Gee, No One Thought of This?

This probably should have been part of an actual traffic study before spending almost a million dollars per mile:

• Chicago's fire commissioner says the women and men of her department have been forced to dodge new roadblocks as the city expands bike lanes and other safety-related street changes.

  "Response times are going up," Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt told aldermen during City Council budget hearings Thursday, explaining that bump-outs, safety islands and bike lanes have restricted the width of a number of city streets, and that's making it harder for fire trucks and ambulances to get through traffic.

  "You might have one lane ... or if we're trying to get to a hydrant, we can't get to a hydrant because it's restricted," said the commissioner. "When we add these things, it changes our tactics," she added, saying she and the department are in favor of expanding bike lanes and other safety features.

Well, first up, she's a moron if she says the CFD is in favor of expanding bike lanes. These lanes are denying businesses of needed street parking, cutting down sight-lines that endanger pedestrians, hamper snow-plowing and street cleaning....and depending on the weather, are unpassable / unusable almost one third of the year.

We went to qualify for our IROCC card at a certain Area range last year and the street leading to the Area had changed from two lanes in both directions to a single lane each way. Traffic sucked and added quite a bit of time to our journey.

And then an ambulance appeared....

And no one could pull to the right because there wasn't anywhere to go. Anyone requiring urgent care from the ambulance (or in the ambulance) wasn't getting it in a timely fashion that day. Goodness only knows how a truck or tower ladder would get to a fire quickly up that way.