32. And I don’t know. But you make infrastructure decisions for decades. Looking at the pictures it’s not exactly 250 year old oaks that are being torn down.
The PR focus is on trees cos that’s where public sympathy lies but if you read the actual complaints being made it’s the usual crap.
Might surprise a few on here but in general I'm all for getting rid of the trees planted along residential streets. They cause far more problems than they solve, which basically amounts to a little bit of air cleaning, maybe a bit of drainage and maybe some shade in the summer.
On the minus side
- they take up a lot of pavement space and therefore pedestrian space
- are a huge hazard along pavements, especially for those with buggies/wheelchairs, increasingly so as theygrow and make the pavement uneven affecting those with mobility problems.
- a lot of the trees they use cover cars in the sticky pollen in the summer.
- in terms of wildlife the main things that live in them are pigeons crapping on your car.
- because they get tarmaced etc right up to the trunk and can't get access to water etc most of them are in poor health anyway.
- when the leaves fall they create a slippy mess on the pavement/roads as we have less money for clearing them up.
- maintenance of the trees with branch cutting etc is also an area councils could cut costs if the trees weren't there.
- potential for damage to underground infrastructure and in some small cases damage to houses either by the roots or an unsafe tree toppling over in a storm
- prevent parking (either roadside or potential access to front drives)
And the thing I find from a lot of those complaining is they have tarmaced drives and brick walls/fences around their garden. Get all the residents to plant hedges for their boundaries and that would be far more beneficial for wildlife, the environment and be a windbreak and air/noise pollutant reducer. They could even plant their own small tree on their own property if they wanted.
