One of the men in the picture lifted those bollards out of the ground, let the tiny trash truck in, and replaced the bollards. Show this to the next person who says car-free streets are not workable because of trash and emergency service. And this scooter-truck, also in Taormina, which turned into a fresh fish market in the middle of the street! These are everywhere in Italy. Vanishingly few vehicles like this are marketed in or made for the U.
Some states, and some federal regulations, make this very tricky. As would, I think, most urbanists, who are frequently critical of the size of American vehicles. Not just the big gas-guzzling SUVs, but the massive fire trucks and garbage trucks and our other commercial and utility vehicles, which are a not-insignificant reason for our very wide residential streets, which in turn incentivize speeding and make neighborhoods less safe.
What difference does it make? The fire department will give you a hard time. Trash collection firms. What about the ambulances? Meanwhile, the old cities that we do have are degraded by the presence of vehicles sized for sparse suburbs with wide streets. And this in turn reinforces the prevailing but sort-of wrong idea that cities are loud and chaotic.
Vehicles and streetsβtransportation networks and development patternsβexist in symbiosis. This whole question of speeds, street widths, and vehicle sizes is interesting.
We have big things: big-box stores, big houses, big cars, wide roads. We have medium-sized versions of these things. But we mostly lack the very small. Look at that Italian fishmonger who can sell fish in the street because he can access a small van with the guts of basically a glorified motorcycle but the capacity of what in America would be a huge, expensive vehicle.
