drive
From my point of view in Europe, where the French vehicles look completely normal, the Californian ones look very aggressive, and like something from a museum.
Fascinating to see how the engineering requirements drive such different designs. The 3,000 gallons vs 500 gallons water capacity difference is particularly striking, as is the acceleration requirements for ARFF vehicles. Classic example of how specialized use cases lead to specialized equipment.
In an earlier life I was an airport fireman. It was in the late 80's so I'm pretty sure things have changed, but physics stays the same.
Firstly the engines on these beasts are massive. My truck had 4500 gallons of water and 500 gallons of foam. It could go 60mph in a (very) straight line (that's what taxi ways are for) but acceleration and breaking were ponderous.
We had another vehicle carrying 500 gallons, with a huge twin-turbo motor, which had insane acceleration and could do 100mph. It's job was to get there first, dump suppressant quickly and get out the way in the 20 seconds before I got there.
Couple things I remember- these things go fast, but corner badly, so one slows down a lot before turning.
Water is really dangerous to transport because it sloshes around moving the center of gravity. Best to drive with water tanks full or empty. If they're only partially full you drive really slowly around corners. Like walking speed. Not surprisingly they were almost always 100% full.
Mine had pretty much 0% suspension. I took a shortcut once and hit a dirt ripple made by a recent grader. Maybe 8 inches high. The jolt was so bad the plastic light covers popped off the flashing lights. The guy in the roof well almost got thrown overboard.
Honestly, I was 18 years old and it was tremendously good fun. But I will say that the car accidents we attended turned me into a cautious driver. And I font need to "go fast" in a car - thats pretty tame compared to going fast in a 36 ton truck.
I randomly bought a fire truck a few months ago.
I was looking for something to convert into a camper van, and found my truck:
(A) low mileage, compared to other trucks because of the usage. Ambulances etc. are super high mileage.
(B) they have excellent maintenance, so it’s ship shape
(C) low comparable purchase cost due to tiny resale market.
I’m loving it. Kids love it. Community loves it. Wife tolerates it. Converted it into a camper and party truck!
I may write a post.
A lot of the effort was removing weight without killing the aesthetics. It has been an awesome outlet for creativity and fiddling.
I have built everything myself, with input from tradies - everyone just loves helping.
Maintanance I leave to the mechanics.
So far it has (a) back bench converted into sleeper area (b) slushie machines, foam machine, beer keg pourer, slide out bbq (c) built a roof that you can sleep in. (D) roof lifts with linear actuators to expose dj lights/smoke machine in the centre (e) plumbing / electrics etc so we can use off-grid.
It has heaps of storage space and is super fun and easy to drive!
Back in the late '70s my dad bought a retired 1942 pumper fire truck from the city. Back then it was sealed bids submitting to the city. He was the only one who bid on it.
I assume today you could buy an airport one from a government auction site.
The picture that shows the difference in visibility is a bit misleading due to a very different perspective?
I'm assuming the visibility difference is still quite different, but it feels like one of the pictures is the perspective of someone in the back seat, as it were.
Among their exhibits is a 300-year-old wagon, and basically this is a gigantic warehouse and boneyard for old fire trucks and equipment which has been lovingly restored to pristine conditions.
There are plenty of memorials for deceased firefighters who made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives, and there's special memorial for the Hot Shots who perished in Yarnell several years back.
The airport truck is gonna be operated in a different regulatory setting under different incentives than the municipal truck. That counts for something.
Another note about fire trucks. There has been a large private equity roll up of fire truck manufacturers resulting in longer lead times and much higher prices. [1]
I was surprised when I specifically checked on Pierce that they are owned by Oshkosh and publicly traded. [2][3]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/us/fire-engines-shortage-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce_Manufacturing
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_Corporation
It really is insane how much prices have increased. Now granted, I've been gone from the fire service for a while (20+ years now) but still. The last new engine I helped spec out back about 1999, cost less than $250,000. The one prior to that (about 1994) cost somewhere around $150,000 IIRC.
Now departments are, from the scuttlebutt I hear, routinely paying more than $1,000,000 for an engine. Of course there are differences (engines are not fungible) but broadly speaking, the idea of any normal fire engine costing more than $1,000,000 just leaves me gob-smacked. Even $500,000 would seem outlandish to me.
Also, yes, lead times have gotten nutty. I recall chatting with a battalion chief from Chapel Hill (NC) FD one day a couple of years ago, and he was telling me they had two new trucks on order (since delivered) that were going to wind up taking somewhere on the order of two years from order to delivery (I don't recall what the exact timeline wound up being, but I'm pretty sure it was not "earlier than expected").
I believe parts for repairs have been impacted in a similar fashion. No hard evidence on that point, but again, going from scuttlebutt and random conversations with friends who are still involved in the fire service.
Do you think the custom-build approach predominant in the U.S. (where engines are designed to specific local needs) is a key factor behind the steep price hikes and lengthy lead times, as opposed to the more standardized, off-the-shelf models that seem common in Europe? Do you support the custom-build approach?
Consolidation leading to long lead times sounds like an efficiency / queuing theory thing. The closer capacity gets to demand, the longer it takes for any slight bumps to work their way out of the backlog.
is a key factor behind the steep price hikes and lengthy lead times
I'm not sure I have an opinion on that. Again, I've been away from the fire service for a long time, and there's a lot of issues that I'm probably not fully up-to-date on.
Do you support the custom-build approach?
I have mixed feelings on that, and always have. On the one hand, I do believe that local needs vary a lot from place to place. For example, a rural farming community in Iowa probably genuinely needs things different from, say, San Francisco. But does each department really need to specify every little detail of how their truck is configured? I'm a big proponent of standardization and I sometimes think that people spec'ing fire trucks get too caught in believing "our case is special" when maybe it's not that special after all. So... uh, yeah. I hate to waffle, but it's hard to say for sure.
Judging by this article, in a country with fairly standard vehicles the lead time is at least 6 months. The price is lower though, £350,000. I saw recent prices from £250-650k while searching, depending what was purchased.
https://www.northantsfire.gov.uk/2022/05/17/new-engines-0522...
They're not "custom" they're "pick your product, pick how you want it outfitted from these dropdown menus"
Inflation doubles every 30 years right? So 250k in 1999, is almost 500k in 2029. 500k shouldnt seem outlandish, if 250k wasnt.
(I believe 1999-2025 is ~92% so 250=480.)
Inflation doubles every 30 years right?
Is that the rule of thumb? I never knew. I guess you only really notice it big-time on large-ticket items that are purchased infrequently like fire trucks. Maybe a car or something, but I never buy brand new cars, so that's probably another reason I haven't been in tune with the degree of inflation.
We can look and check. (The 70s throw it off a bit.) These are all 11 or 31 year periods.
1995-2005 $2.10
1965-1995 $4.84
1935-1965 $2.30
1985-2015 $2.20
1980-1990 $1.59
1970-1980 $2.12
1960-1970 $1.31
2.5% inflation over 30 years gets you that number.
Whether or not that's a good rule of thumb depends on how much you believe in putting economists and "neoliberals" in charge :)
2.5% seems like a typical goal for monetary policy.
Yes. My point is that the monetary policy that so far has worked out pretty well is gonna get thrown out the window when JPow leaves/is fired.
The historical-average may not be worth internalizing now, given current events.
Namely, a new Republican administration dropping chaos-bombs on the US economy and trying to seize direct control of the banking-infrastructure, which in turn would put Trump's little hands onto the levers for interest-rates.
Probably important to know what percentage that fire truck is of the overall fire department's budget. Has that budget increased with inflation at a comparable amount?
Much more in most areas; fire department employees are now the best-paid government employees in many (if not most) jurisdictions.
65% of American Firefighters are volunteer.
Funding for Firefighters in the US is usually on the county level. The vast majority of counties in the US are poor as dirt, and can't pay for anything.
Don't ever use an "average" to look at the US. From education to sewers to courts to elections to the DMV to land zoning, the US is 50 different countries. They do wildly different things, have wildly different results, and generally are hard to compare.
Then add the Rural/Urban divide and things become even more bleak. Rural fire departments are usually partially or mostly volunteer forces.
So while Urban fire departments probably pay alright (ignoring that the job is "Run into that burning building and maybe die"), do not mistake that for "Firefighters (in general) get paid well"
I never used an average.
okay, but the example given is that the new trucks are double the doubling.
> any normal fire engine costing more than $1,000,000 just leaves me gob-smacked. Even $500,000 would seem outlandish to me
No, they said 500k would also be outlandish. But the commenter correctly caught that 500k would in fact be exactly the same price, inflation adjusted. This makes a big difference.
Normal cars also cost somewhere around 4x as much since then. It's inflation.
Seems like when they buy a new engine now its never your bog standard diesel ladder truck. Its some hybrid or electric beast that looks like a hot wheels designer made it. I can’t imagine that is saving money over a simple diesel truck platform but I can understand why its worth paying that cost too as these old trucks are certainly unpleasant to anyone near them in noise, smell, or air quality.
Private equity is the "misaligned AI" we were warned about, only less powerful. If we can't even defeat private equity, what hope do we have?
We shouldn't be war-gaming how we can defeat malicious AI. A more enlightening and realistic scenario is to war-game how we can defeat PE armed with AI.
jeez, from housing to red lobster to veternarians to handymen and HVAC businesses, now fire trucks. Is there anything left that private equity isn't consolidating and squeezing?
Just saw a good video on this that was published a few days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvW-RtTRm8w
Somewhat related, Not Just Bikes / Jason Slaughter talked about how large fire trucks create the need for wide roads, which enables normal car drivers to go at dangerously high speeds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ (27m24s) [2024-08-11]
They open with the sharp increase in pedestrian deaths and zero in on fire trucks. Weird.
Firetrucks haven’t changed since 2010. Pickup truck expansion, embracing poor driver controls and visibility, and the abandonment of traffic enforcement has.
I think a shuffle of fire department equipment may be warranted as EMS has overtaken fire calls, but accommodation of these things is one of a list of many factors.
> Pickup truck expansion,
Itself triggered by poorly thought out public policy.
> embracing poor driver controls and visibility,
Appears to somehow be driven by profit motives. I remain perplexed that it works though.
Poor visibility is partly regulatory driven partly consumer driven. Gotta have those fat A pillars and high beltline with low seating position to max out that crash test rating.
Window area also adds a lot of weight, which decreases fuel economy.
>Itself triggered by poorly thought out public policy.
No. There was no policy that required Ford and Chevy marketing to encourage customers to associate "8 ft high front end" with "better truck".
Pedestrian deaths are related to vehicle grill height, not weight. We could have the same modern monster trucks with a lower grille and have fewer pedestrian deaths.
Have the trucks in that weight class been noticably different historically? It's not something I've ever followed.
My understanding was that people were forced to purchase what was available as the smaller trucks were disincentived by regulations.
Absolutely the height of truck's hoods has increased dramatically over time. I say this as the owner of a pickup truck (and a cargo bike).
My 2000 2500 has a hood approximately at my belly button. Most current 1/2 tons have a hood height at my nipple (I'm 5'8).
A Pillars have gotten significantly thicker too, making it harder to see pedestrians at corners.
Then there is the expanding cab and shrinking bed. The visibility in a standard cab truck is phenomenal, you are surrounded by glass. Higher beds are also harder to use, which doesn't matter for most truck buyers because they buy them as a statement, not for utility.
The percentage of the population smoking weed has also roughly doubled in that time, as another likely contributing factor
Have you ever actually ridden with someone under the influence? In contrast to alcohol (or caffeine, among other things) they're generally much less prone to road rage, much less prone to hurried or reckless behavior, and often somewhat paranoid. At least in my personal experience they're more likely to drive under the speed limit than over it.
I strongly suspect that it increases road safety on the whole.
It appears to be less dangerous than driving drunk, but still quite a bit worse than driving sober:
https://instituteofliving.org/health-wellness/news/newsroom-...
I would accuse that article of serious problems due to potentially very misleading statistics. The entire claim comes down to a single unsubstantiated quote.
> The odds of being involved in a motor vehicle crash when driving ‘stoned’ are approximately double those of sober driving, but significantly less than the 10 to 15 times increase when driving with a blood alcohol concentration of approximately 0.1,
That statistic doesn't account for conditional probability. At any given time of day, the set of people consuming recreational drugs have a significantly different distribution of group membership than the inverse of that set. I am reasonably confident that it constitutes a fatal flaw in this case.
> during the pandemic, fatally injured and non-fatally injured drivers “have demonstrated significantly higher overall drug prevalence.”
That doesn't tell us anything since what we would need is the numbers relative to trips without incident normalized for historical driving behavior of the individuals queried. (I realize that would be a nearly impossible dataset to obtain. That doesn't make the presented statement correct though.)
Something very strange to me in my urban setting is the dichotomy between motorists and everything else on the road.
You can really rely on everyone driving a motor vehicle to obey practically every traffic law every time. That is, they stop for red lights, they stay in lanes, make legal/safe turns; they generally stay near the speed limit and don’t egregiously violate it. And they know that driving is a privilege and that violations can cost them their license, which will cost them their job, their freedom and a lot of things.
On the other hand we’ve got cyclists, pedestrians, scooters, wheelchairs: all sorts of other conveyances on the road, and they basically ignore every traffic law imaginable. Most of those don’t need licensing, and I’m really not clear on the consequences for breaking laws, but often none at all. It’s not like a judge can revoke your privilege to walk on the sidewalk if you’re a jaywalker, and the state wouldn’t ever financially ruin somebody with court fines, for breaking traffic laws on a bicycle or scooter anyway.
So it’s a really crazy situation, for me as a pedestrian, because I can count on motorists to obey laws, but everybody else is absolutely Lord of the Flies / Critical Mass around here. It’s a college town, and so there’s lots of young adults and/or foreigners, and they don’t know the laws, and they don’t care, and they walk wherever they want, and they scoot wherever they want, and they bike whatever direction they care about. And traffic laws be damned.
Personally, I’m the slowest and smallest thing on the road, and I eagerly defer to everything else that’s bigger and faster than me. It often confuses motorists when I permit them to enter a driveway rather than walk in front of them. Many motorists are extremely over cautious about pedestrians, and it’s nearly always difficult to convince them that I’m yielding my right-of-way— on foot— and permitting them to do what they want.
I greatly appreciate vehicles that signal properly and manifest their intentions so that I can anticipate them, because I often find myself directly watching tires and other external controls, in order to get the best signal for a driver’s intentions, regardless of how they're blinkers are working— especially BMWs...
> You can really rely on everyone driving a motor vehicle to obey practically every traffic law every time. That is, they stop for red lights, they stay in lanes, make legal/safe turns; they generally stay near the speed limit and don’t egregiously violate it. And they know that driving is a privilege and that violations can cost them their license, which will cost them their job, their freedom and a lot of things.
Where do you live that this is your observation? This is not what I observe in the United States. Speeding is rampant. Distracted driving is rampant. People roll through stop signs and run red lights enough that everyone should watch out for it.
> It’s a college town, and so there’s lots of young adults and/or foreigners, and they don’t know the laws, and they don’t care, and they walk wherever they want, and they scoot wherever they want, and they bike whatever direction they care about. And traffic laws be damned.
I'm curious what the traffic laws actually are for pedestrians and cyclists in your town. I imagine almost all of them are in regards to interactions with cars, since a pedestrian running into another pedestrian is rarely a life threatening scenario so having a law to enforce pedestrian only traffic isn't a big deal.
>It often confuses motorists when I permit them to enter a driveway rather than walk in front of them. Many motorists are extremely over cautious about pedestrians, and it’s nearly always difficult to convince them that I’m yielding my right-of-way— on foot— and permitting them to do what they want.
In many places the traffic law is to give pedestrians right-of-way over vehicles at otherwise uncontrolled junctions. Motorists are confused because you're asking them to break the traffic laws.
> You can really rely on everyone driving a motor vehicle to obey practically every traffic law every time. That is, they stop for red lights, they stay in lanes, make legal/safe turns; they generally stay near the speed limit and don’t egregiously violate it. And they know that driving is a privilege and that violations can cost them their license, which will cost them their job, their freedom and a lot of things.
What utopia do you live in? There's a major wreck at least once each year a couple blocks away when too many people speed while blowing the stop sign at the same time. There's a motorcyclist routinely going 115mph+ through our 25mph neighborhood, and despite having gotten the police to give him stern warnings on three separate occasions he still hasn't stopped (has slowed down to ~80 most days). The median minimum speed at stop signs is 10mph, which might sound safe, but it's faster if you happen to be crossing the crosswalk at the same time because they have to make sure they can get in front of you -- usually misjudging and requiring me to jump away. And you're right that people usually stay in their lanes ... on straight segments ... on curves I have to be prepared to take evasive action as some pickup truck inevitably borrows half my lane while I'm beside them.
Sure, cyclists usually brazenly flaunt traffic stops, speed limits, and the requirement to share the road, but it's not anywhere near as bad as what the cars are doing.
You make a good point about cyclists, some of whom are only surpassed in misery by swimmers.
But the focus on cars is a risk calculus Probability*impact. If the bike guy hits you, you’ll fall and maybe get hurt. If a car hits you at 30, you’re dead or hospitalized. We rightly empathize threat to life over lower chance of relatively minor injury.
Cars and pedestrian/bikes are an apple to oranges comparison. Its like comparing how we regulate cars to private planes. They just have completely different potential to hurt other people. Placing such a heavy burden on pedestrians/cyclists is just disproportionate to the threat they pose. There is no reason to expect a level play field relative to cars because they are just so different.
And to be clear people should be careful and look after their own safety. But that does not mean they have some moral obligation to help drivers limit the threat they pose. Nor is it reasonable to expect pedestrians to be perfect 100% of the time. Getting drunk, glancing at your phone, being distracted should not be a death sentance.
> Motorists are confused because you're asking them to break the traffic laws.
I am absolutely not asking anyone to break any law.
https://m.xkcd.com/2932/
After reading this comic and understanding its real-life implications, I always avoid signaling any motorist to take action now. I simply indicate hesitancy to them, or I just turn around and loiter on the corner, looking in the opposite direction and indicating with my entire body that I have no intention of walking into their path. It is always a pedestrian's prerogative to stop, to wait, to not move forward nor backwards, unless we're in the middle of the street or something, you know? I can even sit down on the curb, and take 5 minutes to breathe, if there's no bench available. Completely legal.
So this happens at green-light intersections as well as driveways and other junctures. At a residential driveway, I'll carefully check for vehicles intending to pull in or out, before I start crossing it. Because I'm often walking down stroads that are 35mph+. I would rather hang back, take a rest from walking, and allow traffic to smoothly exit that stroad, than insist on my own legal right-of-way.
So no, I'm not requesting or requiring any behavior at all from other motorists or road-users. I'm simply standing still and turning aside and failing to plow through a shared space, OK?
Now I live in Metro Phoenix and Tempe is a college-town. So I see all kinds of traffic hijinx. So people may certainly break traffic laws, but motorists really don't do it much at all, in proportion to the heavy traffic that plagues all our streets here.
Motorists seldom surprise or shock me by doing really crazy maneuvers. Yes, I've seen cars drive the wrong-way on a stroad for like, 1/4th block. Yes, I've seen cars make left turns that are technically illegal. But in general, they definitely stop for red lights (because the cops patrol them and so do the cameras take photos and mail them tickets!) and they definitely do not drive 100mph in a 35 or anything crazy, all things being equal. I frequently ride Veyo, taxis, Uber, and Lyft, and all those drivers are quite safe. I also ride public transit so much: those are the safest operators on the road, bar none. They are hired for their clean records and excellent prudence. I trust public transit with my life, whether I'm in the bus, or crossing the street.
Out on those stroads I feel extremely safe as a pedestrian, crossing the street legally, or in a crosswalk, or just strolling down the sidewalk. If motorists routinely broke traffic laws, I wouldn't feel safe and I'd be expecting surprises! But generally motorists act completely sane, even if they're staring at their SMS!
Now it is possible for a single pedestrian, a cyclist, or a scooter to really cause a big fuckin' accident. I contend that any surprise from a person on foot will mess up the flow of traffic. I have seen middle-school students throwing drinks at one another on the sidewalk, one of them runs into the road to avoid getting drenched, and they're right in front of an oncoming bus going 20-25mph. Holy crap. People have definitely walked right under the light rail and been literally dragged for yards and yards, before the operator could apply the brakes, and the first-responders could pry their dead corpses out. I personally leapt out in front of a Waymo going 35mph once, just to see if it would dodge me (it did but I was crazy).
I have caused a significant amount of road-range and honking and really angry pedal-stompers by riding a manual bicycle and an electric scooter in the traffic lanes (35-40mph limits). The scooters can go max 17mph and it's 100% legal for me to take such a traffic lane, and I play it extremely safe, but still the motorists become enraged and they engage in risky behavior. If I weren't so safe I could cause a major pile-up with that scooter and harm myself in the process, as well.
There are comprehensive laws on Tempe's books for people who operate bicycles and eScooters. I read some of them. If an eScooter is riding on the sidewalk, they can't go past 5mph and they need to yield for everyone (like pedestrians and wheelchairs). There were so many restrictions on sidewalk-riders, I decided that riding scooters and bicycles in the street is far more straightforward (can go up to 17mph rather than 5 plus frequent stops!)
So your assertion that pedestrians can't hurt anyone is false. All a pedestrian needs to do is leverage a lot of momentum by surprising the operator thereof. And then all hell can break loose.
Walking on the sidewalk, I routinely encounter illegal scooters, illegal powered cycles, really aggressive wheelchair users, and all sorts of idiot behavior. You simply can get away with murder, literally, on any sidewalk around here, because there's nearly no accountability for violations, compared to motorists on the roads. Last week there was a pack of 3 boys wearing helmets and BMX gear, riding their bicycles down the sidewalk (and up onto lawns and boulevard strips, commanding as much width as possible), and clearly intending to disrupt and annoy passengers on the bus who were boarding and disembarking. They were able to maintain the exact pace of the bus I rode w.r.t. all its designated stops, and they were really determined to be entitled little jerkoffs, sticking it to the poor man.
Motorists can be held accountable for everything by means of traffic laws, driver licenses, vehicle registrations, and insurance policies. There is a huge amount of legal leverage over any driver on the road that simply never applies to peds or cyclists or riders of scooters or narcocorridos or coyotes around here.
Therefore I feel 100% justified in being courteous and giving deference to everyone else. Defensive driving translates to "defensive walking" or "defensive scooting" for me, these days. I'm 53 years old, and I expect to see 54 with all my limbs intact.
I’m American, but currently in one of those European places with delightfully narrow roads. In my opinion, it’s more dangerous because people drive just as fast, with less margin for error. Having experienced both, I think “narrow roads are safer” is an anti-car meme from people who wouldn’t mind if driving was as miserable as possible.
It feels more dangerous, but that sense of danger is what improves safety. It's when people, especially drivers, feel comfortable that accidents increase; they let their guard down.
The US has dramatically higher rates of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities and injuries than Western European countries, both per capita and per kilometers walked and cycled, and that's presumably with those countries having more narrow roads.[1] See, e.g., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5227927/ Japan falls somewhere between the US and EU. But since the elderly are at far higher risk of both injury and especially fatalities, the larger elderly demographic might have something to do with it.
That sense of danger is it's own legitimate issue, though, and as someone with two small kids I'm definitely a proponent of separating pedestrian and cyclist traffic from cars, and even cyclists from pedestrians.[2]
[1] The lived density in the US isn't that different from Europe. There's plenty of analysis showing that. But I haven't seen rigorous data and analysis comparing road layouts, traffic patterns, and their association with pedestrian and cyclist accidents rates writ large (as opposed to local studies), thus the conjecture.
[2] Cyclists in the US are incredibly aggressive. I've never been hit by a car, but I've been hit twice by cyclists while crossing the street, and nearly a third by one going so fast I definitely could have been killed. (It does happen--cyclists killing pedestrians, albeit usually the elderly.) Two of those three incidents the cyclist was going the wrong way down a one-way, and while ever since the first crash I habitually look both ways crossing a one-way, the third incident happened just as I was turning my head to look in the reverse direction while stepping off the curb--they were flying down the (flat) road the wrong way while also hugging the curb. (FWIW, I was crossing at a busy crosswalk downtown, not jaywalking.) While drivers are liable to be negligent, cyclists of all ages seem much more often to be wantonly reckless.
> It feels more dangerous, but that sense of danger is what improves safety.
I think that’s the idea. Well in Europe they may not have a choice in an old part of town. But in US I’ve seen a municipality replace a two lane street with a one lane plus a median. It was specifically done as a traffic calming measure. The wide street somehow made people drive too fast. It worked pretty well I think. It was just unusual as typically we love to expand roads not shrink them.
It's absolutely nuts to me that US cities (like in Sunset in SF with 50 foot wide roads) accommodate giant fire trucks in addition to both sides having street parking (and driveways and garages!) instead of having narrower roads with smaller trucks (like in Netherlands and Japan, which were discussed in that video).
NJB also has a video※ about Japan's tiny streets (relative to USA) that elaborates on how a single factory (street width) can improve so much about a place.
※ - https://youtu.be/jlwQ2Y4By0U
That’s mostly myth.
San Francisco’s plan was built wide to accommodate streetcars and to reduce the spread of fire. The city was razed by fire after the 1906 earthquake, with several reasons (including a lunatic army contingent that built “firebreaks” by blowing up buildings and the fire chief getting killed in a freak accident early on) contributing. There’s a great book called “San Francisco is burning” worth reading.
My dad was a fire chief for decades in a city department. They only cared about street width in central business districts or other areas where certain types of aerial ladders were required for rescue companies. If they can’t get a ladder up, they need more firemen to respond to certain calls. Cities are insured and firemen DNGAF if they smash up cars on narrow streets, I suspect they find it fun.
On the other hand San Francisco has these giant articulated aerial ladder trucks. European trucks reach the same ladder heights on much smaller trucks by having more telescoping segments on the ladder.
I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of it is a feedback loop: wide streets mean fire trucks can be big, big fire trucks mean streets have to be big (even if only the streets the fire department cares about)
Edinburgh's new town (designed 1776) has some very wide streets. When cars were invented they became handy because two cars could be parked nose to nose across the middle of the street plus the usual curb parking on both sides, still leaving room for four lanes of traffic. Traffic calming and pavement|sidewalk widening measures in recent years have reduced this to one vehicle across the middle, curb parking and one lane each way.
Check out the Village Homes subdivision in Davis, CA.
It was designed with narrow streets and off street parking so that trees could more effectively shade the pavement. Also, the paved streets alternate with bike and walking paths between rows of houses.
One result of the shaded streets and increased greenery is ambient summer temperature that is noticably cooler compared to other nearby neighborhoods.
The original planners worked with the local FD to make sure their trucks could turn around in the cul de sacs.
https://maps.apple.com/?address=Village%20Homes,%20Davis,%20...
Just to point, and as the video say, it's not the trucks that create the need. Just because your city have some large trucks to send where hydrants are rare, it doesn't mean you need to design the entire city so they can fit.
Not Just Bikes is wrong about several things:
The video states at 1:37: "Baltimore was supposed to install 10 miles of new bike lanes downtown, but the fire department said that would make the streets too small for its trucks and aggressively fought against the plan."
This is false. The residents of Potomac Street (the visual example given in the video) aggressively lobbied against the bike lanes because they would take away parking spots. The residents involved the Fire Marshalls. The Fire Marshalls noted that the street would be 19 feet wide and the fire code called for 20 foot streets and, enforcing the law, they said the project needed to be paused until an exemption was granted.
Then the exemption was granted.
Then the bike lanes got built.
Here they are, right here, clear as day: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hKNb82Ef6sWL4uUw5
I even aligned the streeview image to extremely close to the exact position the video showed at the timestamp where the narrator said "was supposed to install".
I knew they were wrong about Baltimore because while I am not a BFD employee I am a both a volunteer firefighter in an exurb of Baltimore and a cyclist, so I followed the development of bike lanes in the area very closely.
I figured that if the video was wrong about Baltimore, they probably just googled "fire department oppose bike paths" and used the article titles as references so I looked up the Peekskill story.
The narrator states at 2:12, explicitly including the Peekskill Esther Place pedestrian mall, "all of this potential progress WAS LOST".
"Was lost" implying it is gone. Kaput. Erased.
Esther Place still exists. Here is a city council meeting bill from two months ago explicitly extending the road closure: https://www.cityofpeekskillny.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item...
Also, there is no evidence of the fire department raising any objections to it except for a strongtowns.org blog post, and the youtube channel and the website appear to be the same entity.
So now I'm like "is the entire video bullshit"?
edit: I must be trippin because I know that European cities with narrow medieval streets have smaller fire trucks, but the dimensions for the Scania P460, a common euro-spec fire truck and MAN TGM (a fire truck used by a Dutch volunteer fire company youtube channel I follow) and a Pierce Saber (a normal, typical US-spec fire truck) are damn near identical except for a custom variation in length with US trucks being about 5 feet longer-- hardly a radical difference.
Consider at front and rear axle loads, not how your eyes perceive their sizes.
He cites his sources:
https://notjustbikes.com/references/firetrucks.txt
Re: the Baltimore FD
https://www.baltimoresun.com/2018/07/03/baltimore-city-counc...
And yes, the exception was granted just a few months later:
https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/city-council-passes-bi...
Even this article cites the fire department objections.
It's a shame that Not Just Bikes didn't seem to catch that the lane _did_ get built, but his point seemed to focus on FDs objecting to bike lanes, and I think that Baltimore story is a prime example of that.
>but his point seemed to focus on FDs objecting to bike lanes
The Fire Marshalls are required by law (and oath) to enforce the laws.
They are literally and legally required to object and grant exemptions as appropriate.
And the source for the Peekskill story in the "cited sources" is themselves.
They're using a sourceless article they wrote themselves as a source.
I just finished watching the video and the factual errors are... voluminous.
> The Fire Marshalls are required by law (and oath) to enforce the laws.
This isn't what they were doing. To quote from the baltimoresun article linked above
> She then detailed several incidents, including an alleged assault on May 14 at the Baltimore School for the Arts at a meeting to discuss a bike lane.
> Baltimore City firefighter Charles Mudra is accused of assaulting Austin Davis, a Baltimore city employee who attended the meeting and who lives on Cornish’s block. Mudra has a court date scheduled for Aug. 13. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There is no legal obligation to criminally assault people you disagree with.
> Then, a bicyclist says a fire department employee cut her off with his pickup truck and screamed, “I still hate you!”
This is harassment, bordering on criminal (driving offences if not assault)
> Ford [the fire chief] said he was aware of the two incidents of physical confrontation involving members of the fire department
There is no legal obligation to engage in physical confrontations
> Ford said his opposition to changes to the fire code comes from concern for public safety, not animus against bike lanes.
There is no legal obligation to oppose changes to the fire code.
> The council held an oversight meeting Tuesday to question the agency as members consider stripping regulations from the fire code to make it easier for protected bike lanes and developments to be built — a move the fire department is lobbying against. Fire officials do not want the city to replace International Fire Code requirements with National Association of City Transportation Officials’ Urban Street Guidelines.
There is no legal obligation to lobby
> Liz Cornish, director of the advocacy group Bikemore, is alleging that fire department brass sent large vehicles in front of her house while making a video about how protected bike lanes impede firefighting.
This is not something that they are possibly required to do.
> Fire Chief Niles R. Ford said Tuesday he had no intention of intimidating Cornish when fire officials parked in front of her house to film a video to support their argument. He said he wanted to show how much-needed fire equipment has trouble fitting down streets made narrow by bike lanes.
There is clearly no legal obligation to
1. Film videos supporting their desire to have wide streets
2. Make public comments that they need wide streets.
This isn't even close to a case of them "just enforcing the law".
Furthermore note that the firefighter ended up pleading guilty in that assault case. https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/firefighter-pleads-gui...
Not Just Bikes and Strong towns are different organizations that employ different people. They are pretty closely aligned ideologically and collaborate frequently, but they aren't the same entity.
They're using a sourceless article they wrote themselves as a source.
There are plenty of sources in that article though?
If you are wrong about that, I'm going dismiss the rest of your comments as well, since you are probably wrong about your other criticisms.
>There are plenty of sources in that article though?
There are no mentions of the fire department in that article except one in the last paragraph.
>“We’d love to talk to the fire and police departments and figure out a way to address safety concerns while keeping this corner a permanent fixture of the city,”
There are no other easily findable references on the internet.
All of this ignores the fact that the narrator of the video implied that the pedestrian mall was removed due to fire department interference, when it obviously wasn't and this conversation thread will not stray into any tangents and will focus on the fact that the narrator implied that the pedestrian mall was removed due to fire department interference, and that was a lie.
> The Fire Marshalls noted that the street would be 19 feet wide and the fire code called for 20 foot streets and, enforcing the law, they said the project needed to be paused until an exemption was granted.
This is missing the forest for one particular tree. The fire code calling for 20 foot streets is because that's what the fire departments asked for. It's not a requirement that came out of nowhere, or that they aren't (morally) responsible for.
CAL FIRE has their own specialized fire trucks.[1] California has a huge number of wildfires, all over a big state.[2] CAL FIRE has about 3,000 pieces of equipment.
Current CAL FIRE trucks are 4 wheel drive off-road heavy trucks. They're shorter than municipal or airport trucks, for dirt roads with tight turns. They use a 500 gallon tank with a foam system.
[1] https://www.fire.ca.gov/what-we-do/fire-protection/mobile-eq...
[2] https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents
It's curious that even when length is a concern they still went with bonneted trucks instead of the cab-over-engine design that dominates Europe because of length and maneuverability considerations.
Compare for example these French forest fire trucks: http://www.sides.fr/en/french-standardised-vehicles/
Or this range of vehicles from a Spanish manufacturer: https://www.iturri.com/en/vehicles/emergencies-and-fire-figh...
Probably another example of path dependence?
The US does make some cabover trucks. For the Army, naturally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Medium_Tactical_Vehi...
Entertainingly, the manufacturer is listed as:
> Oshkosh Corporation (current; won rebuy competition)
and that's part of the private equity consolidation of emergency vehicle manufacturers from another comment [1] in this post. Perhaps that means there could be more compact, maneuverable, cabover designs of commercial fire trucks!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43646865
No thoughts on this maneuverability debate and totally respect the firefighters in every country, but just chuckling that the trucks on that french page literally look like cute little toys.
The photos might have some tilt-shift-like effect going on.
Proportionally they're fine when you look at window and door sizes. They're just short wheelbase 4/8 tonne trucks with a dual cab. You see them fairly often here in .au driven by tradies who actually understand what they need to use for work and entertainingly smaller, easier to park, and have a cargo capacity larger than the shitty utes that all the accountants drive
From my point of view in Europe, where the French vehicles look completely normal, the Californian ones look very aggressive, and like something from a museum.
In the US, Airport fire operations have their own NFPA Standard
https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-440-standard-d...
And their own standard for fire fighter qualification
https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-1003-standard-...
Fascinating to see how the engineering requirements drive such different designs. The 3,000 gallons vs 500 gallons water capacity difference is particularly striking, as is the acceleration requirements for ARFF vehicles. Classic example of how specialized use cases lead to specialized equipment.
In an earlier life I was an airport fireman. It was in the late 80's so I'm pretty sure things have changed, but physics stays the same.
Firstly the engines on these beasts are massive. My truck had 4500 gallons of water and 500 gallons of foam. It could go 60mph in a (very) straight line (that's what taxi ways are for) but acceleration and breaking were ponderous.
We had another vehicle carrying 500 gallons, with a huge twin-turbo motor, which had insane acceleration and could do 100mph. It's job was to get there first, dump suppressant quickly and get out the way in the 20 seconds before I got there.
Couple things I remember- these things go fast, but corner badly, so one slows down a lot before turning.
Water is really dangerous to transport because it sloshes around moving the center of gravity. Best to drive with water tanks full or empty. If they're only partially full you drive really slowly around corners. Like walking speed. Not surprisingly they were almost always 100% full.
Mine had pretty much 0% suspension. I took a shortcut once and hit a dirt ripple made by a recent grader. Maybe 8 inches high. The jolt was so bad the plastic light covers popped off the flashing lights. The guy in the roof well almost got thrown overboard.
Honestly, I was 18 years old and it was tremendously good fun. But I will say that the car accidents we attended turned me into a cautious driver. And I font need to "go fast" in a car - thats pretty tame compared to going fast in a 36 ton truck.
I randomly bought a fire truck a few months ago. I was looking for something to convert into a camper van, and found my truck: (A) low mileage, compared to other trucks because of the usage. Ambulances etc. are super high mileage. (B) they have excellent maintenance, so it’s ship shape (C) low comparable purchase cost due to tiny resale market.
I’m loving it. Kids love it. Community loves it. Wife tolerates it. Converted it into a camper and party truck!
You should write a an article/share some pics :)
Wondering how it went overall, how hard parts were to find, how hard maintenance is - do you do it yourself? Do you need special tools?
I may write a post. A lot of the effort was removing weight without killing the aesthetics. It has been an awesome outlet for creativity and fiddling. I have built everything myself, with input from tradies - everyone just loves helping. Maintanance I leave to the mechanics.
So far it has (a) back bench converted into sleeper area (b) slushie machines, foam machine, beer keg pourer, slide out bbq (c) built a roof that you can sleep in. (D) roof lifts with linear actuators to expose dj lights/smoke machine in the centre (e) plumbing / electrics etc so we can use off-grid.
It has heaps of storage space and is super fun and easy to drive!
Very cool, thanks for sharing!
Back in the late '70s my dad bought a retired 1942 pumper fire truck from the city. Back then it was sealed bids submitting to the city. He was the only one who bid on it.
I assume today you could buy an airport one from a government auction site.
https://www.govplanet.com/for-sale/Emergency-Vehicles-1985-O...
The fill-ups would probably financially ruin anyone that doesn’t have access to bulk Jet A.
I always love how futuristic they look: https://youtu.be/8weVJBGDpHI?si=mfIkPEgm44fSLQcc
Also here halfway through it: https://youtu.be/9z1qetAaiBA?si=j78gg2HmUg-jCnTS
The picture that shows the difference in visibility is a bit misleading due to a very different perspective?
I'm assuming the visibility difference is still quite different, but it feels like one of the pictures is the perspective of someone in the back seat, as it were.
If you ever find yourself visiting Phoenix, and there’s 4+ hours open in your itinerary, I strongly recommend the Hall of Flame Fire Museum!
https://maps.app.goo.gl/athmHCH2AG4sWk8F6
Among their exhibits is a 300-year-old wagon, and basically this is a gigantic warehouse and boneyard for old fire trucks and equipment which has been lovingly restored to pristine conditions.
There are plenty of memorials for deceased firefighters who made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives, and there's special memorial for the Hot Shots who perished in Yarnell several years back.
The airport truck is gonna be operated in a different regulatory setting under different incentives than the municipal truck. That counts for something.