In an illustrated article on Opticos Design's blog, Siegman & Associates founder Patrick Siegman makes the case for buying more agile fire department vehicles:

"If you want safe streets, you need to buy fire engines that fit on safe streets. The same goes for ladder trucks, foam tenders, HazMat rigs, and other fire department vehicles.

That lesson was brought home, once again, by the Opticos team’s work on a recent downtown plan. Our team had encountered a typical American conflict. Many community members wanted walkable streets, with wide sidewalks, protected bicycle lanes, slow-moving traffic, and ample room for trees, flowers, and sidewalk cafés. The fire department wanted wide, unobstructed swathes of asphalt.

This conflict between community members’ desire for low-speed streets, with a high level of traffic safety, and a fire department’s desire for wide, high-speed roads is frequent in the United States. But in Europe, it is rare..."

Continue reading at Opticos Design.