This post is inspired by me seeing an ambulance in the bike lane by the apartment building opposite of mine.
By this point, I’m sure we’ve all had just about enough of anti-urbanists and NIMBYs claiming in bad faith that bike lanes and bus lanes will be obstructive for emergency vehicles, and as such cannot be built.
You’re probably well aware that exactly the opposite is the case - cars are the principal obstruction for emergency vehicles, and emergency vehicles can actually make very efficient use of bike and bus lanes to shorten response times.
I propose that we flip the argument on its head by rebranding bike and bus lanes as Emergency Vehicle-lanes, which just so happen to afford permission to buses and bikes when not in active use by emergency vehicles (which is of course already the case, everyone is required to yield any space to emergency vehicles, at least where I live).
This way, we kill this particular argument against bike and bus lanes in its crib, and expose the opposition as being actually against emergency vehicle mobility, in favour of having more lanes to drive their cars on.
Let me know what you think!
In places like the Netherlands, dual-direction bike lanes allow the smaller-built emergency vehicles to move freely. But, the Netherlands also loves to employ only a single driving lane in each direction and has opened up the median lane for public transit like busses and trams. This results in no car traffic for the public transportation, and freedom of movement for emergency vehicles. As well as reducing car dependency, because if there is one guy going slow on the road, you are stuck behind him. We would need to flip the car-centered narrative in the US to allow something like this to be implemented. Cities like Portland actually have implemented dedicated transit lanes and even overpasses for busses only, but the designs swap right back to the American ones the second you leave the “urban” part of the city. People need to be educated to see the alternative view and how it can help them. We can show source after source to educate people that bike lanes are better for their lifestyle, local businesses, safety, noise, travel times, and kids but people need to have the willingness and openness to learn. I think videos like this one are better to spread around and convince people with because you wouldn’t even think this is rush hour! But then you imagine if every single person was in a car, and you can imagine how large of an intersection ths would be, and how loud.