We Could Do What?

Photographer Ed, temporarily working under the aegis of The Office of Incisive Analysis, has looked at the problems faced by the Whatcom County Planning Office with respect to Saving the APA Maple Canopy project and found some options in potential actions.  He provides them here for your consideration:

There seem to be three general approaches to APA

road widening:

1. DO NOTHING, just leave the current pavement,

   ditch, shoulder, and trees as they are.

   Likely positions on this are:

      Residents: Great, we like it the way it is

      and strongly oppose harming those big maples

      Developer: Great, we like the trees too.

      Besides, this saves us the road widening

      costs.

      County. Bad; we would have to give up this

      golden chance to bring APA up to current

      standards (22 feet of pavement with 4 foot

      gravel shoulders) at no cost to the county.

   I think we should ask for this, but I don't

   think the county will bite.  A truly

   enlightened county government might, but I bet

   that's more enlightenment than we've got here.

2. HARD PAVING ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE ROAD ONLY.

   That would require putting a culvert in the

   ditch, filling the ditch in, and adding 3 feet

   or so of pavement and some gravel on top of the

   culvert.  Four feet of gravel shoulder could go

   on the south side without much harm to the big

   maples.  To alleviate any concern about

   inadequate pedestrian and bike ways, a nice

   gravel path could wind through the trees south

   of the big roadside maples.

   Likely positions:

      Residents: Pretty good! Doesn't change much

      and saves all of the trees.

      Developer: Well, we do like those trees, but

      culverts would add to our design and

      construction costs.  On the other hand, this

      plan would greatly reduce community

      opposition to our project, and that's got to

      be a good thing for us.  On balance?  Gotta

      think about it.

      County: I think they'd go for it.  My quick

      reading of the standards

      [http://tinyurl.com/44d7zbl] makes me think

      this gives them most or all of what they

      need for a standards-compliant APA.  (To

      head off any misunderstanding, these are

      minimum standards for this type of road, and

      do not result from projections of increased

      traffic.)

3. HARD PAVING ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE ROAD ONLY.

   Three feet of additional pavement and four feet

   of shoulder would require cutting down some of

   the big roadside maples and would gradually

   kill the others through traffic damage to their

   roots.  (Just to be clear, there's really no

   room for compromise between hard paving only on

   the north side (2) or only on the south side

   (3).  That's because the pavement is already

   very close to the edge of the ditch -- no room

   to do anything without filling in that ditch.)

   Likely positions:

      Residents: No, no, no!  To the barricades!  

      Developer: Hate to lose those nice trees,

      but it does save us the culvert costs.  Too

      bad, but whadaya gonna do?

      County: Happy as a clam, even without much

      of a shoulder on the north side of the road.

      That is, unless they worry about fire bombs

      hurled through their office windows by

      disgruntaled Point Roberts residents.

  

As things stand, the decision is pretty much up to

the developers.  They could have their engineers

draw up either plan (2) or plan (3), with a very

good chance of getting county approval for either

one.