CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Charlottesville’s Fire Department is in the market for smaller fire trucks, after input from a number of community cyclists and walkers at a recent town hall meeting.

“Charlottesville is a very bike-friendly community, walk-friendly community, and sometimes when they see our fire trucks, they look massive,” Deputy Fire Chief Will Broscious said during an appearance on WINA Morning News. “And that’s become a topic among our community member who want to see us in smaller fire trucks to basically allow us to have more bike lanes.”

As for finding the smaller trucks that have the space and can carry the equipment they need, Broscious said, “Thankfully we’re not the only city that has that challenge.”

A recent WIRED Magazine article outlined fire department pushback in New York and Baltimore about various biking lane and walkway barriers that make things safer for them.

“Firefighters, though—they just want to get where they’re going, fast,” the article said.

“So, manufacturers have kind of met us in the middle, and they’re called a ‘metro’ design,” Broscious said.

He said these new trucks have a low hose bed, a shorter wheelbase that’s able to turn a lot easier than the classic, over-sized fire trucks.

One of the challenges in purchasing them is the price tag, which has – along with most things – gone up in recent years.

“Thankfully, the fire truck we just received, we actually put under contract a few years ago, and so we paid significantly less for that fire truck than we will for the next fire truck,” Broscious noted.

He said the regular old-school fire truck these days is running over $1 million, and Charlottesville Fire evaluates what trucks will need replacing over the next 5-to-10 years and plans for it.

That plan is also essential because there’s now a 3-to-4 year build time on any fire truck the city requests.

According to WIRED with an example of one of the smaller trucks, the Ferrera Fire Apparatus is “ten inches shorter and two inches narrower than the department’s older trucks, and the turning radius has been knocked down to 25 feet from 33”.

About a dozen community members turned out for the March CFD town hall at CitySpace, and Chief Broscious said they plan to hold more.