News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
An engineer's schematic shows the route of fire trucks and placement of stop signs on a new street design. The figure, presented to the city council, shows a conceptual footprint of the improvements, along with the typical vehicle path for a fire truck, both as it travels from the fire station to SR-155 and on a return path from the highway to the station. The lines are created by using the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) standard turning template dimensions, the engineer said. The turning templates account for the physical space requirements needed to turn a vehicle of a particular class. It is typical to design for the largest vehicle that will frequently use the intersection, in this case the templates for a city bus were used and require more space than a typical fire truck. - Courtesy of Gray & Osborne, Inc.
The city of Electric City, as well as engineering firm Gray & Osborne, maintain that they did consider emergency traffic in regard to the upcoming intersection change in Electric City, although not speaking directly to the fire chief about it.
An upcoming intersection change in Electric City, which will remove a stretch of Western Avenue at a Y-shaped intersection in front of city hall, was met with criticism by firefighters as well as citizens at an April 9 council meeting, particularly in regard to how the change would affect the response time of firefighters leaving or arriving at the nearby station.
Mike Meskimen of Gray & Osborne presented maps at a meeting depicting the routes a fire truck would take with that change to the intersection, showing that a fire truck could handle the additional turns presented by that change.
Meskimen, as well as City Clerk Russ Powers, explained that various kinds of traffic, including emergency traffic, was considered in the planned intersection change.
Powers did apologize to Fire Chief Mark Payne for not discussing the change with him throughout the planning process, but maintained that emergency traffic is always considered when engineering a city's streets.
Meskimen later elaborated more in an email on the topic of engineering in relation to emergency vehicles.
"There is limited guidance specifically concerning emergency vehicles," Meskimen said. "Good transportation design considers all aspects of traffic flow, including such things as efficient traffic flow, ease of movement, sight distance, pedestrian safety and overall public safety. The present configuration of intersecting streets in the vicinity of Grand Avenue and Western Avenue does well to facilitate traffic flow on Grand and Western but the configuration does not promote pedestrian safety, or the multiple points of access for vehicles parked in the vicinity of City Hall. Traffic traveling northeast on Grand Avenue and turning left onto Western is blind to pedestrians crossing the street to City Hall. The improvements shown attempt to strike a balance between all users."
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