Best Practices: Emergency Vehicle Access for Bicycle/Pedestrian Friendly Streets

3:00 pm ET

Presenter:

• Tom Bertulis, MS, PE, PTOE, KTUA Planning + Landscape Architecture 
• Charlie Ream, Acting Lead, Planning & Project Development Team, City of Oakland
• Dan Burden, Director of Innovation and Inspiration, Walkability

Since WWII, the automobile has dominated our streets, as well as the policies and design manuals that govern them. This produced high speed roadways that were not friendly for people biking and walking. Luckily, in recent decades, this paradigm has shifted, and many planners and engineers are designing streets around people instead of around the automobile. Often this type of design narrows the streets and calms the traffic with horizontal and vertical traffic calming devices. Slowing vehicles can be at odds with the goals of emergency service responders, who are seeking ways to reduce the time it takes to arrive to the scene of an emergency call. Moreover, fire trucks require a certain amount of physical space to deploy their equipment, space that may be constrained by street design. In recent years, the coupled concepts of "Vision Zero" and "Safe Systems" have gained momentum, resulting in new interest to engage with emergency responders to slow streets. This webinar will dive into recent research into engaging with emergency responders from various cities across southern California with the goal of implementing traffic calming to reach our Vision Zero goals and objectives. It will highlight best practices, and give the viewers insight on steps they can take to make the communities safer for people walking and biking.

Access to the Resources for this session below are only available after you purchase and own the course.