(Day 2 of the 30-day blogging challenge!)
I picked up my latest weekly local paper, the Saline Reporter and came across the article about a homeowner's trees getting in the way of a sidewalk/walkway/greenspace project. There are multiple subdivisions in this area, and the township decided to have walkways in the neighborhood in order to make it safe for pedestrians (and other non-vehicular traffic) to walk between Saline and Ann Arbor. But this resident's trees are smack in the path of the proposed sidewalk. The house is not "in" a subdivision, it's right next to the road and it's almost the closest house to the road.
What to do?
1) Go around the trees, towards the road. The officials say no, because it's too close for safety.
2) Go around the trees, closer to the house, away from the road. The homeowner doesn't want the sidewalk 30 feet from the dining room window.
3) Don't build it at all. Nope, the government wants it.
4) Go build the pathway on the OTHER side of the road. The officials say no, even though there are fewer houses affected, it "has to do with pedestrian safety" and making a "seamless pathway".
I had a thought that may help a little.
The homeowner was concerned that the trees might be damaged by a concrete sidewalk (that's how the rest of the pathways are constructed, that or asphalt). I was thinking of perhaps making a deck/walkway on short "piers" like a deck or like the walkways at Point Pelee Provincial Park in Ontario....like this:
Maybe at least this way, the walkway could be CLOSER to the trees and they would affect the root systems less than digging out and laying out concrete sidewalks.
Maybe a lot of you out there would just say, "don't let the government make this sidewalk to begin with". That might be the easiest of all, but you can't make everyone happy.
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