The Emergency Vehicle Excuse

Here's one of the other Twitter posts I meant to talk about in February. It came up in the midst of the truck blockade, when Ottawa police closed many downtown streets completely for days on end.

The writer is an EMT, and he's responding to the common argument that we can't have narrowed streets, pedestrian-only streets, and other traffic-calming measures because it will be too hard for emergency vehicles to get where they need to go.

He points out that closed streets (that is, streets closed to cars) are not the problem: cars are the biggest obstacle with their double-parking, blocking of intersections, and general traffic. Pedestrian plazas are fine for emergency personnel: they can bring equipment on foot if needed, it's part of the job. They have UTVs and bikes, he says, they can use in larger pedestrian-only spaces. 

And he also say (as I was thinking) that ambulances, etc., can go into pedestrian-only spaces if they are set up with that in mind in the first place. There are retractable bollards, for instance.

These are two of my favorite points:

• "It’s easier to move large amounts of  people and bicyclists out of our way than to move many cars out of our way."
• "Sirens can be much quieter if people aren’t in cars."
  

And, as one of the commenters points out, a decent share of emergency calls are needed because of car crashes, so if there were fewer cars, there would be fewer calls in the first place.

I would add, if traffic lanes in the streets were narrower, there would be fewer crashes and fewer injury calls because drivers would be going slower.