Get to know your fire chief

Cooperation and education are the keys to building human-scale streets and ensuring public safety. Over the last decade, many designers, engineers, developers, local officials, emergency response personnel, and neighborhood residents have found themselves struggling over seemingly competing objectives when it comes to good street design. Ultimately, however, among the many values at stake in street design, public safety always emerges as the final arbiter. But even within this incontestable objective, a conflict has emerged that has only recently been thoroughly defined and studied, and is starting to be addressed: the seeming conflict lies between the need for rapid emergency response to any location and achieving slow, safe everyday neighborhood streets. The Ingredients of a Conflict The three basic neighborhood street type and circulation models, within which everyday and emergency- vehicle circulation takes place, help us to understand the nature of the problem and to find possible sources for the solution. 1. Pre-1940s gridded neighborhoods. While postwar development models superceded this type, these old neighborhoods still exist and require emergency response to continue to function within their patterns of narrow streets. 2. Postwar subdivisions (i.e. curvilinear layout, cul-de-sacs, dead ends, hierarchical street system). Most current emergency response maneuvers have been developed to serve the un-networked street patterns of this era — maneuvers which necessitate extremely wide streets. In turn, new equipment size greatly increased during this time, since new technologies were developing within the context of the new very wide streets. Often, over time, residents of these subdivisions request the installation of traffic-calming features to slow speeds generated by overly wide streets. 3. Neotraditional networked neighborhoods. Many new neighborhood designers are returning to the design intelligence found within the traditional neighborhoods’ interconnected network of narrow, tree-lined, slow, safe streets. However, they then find themselves in conflict with the maneuvers fire departments have established to get their equipment to fire emergencies on wide dead-end streets. The fire department’s view If you live in the West, your state has probably adopted what is called the “Western Fire Code” — or elsewhere, a similar equivalent. This code says that streets should have a minimum 20-foot “clear” fire access way — meaning between parked cars, medians or any other possible obstruction. The rationale behind this guideline is to allow for a specific, but widely accepted, firefighting maneuver, the “cul-de-sac maneuver,” which works as follows: The first engine responding will get close to the fire, stop along the way to hook up hose to the nearest hydrant, and then drive the rest of the way to the fire, laying hose as they go. The firefighters deploy their truck near the building, opening equipment cabinets along the side of the fire truck. The second fire truck responding follows the same route as the first into the scene of the fire, hooks up to the same hydrant, and must now be able to pass the fully deployed truck already at the scene. The 20-foot clear guideline is intended to provide the necessary space for the second truck to pass the first truck. There have been suggestions that the solution to the “skinny- streets-vs.-big-fire-trucks” problem is simply getting fire departments to purchase smaller vehicles. As in many other areas of vehicle and construction technology, managers in the industry feel bigger is better, since the new, big trucks have all the latest, best features – one vehicle does it all (ladder and pump, etc.). Fire departments may be reluctant to invest in new equipment that is somehow “less” than the best available (this, in fact, explains why some small towns with no building higher than two stories might have a fire truck fit for fighting mid-rise commercial). To think this is going to change significantly any time soon is probably naive. And even if towns immediately chose to change to smaller vehicles, it would take years for most fleets to turn over, considering the sticker prices for new equipment. For all of these reasons, it seems that large fire apparatus will remain a characteristic of fire departments for many years to come. Therefore, other solutions must be sought. The designers’ and users’ view From the point of view of urban designers, developers and residents, narrow streets are highly desirable for many reasons. 1) With slow, safe, human-scaled, well-landscaped streets, residents walk more and are more likely to meet their neighbors. They feel a stronger sense of community, which leads to less crime and increased overall safety. Also, health experts say that integrating walking into regular daily patterns is a very effective way to incorporate exercise into busy, modern lives. 2) A 24 to 26 foot (curb-to-curb) street with parking on both sides is considered ideal for walkable streets because it slows traffic (traffic calming through street geometry). Walkers feel most comfortable when vehicle speeds are kept to 10 to 25 mph, because slower traffic means safer streets! The wider the street, the more likely cars are to speed — and with faster speeds, accidents become more likely, and more deadly (pedestrians hit by vehicle traveling 15 mph have a 96 percent chance of survival; at 40 mph, survival chance drops to 17 percent). 3) Narrow streets reduce neighborhood “cut-through” traffic that is encouraged by wide, fast streets. 4) Street trees lining both sides of a narrow street provide a canopy that almost completely shades the street in summer, producing up to a 10 to 15 degree temperature drop in a sunny climate. In the California Central Valley, for example, this can save up to 25 percent on energy consumption during warm months. 5) Narrow streets generate less noise because of the lower speeds and the lack of need for speed bumps and stop signs, both of which increase traffic noise. 6) Space that is usually consumed by street pavement can be transferred to residential alleys to provide car storage (garages) and parking in the rear of the houses. response and safe streets In the mid-1990s, Peter Swift, of the civil engineering and town planning firm Swift and Associates, undertook to compile and analyze accident data in the town of Longmont, Colorado, and published the results in a paper titled “Residential Street Typology and Injury Accident Frequency” (http://members.aol.com/Phswi/Swift-street.html; email: phswi@aol.com); this research paper is currently under peer review for publication through Institute of Transportation Engineers.) The research shows that over the eight-year study period, there was only one serious fire and a number of smaller fires, with no injuries; by contrast, there were 227 automotive accidents (both car/car and car/pedestrian) resulting in injuries, mostly on wide streets. This kind of information can provide local fire chief with a public safety basis for making exceptions to the street design requirements of the adopted fire code. If there is a correlation between wider streets, higher speeds, and a greater frequency of injury accidents, then should wide streets still be built primarily for the purposes of fighting residential structure fires? When the accidents and the fires are counted, you can get a statistical basis for a more comprehensive approach to public safety: that a connected network of narrower streets provides greater overall public safety. Emergency response vs. traffic calming in existing neighborhoods While in most situations fire departments are successful in sustaining veto power over designs for narrow streets in planned developments to accommodate their “cul-de-sac maneuver,” they are often not as successful in overturning residents’ later demands for retrofitting streets with traffic-calming devices to slow overall traffic speeds. By this time, neighbors are often able to point to actual accidents, injuries, and near tragedies that have occurred on these overly wide, fast streets, and their case begins to look stronger than the case for getting the second fire truck to any location at the maximum speed (e.g. Seattle — comprehensive traffic-calming strategy reduced accidents by 94 percent in traffic-calmed areas). So, over the protest of the fire department, street designers are tasked to install traffic calming barriers to slow all vehicles on these streets. This unintentionally creates the final safety conflict of the ongoing street design and redesign cycle. In many situations, the fire truck is the way that the department’s emergency medical technicians (cross-trained firefighters) get to their medical 911 calls. While driving a 40-foot long ladder truck to respond to medical emergencies may not require the “20-foot clear,” fast response time is critical to survival rates in medical response situations. This is where the traffic calming features such as speed bumps and stop signs — installed in the previous stage of the cycle to slow down the overly-wide streets — greatly impact emergency response times. By contrast, streets that are designed for slow, safe everyday neighborhood circulation make such traffic-calming barriers unnecessary. GETTING TO SOLUTIONS Local municipalities are supposed to abide by the fire codes they adopt. Their insurance rating will consider factors like emergency response times, fire and ambulance equipment, staffing levels, staff experience, and training. A local fire chief has discretion in applying the code, but will need to be able to make a case for making departures from that code in the interest of increasing overall public safety. Therefore, the solution must lie in establishing street designs that can satisfy both public safety needs — emergency response, and slow, safe neighborhood streets. The solution takes place at two scales: the citywide or townwide scale and the neighborhood scale. network design and emergency response routes The most basic solutions to ensuring emergency response access without compromising traffic safety must be established at the citywide scale. Town planners and fire departments each have their own role in this effort, and must work together on overlapping issues: 1) Circulation Networks: The first role belongs to town planners overseeing the design and expansion of citywide circulation networks. A system of well-connected streets with an overall hierarchy of clear, main response routes is most critical to emergency response. With such networks, the exact conditions on the last block or so are not critical, because there are multiple access-ways to any one location on that block. 2) Working Together. Within the interconnected network, planners and fire officials can work together to create, map and ensure enforcement of well-established primary emergency response routes on free-flowing, unobstructed avenues and boulevards, especially along routes to hospitals. Further, whereas in a conventional street hierarchy system (arterials, collectors, minor collectors, residential streets), limited route options to any single location often force emergency vehicles to leave the arterials streets sooner, with a densely interconnected network of streets, they can opt to stay on the main routes longer because of the many different options for approach. This gets them closer to the emergency location before they turn onto the slower, narrower neighborhood streets. 3) Fire Departments — Location and Enforcement. Fire Departments play an important role in the success of slow, safe narrow street systems by locating fire stations on the edge of neighborhoods, ensuring quickest access on what are appropriately the slowest streets. Fire officials should also regularly review the established main routes for safety issues and enforcement (site lines, illegal double parking and delivery parking, etc.). Street design solutions at the neighborhood scale Just as at the city scale, an interconnected network of streets is very important to emergency response within the neighborhood. The fire truck maneuver described earlier makes sense if the fire is on a cul-de-sac or within a hierarchical street system. However, to fight a fire at a location on a connected street network, the first arriving fire company can assess the situation and direct the approach of the second company, e.g. from the opposite end of the block, using another fire hydrant, if it does not have room to pass the first truck. In fact, many fire departments have already adapted their operations to do just this in the older, pre-1940s neighborhoods. Our conversations with local fire officials have yielded several neighborhood design features, completely compatible with TND design, which in turn can be used to enhance fire and emergency response objectives. These include: 1) Intersection visibility: Small curb radii are workable, but keep street trees and other landscaping 20 feet from intersections. Also, the placement of “bulb-outs” at intersections, which prevent parking within 30 to 40 feet of an intersection, will reassure the fire department that intersections will be free of obstructions. 2) Rear alleys: A staple of TND neighborhood design, the use of alleys can also help persuade fire officials that off-street parking has been adequately provided for, thereby reducing the need for obstructive on-street parking loads. 3) Shorter blocks: Hose lengths can extend up to 150 feet. Block lengths under 300 feet allow fire fighters to get to a location from either end of the block in the unlikely circumstance of a street blockage. 4) Long term infrastructure vs. shorter-term practice: If the Fire Department still does not agree to narrower street design, propose a 26 foot curb-to-curb design with one-sided parking to create the 20 foot clearance required. Then, in the future, when attitudes change, the desired narrow street infrastructure is in place — just remove the “no parking” signs! Conclusion With these strategies of communication, consideration and comprehensive design solutions, street design can accommodate all pieces of the public safety goal that have placed designers, developers, neighborhood residents and emergency responders at odds. The key is to become an ally of your local fire officials in the important civic responsibility of protecting the public. Learn more about their needs and perspectives, and use design talent to bring about a solution in your community or project. And when certain fire departments continue to say, “No — we can and will insist on the wide streets because we save lives,” TND designers and developers should continue to offer the response “Slowing traffic can also save lives” (quote from a Portland fire fighter). Mary Stalker and Tom DiGiovanni are with Heritage Partners, a new urbanist consulting and development firm in Chico, California. John Anderson is with Anderson Lamb & Associates in Chico, California.