Kirby trees doomed, forester says

Almost all trees will be lost

David Crossley, Jan 25, 08.

Tagged with quality of life, neighborhoods

The River Oaks Examiner is reporting that the deal Trees of Houston made with the City of Houston Public Works department to save trees as Kirby Drive is widened isn't going to save them. Almost all of the trees between Richmond Avenue and Westheimer will be lost to construction, according to City Forester Victor Cordova. Cordova said that 8 trees have a "realistic chance" of surviving, because they are relatively small. He said all 143 live oaks and 18 smaller trees will be removed.

The City insists that the street be widened not to increase capacity but to increase the lane widths. A Public Works engineer told me recently that drivers of Hummers and some large SUVs find the current Kirby lane width "uncomfortable." A staff member of an elected official used the same word. As we have reported before on the Kirby issue, "discomfort" has been found to keep drivers alert and calms the desire to speed.

Dan Burden, one of the great expert practitioners in streetscape design, says added lane width encourages added speeds, reduces operational efficiency, reduces safety, and inspires risky driving.

Incidentally, a Hummer is 6.8 feet wide. The average car is 6 feet wide. In the current lane width, the Hummer has 1.4 feet of space on each side in its lane (the new width will add 3 inches to that). The nominal distance to the next car, then, is 2.8 feet. At 25-30 miles an hour, a reasonable speed for such a busy street with so much cross traffic and several lights, this may not be enough room for driving while text messaging or reading magazines, but ought to be safe enough for the driver who is paying attention.

That section of Kirby, as anyone can see, is fast becoming very urban, and there will soon be a light rail station at Richmond. These two changes mean there will be a great many pedestrians on the street. Of course the increased lane width will not come at the expense of property owners, so widening the street while maintaining the same right of way as today means pedestrians will pay the price for a few drivers' comfort. And all of us will pay for the loss of the trees, and the subsequent cost of "replacing" them.

Clearly it's time to modernize the Public Works design manual, which is dictating these changes even as other cities go in the opposite direction.

In related news, a number of transportation and quality of life groups are organizing a new initiative with a working name of Walkable Houston. The purpose is to advocate for pedestrian rights as we add a huge new transit system and about one million people to the City over the next few decades. Pedestrian interests were not represented in the private deal Trees for Houston made with the City, and the group hopes to remedy that in the future.

For more on the widening project, go to the earlier blogs by Robin Holzer and Tory Gattis

Next David Crossley post: "Congress for the New Urbanism XVI"
Previous David Crossley post: "Agitators miss the mark"

More Commentary