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At the Pinecrest Community Center recently, residents were given an opportunity to review detailed drawings of the proposed 10-foot-wide shared use path to be installed along Kendall Drive’s south side between Ludlam Road and Red Road.
All who showed up for the sparsely attended meeting were strongly opposed but for a cycling advocate who thoughtfully reminded a distraught resident that he made a mistake decades earlier in buying a home on Kendall Drive.
The plan calls for removal of 102 trees along the 1.15 miles of roadway. Our public works director, who led the meeting, gave assurances that Pinecrest would provide ample tree replacements. He said our results will be better than the county’s experience with the SW 136th Street shared use path, where in his opinion meager plantings of inappropriate tree types were specified.
The Kendall Drive path is a harbinger of what is to come. Under a transportation plan adopted by Village Council, we intend to install 11.21 miles of shared use paths along 10 different roadways in coming years. Likely the next path: along Ludlam from Kendall Drive to SW 136th Street.
My home on Ludlam is adjacent to a well-used sidewalk. News flash: cyclists may ride on sidewalks. Over 35 years, I don’t recall a single conflict between cyclists, or between cyclists and pedestrians. And for casual bike-riding on Pinecrest streets without sidewalks, why would someone, or a family group, not be comfortable traveling on less-busy secondary roads? We’ve done it with young grandchildren without worries.
Surprisingly, the plan includes a second attempt to build a shared use path along SW 104th Street. A few years ago, angry neighbors successfully scuttled a similar plan. They voiced safety concerns about visibility when exiting their driveways and cringed at landscape destruction.
For me, destroying canopy trees is a major issue. Extrapolating from plans for the Kendall Drive path, we stand to lose up to 1,000 mostly mature canopy trees. These will no doubt include some installed more than two decades ago during my time of service on the village landscape committee.
According to a recent county study, Pinecrest has lost an alarming 15 per cent of its tree canopy in the past five years. Massive lot clearing for new homes has affected every neighborhood. It often involves removal of familiar swale trees that have defined our streetscape “look” for decades. Granted, many new replacement trees are being installed.
But at 77 years old, I won’t live long enough to fully appreciate them. The accelerating pace of change in our neighborhoods at the present time causes me discomfort.
First and foremost, Pinecrest’s strategic plan calls for preserving the character of our community. Adherence to this principle helps us retain the quality of life we enjoy.
Shoehorning 11-plus miles of asphalt ribbons into our long-established transportation grid is inconsistent with this aim.
The craziness of retrofitting shared use paths reminds me of the US Army officer during the Vietnam War who allegedly said: “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Bob Ross served eight years as a Pinecrest Village Council member.
