Why do you need to drive a giant fire truck down the alley? […] “we need to carry water and I don’t know what a fire hydrant is”
Fire hydrants provide water, but you need to run the water through a pump to increase the pressure, and a fire truck acts as that pump. It also allows for the attachment of multiple hoses so that water can be sprayed in multiple locations.
And if all the roads are very narrow, how are you going to get a moving truck or other delivery vehicle in? What about a plumber’s van? What about a small personal vehicle? Two meters isn’t wide enough for any of those, especially not with outdoor seating. Six meters gives space for service vehicles to coexist with pedestrians, cyclists, and seating.
I don’t agree with not having tall buildings either though. If the majority of housing is dense apartments above ground-floor businesses then there’s much more open space left for nature preserves, parks, and gardens. I mean, they don’t need to be skyscrapers, just 3-10 stories maybe. You can also save a lot of space with row houses.
Fire hydrants provide water, but you need to run the water through a pump to increase the pressure, and a fire truck acts as that pump.
Finally, someone with something approaching an answer!
I’m looking for hard info one way or another, but it looks like some fire hydrants provide much more pressure than others. It seems weird that there would need to be a mobile pump attached to the stationary fire hydrant, when it could be built in. I imagine the reason it’s not, is a combination of 1) if the street is wide and the fire engine has a pump built into its water tank anyway, why spend extra on a redundant stationary pump on the fire hydrant? and 2) the pump needs to be powered somehow, and the electrics might be knocked out in an emergency relating to a fire anyway, so it’s neater to simply not rely on mains electricity for the pump.
Which begs the question: what do genuinely narrow (<2m) streets do about fire? Well, sometimes they just run a big hose from a hydrant on a wider street. And sometimes…
(Kei trucks are <1.5m wide! They easily fit down a 2m street!)
And if all the roads are very narrow, how are you going to get a moving truck or other delivery vehicle in? What about a plumber’s van? What about a small personal vehicle? Two meters isn’t wide enough for any of those, especially not with outdoor seating.
The moving truck isn’t important for apartments - everything needs to fit through the front door/corridor/stairwell anyway, so having a 6m-wide street is just about efficiency.
Again though, a kei truck is max 1.48m, so just use a flatbed kei truck and these problems magically disappear. I really don’t know why you want to run your small personal vehicle down an obviously for-pedestrians street, but it is possible (if not legal).
More broadly, if the street is tiny then you bring a tiny vehicle. It’s like being mad that KFC doesn’t have a vegan option. If you really need to use a truck, then drive it to the entrance of the alley and either carry it the rest of the way to the door, or use a trolley.
There’s also another precedent here, from delivery vehicles: take a look at the various cargo ebikes used by delivery services, like Amazon’s “cargo ebike” that fits in a bike lane. Two of them should be able to pass by eachother in a 2m-wide street.
Six meters gives space for service vehicles to coexist with pedestrians, cyclists, and seating.
So I should clarify: 2m should generally be for the less-used streets. Not all streets should be 2m, if a street is frequently used it could obviously benefit from more space. But conversely, if a street is rarely used then it really shouldn’t be overbuilt just to accommodate ‘efficiency’ of extremely rare events (like a moving truck).
Service vehicles don’t need to coexist with that seating/etc. You limit deliveries to a specific hour of the day (say, 8AM-9AM) and pack up the seating during that hour, and if a kei truck is coming down the alley then you squidge over into the remaining 50cm of the street, or duck into a doorway or something, for the ~5 seconds it takes for the truck to go from right behind you to right in front of you. Obviously, a 2m street requires the truck to give way to pedestrians, so they’ll want to slow to a crawl as they drive past you.
And FWIW, I’m not opposed to taller buildings. I am opposed to the mindset that automatically assumes they’re the only option, though. Short buildings are very cheap-per-sqm and mesh well with incremental development, and short buildings with narrow streets (particularly rowhouses!) are IMO just a straight upgrade from the plenty of places with height restrictions and a requirement for wide streets. It’s not like you need to commit to one or the other for the whole city - you can have a 6m street parallel to a 2m street, easy.
Fire hydrants provide water, but you need to run the water through a pump to increase the pressure, and a fire truck acts as that pump. It also allows for the attachment of multiple hoses so that water can be sprayed in multiple locations.
And if all the roads are very narrow, how are you going to get a moving truck or other delivery vehicle in? What about a plumber’s van? What about a small personal vehicle? Two meters isn’t wide enough for any of those, especially not with outdoor seating. Six meters gives space for service vehicles to coexist with pedestrians, cyclists, and seating.
I don’t agree with not having tall buildings either though. If the majority of housing is dense apartments above ground-floor businesses then there’s much more open space left for nature preserves, parks, and gardens. I mean, they don’t need to be skyscrapers, just 3-10 stories maybe. You can also save a lot of space with row houses.
Finally, someone with something approaching an answer!
I’m looking for hard info one way or another, but it looks like some fire hydrants provide much more pressure than others. It seems weird that there would need to be a mobile pump attached to the stationary fire hydrant, when it could be built in. I imagine the reason it’s not, is a combination of 1) if the street is wide and the fire engine has a pump built into its water tank anyway, why spend extra on a redundant stationary pump on the fire hydrant? and 2) the pump needs to be powered somehow, and the electrics might be knocked out in an emergency relating to a fire anyway, so it’s neater to simply not rely on mains electricity for the pump.
Which begs the question: what do genuinely narrow (<2m) streets do about fire? Well, sometimes they just run a big hose from a hydrant on a wider street. And sometimes…
…they use a fire engine built as a kei truck!
(Kei trucks are <1.5m wide! They easily fit down a 2m street!)
The moving truck isn’t important for apartments - everything needs to fit through the front door/corridor/stairwell anyway, so having a 6m-wide street is just about efficiency.
Again though, a kei truck is max 1.48m, so just use a flatbed kei truck and these problems magically disappear. I really don’t know why you want to run your small personal vehicle down an obviously for-pedestrians street, but it is possible (if not legal).
More broadly, if the street is tiny then you bring a tiny vehicle. It’s like being mad that KFC doesn’t have a vegan option. If you really need to use a truck, then drive it to the entrance of the alley and either carry it the rest of the way to the door, or use a trolley.
There’s also another precedent here, from delivery vehicles: take a look at the various cargo ebikes used by delivery services, like Amazon’s “cargo ebike” that fits in a bike lane. Two of them should be able to pass by eachother in a 2m-wide street.
So I should clarify: 2m should generally be for the less-used streets. Not all streets should be 2m, if a street is frequently used it could obviously benefit from more space. But conversely, if a street is rarely used then it really shouldn’t be overbuilt just to accommodate ‘efficiency’ of extremely rare events (like a moving truck).
Service vehicles don’t need to coexist with that seating/etc. You limit deliveries to a specific hour of the day (say, 8AM-9AM) and pack up the seating during that hour, and if a kei truck is coming down the alley then you squidge over into the remaining 50cm of the street, or duck into a doorway or something, for the ~5 seconds it takes for the truck to go from right behind you to right in front of you. Obviously, a 2m street requires the truck to give way to pedestrians, so they’ll want to slow to a crawl as they drive past you.
And FWIW, I’m not opposed to taller buildings. I am opposed to the mindset that automatically assumes they’re the only option, though. Short buildings are very cheap-per-sqm and mesh well with incremental development, and short buildings with narrow streets (particularly rowhouses!) are IMO just a straight upgrade from the plenty of places with height restrictions and a requirement for wide streets. It’s not like you need to commit to one or the other for the whole city - you can have a 6m street parallel to a 2m street, easy.