Emergency response
It's a fair worry: with fewer lanes, will emergency vehicles get stuck? The one study that measured response times before and after found no change, and the Federal Highway Administration says the center turn lane gives responders an open path around traffic.
On a four-lane road with no median, drivers in the outside lane know to pull to the curb. Drivers in the inside lane often don't know where to go, and responders end up threading a path down the middle, waiting for gaps. FHWA notes that this slows response and raises the chance of a second crash on the way.
With one lane each way and a center turn lane, there's one obvious move: pull right. The center lane is left open for the emergency vehicle. On Boston Post Road, the new bike lanes add room for drivers to pull over, so even a driver caught in the center lane has somewhere to go.
The measured evidence is limited but consistent: response times held steady, and fire departments that were brought in early signed off. Two findings are worth knowing about, and they point to what makes a road diet work for responders.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa · peer-reviewed, 2024
University of Iowa researchers compared 3,872 fire department trips on streets before and after four-lane roads became three. Response times “did not meaningfully differ.” As far as the authors know, it's the first study to measure this.
North Main Street, West Hartford, CT · 2021–22
A trial turned four lanes into one 10-foot lane each way and a 12-foot center turn lane, the same idea as Boston Post Road. Emergency services were a formal test. Police, fire and ambulance services raised no life-safety concerns, supported the road diet after a winter of use, and the trial was made permanent.
Main Street (Route 71), Asbury Park, NJ · 2017
An NJDOT road diet on a state highway, like ours. The city's emergency departments had concerns, so the city took them to NJDOT and asked for more traffic counts. The plan went ahead once police, fire and emergency management were on board, and NJDOT has since rebuilt the street as a road diet.
San Francisco · peer-reviewed, 2025
A study by the city's transportation agency and fire department found most street redesigns did not slow emergency vehicles. But lane reductions on highly congested corridors were associated with slower emergency vehicle travel.
In Asheville, North Carolina, the county's emergency services director opposed a road diet on Charlotte Street in 2019, pointing to the hundreds of emergency calls in the area each year. The city built it that year. Its 2022 follow-up found left-turn crashes down 93% and sideswipes down 50%, with a few more rear-end crashes and longer drive times near the interstate. The follow-up didn't report on emergency response.
The places that made it work did three things: they brought fire and EMS in early, they sized the center lane generously, and they taught drivers that on a three-lane road you pull right, not into the middle. All three are worth asking NYSDOT and our fire departments about.