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Not Just Bikes is wrong about several things: The video states at 1:37: "Baltimore was supposed to install 10 miles of new bike lanes downtown, but the fire de

Not Just Bikes is wrong about several things: The video states at 1:37: "Baltimore was supposed to install 10 miles of new bike lanes downtown, but the fire department said that would make the streets too small for its trucks and aggressively fought against the plan." This is false. The residents of Potomac Street (the visual example given in the video) aggressively lobbied against the bike lanes because they would take away parking spots. The residents involved the Fire Marshalls. The Fire Marshalls noted that the street would be 19 feet wide and the fire code called for 20 foot streets and, enforcing the law, they said the project needed to be paused until an exemption was granted. Then the exemption was granted. Then the bike lanes got built. Here they are, right here, clear as day: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hKNb82Ef6sWL4uUw5 https://maps.app.goo.gl/hKNb82Ef6sWL4uUw5 I even aligned the streeview image to extremely close to the exact position the video showed at the timestamp where the narrator said "was supposed to install". I knew they were wrong about Baltimore because while I am not a BFD employee I am a both a volunteer firefighter in an exurb of Baltimore and a cyclist, so I followed the development of bike lanes in the area very closely. I figured that if the video was wrong about Baltimore, they probably just googled "fire department oppose bike paths" and used the article titles as references so I looked up the Peekskill story. The narrator states at 2:12, explicitly including the Peekskill Esther Place pedestrian mall, "all of this potential progress WAS LOST". "Was lost" implying it is gone. Kaput. Erased. Esther Place still exists. Here is a city council meeting bill from two months ago explicitly extending the road closure: https://www.cityofpeekskillny.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/1392?fileID=9066 https://www.cityofpeekskillny.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item... Also, there is no evidence of the fire department raising any objections to it except for a strongtowns.org blog post, and the youtube channel and the website appear to be the same entity. So now I'm like "is the entire video bullshit"? edit: I must be trippin because I know that European cities with narrow medieval streets have smaller fire trucks, but the dimensions for the Scania P460, a common euro-spec fire truck and MAN TGM (a fire truck used by a Dutch volunteer fire company youtube channel I follow) and a Pierce Saber (a normal, typical US-spec fire truck) are damn near identical except for a custom variation in length with US trucks being about 5 feet longer-- hardly a radical difference. Consider at front and rear axle loads, not how your eyes perceive their sizes.

artimaeis 2y ago
He cites his sources: https://notjustbikes.com/references/firetrucks.txt https://notjustbikes.com/references/firetrucks.txt Re: the Baltimore FD https://www.baltimoresun.com/2018/07/03/baltimore-city-council-examines-allegations-of-bullying-intimidation-of-bicyclists-by-fire-officials/ https://www.baltimoresun.com/2018/07/03/baltimore-city-counc... And yes, the exception was granted just a few months later: https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/city-council-passes-bill-altering-fire-code-to-address-stalled-bike-lane-building-projects/ https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/city-council-passes-bi... Even this article cites the fire department objections. It's a shame that Not Just Bikes didn't seem to catch that the lane _did_ get built, but his point seemed to focus on FDs objecting to bike lanes, and I think that Baltimore story is a prime example of that.
- os2warpman 2y ago
  >but his point seemed to focus on FDs objecting to bike lanes The Fire Marshalls are required by law (and oath) to enforce the laws. They are literally and legally required to object and grant exemptions as appropriate. And the source for the Peekskill story in the "cited sources" is themselves. They're using a sourceless article they wrote themselves as a source. I just finished watching the video and the factual errors are... voluminous.
  - Goronmon 2y ago
    They're using a sourceless article they wrote themselves as a source. There are plenty of sources in that article though? If you are wrong about that, I'm going dismiss the rest of your comments as well, since you are probably wrong about your other criticisms.
    - os2warpman 2y ago
      >There are plenty of sources in that article though? There are no mentions of the fire department in that article except one in the last paragraph. >“We’d love to talk to the fire and police departments and figure out a way to address safety concerns while keeping this corner a permanent fixture of the city,” There are no other easily findable references on the internet. All of this ignores the fact that the narrator of the video implied that the pedestrian mall was removed due to fire department interference, when it obviously wasn't and this conversation thread will not stray into any tangents and will focus on the fact that the narrator implied that the pedestrian mall was removed due to fire department interference, and that was a lie.

artimaeis 2y ago

He cites his sources: https://notjustbikes.com/references/firetrucks.txt https://notjustbikes.com/references/firetrucks.txt Re: the Baltimore FD https://www.baltimoresun.com/2018/07/03/baltimore-city-council-examines-allegations-of-bullying-intimidation-of-bicyclists-by-fire-officials/ https://www.baltimoresun.com/2018/07/03/baltimore-city-counc... And yes, the exception was granted just a few months later: https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/city-council-passes-bill-altering-fire-code-to-address-stalled-bike-lane-building-projects/ https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/city-council-passes-bi... Even this article cites the fire department objections. It's a shame that Not Just Bikes didn't seem to catch that the lane _did_ get built, but his point seemed to focus on FDs objecting to bike lanes, and I think that Baltimore story is a prime example of that.

os2warpman 2y ago
>but his point seemed to focus on FDs objecting to bike lanes The Fire Marshalls are required by law (and oath) to enforce the laws. They are literally and legally required to object and grant exemptions as appropriate. And the source for the Peekskill story in the "cited sources" is themselves. They're using a sourceless article they wrote themselves as a source. I just finished watching the video and the factual errors are... voluminous.
- Goronmon 2y ago
  They're using a sourceless article they wrote themselves as a source. There are plenty of sources in that article though? If you are wrong about that, I'm going dismiss the rest of your comments as well, since you are probably wrong about your other criticisms.
  - os2warpman 2y ago
    >There are plenty of sources in that article though? There are no mentions of the fire department in that article except one in the last paragraph. >“We’d love to talk to the fire and police departments and figure out a way to address safety concerns while keeping this corner a permanent fixture of the city,” There are no other easily findable references on the internet. All of this ignores the fact that the narrator of the video implied that the pedestrian mall was removed due to fire department interference, when it obviously wasn't and this conversation thread will not stray into any tangents and will focus on the fact that the narrator implied that the pedestrian mall was removed due to fire department interference, and that was a lie.