Man, I would be rich if I had a loonie for every time someone says bike lanes prevent emergency vehicles from reaching their destination.
Please stop saying this. It’s just untrue.
If you think about it, the only streets that actually block emergency vehicles are those completely filled by other vehicles. It happened to me while driving on Lonsdale Avenue the other day. An ambulance came up behind me, but I had nowhere to go because the gal beside me had nowhere to pull over. There was too much traffic for anyone to get off the road.
Ironically, wide, multi-lane roads with lots of traffic pose greater challenges for emergency responders because drivers aren’t always familiar with how to yield to emergency vehicles, or, as in the example above, just can’t. The siren can wail away, but people aren’t going to be able to move until the traffic ahead moves to create space. But if you have a street with one lane in each direction plus a center turn lane or a bus lane or wide bike lane, an emergency vehicle can use the non-travel lane to get around traffic.
For example, the southbound bike lane on the Cambie Street Bridge actually speeds up emergency vehicles when there’s a crash. The bike lane is wide enough to accommodate an ambulance, so emergency responders can bypass congestion using it. There’s even an opening in the barrier between the bike lane and traffic lanes so that emergency vehicles don’t have to “jump” over it.
Similarly, on West 10th Avenue in the hospital precinct near Vancouver General, mountable curves along the bike lanes allow emergency vehicles to bypass traffic while delivering patients to the emergency entrance.
Here on the North Shore, the Low Level Road bike lanes act as a defacto emergency route so that fire and ambulance workers can rapidly attend to accidents at our port facilities.
Many other cities have purposefully designed their bike lanes to accommodate ambulances. Because weaving through traffic is way slower, resulting in longer response times and increasing the likelihood of secondary crashes during an emergency. In contrast, three-lane roadways with a central two-way left turn lane offer more clarity in emergencies.
People may think that more vehicle lanes move traffic better than fewer because more means bigger and, therefore, more cars can fit in. However, the throughput advantage of multiple lanes collapses in real life. When someone turns left, they stop in the middle of the lane to wait for a break in oncoming traffic. When they do this, everyone behind them needs to either stop or make a quick lane change to go around them. A single person trying to make a left turn triggers a series of potentially dangerous situations, all playing out at the same time. Two lanes with left-turn bays and reserved bus and/or bike lanes are more efficient and safer.
On Mountain Highway, where district staff recently proposed a two-lane configuration with bike lanes and left turn bays, emergency vehicles could easily use the bike lanes for rapid response. Council turned down this proposal due to citizen concerns over their travel times, even though a similar configuration exists to the north and works well. Frustration with the back-ups lower down on Mountain Highway, caused by the new Highway 1 interchange, probably led to this misinformed response. Can you hear my sighs?
Making a street safer for all users does not delay emergency response times. In some cases, a bike lane becomes the preferred emergency response route. Our municipal staff and transportation engineers work with police, fire, and ambulance departments to ensure our roadway designs do not prevent the swift conveyance of life-saving personnel. It’s not the roads, bike lanes, buses, or even garbage cans that slow down emergency vehicles – it’s the cars.
Heather Drugge is a sustainable transportation advocate who has used her bike for transportation for more than 20 years. She’s got an e-bike now, and maybe a jetpack next. [email protected]
