Cycling in Waterloo Region

[ijmorlan]

One of the surprising factors on road width around here is fire departments. They're accustomed to their large trucks and insist we build roads that can accommodate them in any situation. It's unbelievable how much influence that has had.

Is there any evidence of this?  I'm honestly curious - I've heard this from so many people, but never any official sources, so I have to wonder if it's one of those propagated urban legends or something, or there's actually some weight to it.

i mean, Europe, Asia, etc. have some pretty darn narrow streets.  Do they just not have fire trucks, and let buildings on fire burn down?

No, they have appropriately-sized firetrucks for the context.

I heard about one city whose name I unfortunately cannot remember which was a closely-built medieval place in which a major infrastructure project consisted of clearing a roadway directly through the middle with a width of — wait for it — 1.1m, specifically to allow emergency vehicles to get through. Prior to the project the routes had narrower points than that and were hopelessly tangled (i.e., worse than K-W!).

Here planning mostly consists of enforcing the same rules originally developed for the suburbs (where they aren’t appropriate) through the entire city (where they’re grossly inappropriate), and road and emergency response planning is no exception.