Here's the situation - a tree eventually grows tall enough to provide shade in summer and windbreak in winter for pedestrians at 83rd Avenue and 103rd Street.
City of Edmonton sees this and kills it.
No discernible reason...
Tree was behind guardrail in park space, giving Edmontonians a small taste of nature, a small reminder of the natural world, a small baffle from the car noises of busy 103rd Street, its shade providing relief from the otherwise ugly parking lots and wasteland of the old rail-line property, its trunk and branches providing a windbreak fomr teh <north wind that howls down the open-ness of the old rail-line property.
Certainly the old dream of a "City Beautiful" suffered a blow today.
Below is a letter I sent Ben Henderson, my councillor.
Replacement, if any, will probably be a spindly thin tree that will need years to equal what the City so brutally wiped out today. Such was the case on Whyte Avenue on the median when huge old 50 years old trees were wiped lout and not replaced. You can say they were replaced -- but certainly not in size. And not even in number. Only half were replaced - with spindly ones whose shade barely extends to the car lanes.
The City said they were old and dying. They were still green. More likely the City wanted them out of the way to make room for its disastrous plan to run a LRT commuter train line through Whyte Avenue. A wide young man told me before the city builds a line through Whyte Avenue, it should run buses along the route, dedicating the same space the train line will use and check first to see what chaos such a line will cause before spending all that money for what I see will likely be a disaster. Underground line is much preferable - the City council should think that they are building for a hundred or more years into the future instead of doing things on the cheap and without concern for overall effect. Such as taking out a tree apparently on a whim of some official who may never even have seen the tree, stood in its shade.
Here's the letter:
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Mr. Henderson,
I don't understand why the city, despite its money troubles and on one of the hottest days of the year, would remove a fine shade tree, providing shade to pedestrians on a sidewalk.
The tree was at NE corner of 83rd Avenue and 103rd Street. The tree was not in the way of traffic or any other city function that I can see. it was behind a guardrail, on park space.
The city could have removed the dead tree marked with red at 83rd and 104th. It could have done something about the mudbath between the sidewalk and the road at the NE corner of 104th and 83rd. but instead it took out what I thought was a perfectly good tree.
As consolation, I hope the city is planning to replace it. The replacement will not be as good as what the city had, at least for a few years but eventually will provide as much natural green beauty, oxygen, windbreak and shade that I and I am sure many other pedestrians appreciated at that corner.
Would you try to see that a replacement is put in there please?
Thanks for anything you can do on this matter,
Tom Monto
Edmonton
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Sept. 4, 2020
Weeks later, I have still received no response to my letter, but now it is clear that the city chopped the tree to allow line of sight for crossing of extension of a railway track across 83rd Avenue.
I think it is for streetcar service.
There is still no signage on site explaining what is happening there.
And then City is surprised a few years ago when someone could just go and chop down a tree on 83rd Avenue and no one reported it at the time.
Well, that is what the city does apparently...
You wonder who they think the City is for, City hall or its residents....
Thanks for reading.
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