The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Plan for Pike Road…
Or, Why Does Longmont Want to Rip Out 60+ Healthy Mature Trees for … Bikes?????*
*it’s not really about the bikes
It’s just over eight months since the Longmont City Council voted to demolish dozens of healthy trees along Pike Avenue to build a bike path and add traffic lanes on the road. T minus 30 days (or so) until the quality of life of several neighborhoods, home to thousands of people, is irrevocably changed.
I walk Pike every morning with my dogs. There’s a heavy canopy of mature trees that provide shade in the hot summer months and protection from ice and snow in the winter. The trees buffer traffic sounds for the surrounding neighborhoods and help with our air quality. The trees offer a pleasant barrier between a busy road and a residential neighborhood.
Come March all of this will be gone.
Instead, the city will tear up the trees and add four lanes of traffic to part of Pike. At Coffman, the street will convert to two lanes for vehicle traffic, but there will be on-street bike lanes in both directions of at least seven feet wide (according to notes taken by a neighbor at the meeting). This on a street where the posted speed limit is 40 miles per hour, but where vehicles…
