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!

  • Showroom7561English
    1·
    13 hours ago

    It’s rare here to see cars in the sidewalk but there was this one house that consistently did it for a while

    Part of the problem is that too many people have large trucks for personal use… these trucks were never designed to be parked in a residential area. So, they take up the sidewalk AND often back onto the bike lane… double-whammy!

    This is the type of nonsense our cyclists have to deal with on a marked bike route:

    FYI: not long ago a cyclist was hit and critically injured just down the street from where this photo was taken. These bike lanes aren’t safe when you have cars blocking them.