Building better streets saves time, lives, and money

In recent years, new urbanists and firefighters have discovered both common interests and shared challenges in neighborhood street design.

The Emergency Response & Street Design Initiative, a collaboration between the Congress for the New Urbanism, fire marshals from across the United States, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Smart Growth program, found solid common ground for ongoing efforts to reconcile narrower streets and good emergency access: Street connectivity — specifically well-connected networks of traditional street grids — is essential to good urbanism, shortens emergency response times, and improves overall community life safety.

From that foundation, we are cooperatively working to change the International Fire Code with proposed amendments empowering local fire code officials to be flexible on street designs. Fire marshals Carl Wren, of the Austin, Texas, Fire Department, and Rick Merck, of Montgomery County (Md.) Fire & Rescue, wrote new language for Section 503 of the code — the passage that mandates designated fire access roads have at least 20 feet of clear space. CNU members Patrick Siegman, a transportation planner with Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates in San Francisco, and Peter Swift, a civil and traffic engineer and owner of Swift & Associates in Longmont, Colo., wrote a new appendix (Appendix K) that can be adopted by local jurisdictions.

These changes were presented to the International Code Council in Baltimore, Md., on Oct. 26. The ICC's Fire Code Committee approved Appendix K, but rejected the proposed Section 503 language. CNU's summary of that vote is available here.

Regardless of the Fire Code Committee’s decision in Baltimore, the last word on these proposals will come at the Final Action Hearings in May 2010, in Dallas, Texas. The ICC is accepting public comments – and we need yours in support of our effort. The comments window is open through Feb. 8, 2010; MS Word and PDF comment forms are available here.

The initiative team has also added a new chapter on emergency response to the CNU/Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) new Proposed Recommended Practice, Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities, which advances the successful use of context-sensitive solutions (CSS) in the planning and design of major urban thoroughfares for walkable communities.

Underlying this initiative are a few basic facts: Wider streets lead to higher traffic speeds and greater chances for fatal collisions, as shown by CNU member Peter Swift's study, Residential Street Typology and Injury Accident Frequency. Depending on their context, they damage, if not destroy outright, any sense of an inviting, walkable place. As communities sprawl outward and homes are built further and further from firehouses, firefighters and other emergency responders find it increasingly costly and difficult to maintain acceptable emergency response times. Those times suffer, and response distances increase when street networks are designed as poorly connected mazes of cul-de-sacs.

To meet these challenges, new urbanists and firefighters are finding that building compact neighborhoods with highly connected street networks can provide a solution that keeps homes close to fire stations and out of high-hazard areas. A 2008 study of street connectivity by the city of Charlotte, N.C., presented at CNU's Transportation Summit 2008 by host Danny Pleasant, proves this point.

But there are also occasions when the desire for narrow streets and calmer neighborhood traffic collides with the need for fast access and ample working room for fire equipment. The Emergency Response & Street Design Initiative was launched to solve this problem through better street connectivity and design, better building construction techniques, and better education for firefighters and new urbanists about each other's professions. For a detailed history of the initiative, click here.

More information about the Street Design & Emergency Response Initiative will be posted as it becomes available.

Resources

  • CNU's proposed International Fire Code amendments.
  • CNU Report on Emergency Response & Street Design lays out the case for traditional streets in connected networks, summarizing findings from earlier work and case studies including Peter Swift's study, Local Government Commission case studies of developments in Memphis, Seattle, and the San Francisco Bay area, and other studies cataloged by the Initiative team.
  • NEW:This article from the November 2009 American Journal of Preventive Medicine (a PDF file), is the latest proof that sprawl lengthens emergency response times.
  • Oregon's Neighborhood Street Design Guidelines (a PDF file), which resulted from a cooperative effort to reduce street widths.
  • Presentations from, and a summary report of the October 2008 working group meeting are available here.
  • Presentations from and a summary report of the April 2008 Smart Growth Streets and Emergency Response Workshop are available here.
  • An annotated bibliography and collection of articles and studies that helped form the informational skeleton for that workshop can be found at the website of Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions, which is a partner with CNU in this project. This collection includes the Swift study and excerpts from a study done by the city of Raleigh, N.C., in 2000, showing a fire station in the most connected neighborhood can cover three times more structures than a fire station in the least connected neighborhood.
  • Sprinkler systems also give fire marshals much more comfort with the question of narrow streets, and flexibility in accepting them. Capt. Frank Kinnier, an assistant fire marshal with the Chesterfield County (Va.) Fire & EMS and workshop participant, explains why here.

Contact

For more information, or if you know of other studies that address street network connectivity, or the relationship between street width and traffic speed, please contact Jon Davis or Heather Smith.

 

Top left photo courtesy of LouAngelini2008, via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

 

Fire engines can't negotiate this turn in an Austin, Texas, neighborhood quickly in an emergency. They'll lose precious minutes backing up and inching forward because of a too-tight turning radius. (Photo courtesy of the Austin Fire Dept.)

One FDNY engine can't get around another whose stabilizing jacks are deployed. Fortunately, the city's connected street grid means fire companies have other, quick ways of getting to the scene. (Photo courtesy of the Austin Fire Dept.)

Large diameter hoses running between hydrants and fire engines can't turn easily in narrow spaces. (Photo courtesy of the Austin Fire Dept.)

The traditional connected street grid allows many ways to get to an emergency, which gives emergency responders shorter response times. (Photo from "Over Washington, D.C." via David A. Sargent.)

The typical suburban pod development restricts emergency responders to only one or two ways into a subdivision, and few access options once inside. (Lower left photo courtesy of David A. Sargent; others courtesy of City of Ventura, Calif., via David A. Sargent.)