The width of streets also affects other aspects of livability. <br />Narrow streets are less costly to develop and maintain and <br />they present less impervious surface, reducing runoff and <br />water quality problems. <br />The topic of automobile speeds on neighborhood streets <br />probably tops the list of issues. Where streets are wide and <br />traffic moves fast, cities often get requests from citizens to <br />install traffic calming devices, such as speed humps. How- <br />ever, these can slow response times of emergency service <br />vehicles creating the same, or worse, emergency response <br />concerns than narrow streets. <br />Oregon's Land Conservation and Development Commission <br />recognized the values associated with narrow street widths <br />when it adopted the Transportation Planning Rule. The rule <br />requires local governments to establish standards for local <br />streets and accessways that minimize pavement width and <br />right-of-way. The rule requires that the standards provide for <br />the operational needs of streets, including pedestrian and <br />bicycle circulation and emergency vehicle access. <br />• Why Are Emergency Service Providers Concerned? <br />Street width affects the ability of emergency service vehicles <br />to quickly reach a fire or medical emergency. Emergency <br />service providers and residents alike have an expectation <br />that neighborhood streets provide adequate space for emer- <br />gency vehicles to promptly reach their destination and for <br />firefighters to efficiently set up and use their equipment. <br />Fire equipment is large and local fire departments do not <br />have full discretion to simply "downsize" their vehicles. <br />Efforts by some departments to do this have generally not <br />been successful, since these smaller vehicles did not carry <br />adequate supplies for many typical emergency events. <br />The size of fire apparatus is driven, in part, by federal Occu- <br />pational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) require- <br />ments and local service needs. The regulations require that <br />fire trucks carry considerable equipment and that firefighters <br />ride completely enclosed in the vehicle. In addition, to save <br />money, fire departments buy multi-purpose vehicles that can <br />respond to an emergency like a heart attack or a traffic acci- <br />dent, as well as a fire. These vehicles typically provide the <br />2 <br />92 <br />