For the first time in over a month I walked the Katy Trail this morning. I was aware of work starting to widen the trail and saw it firsthand today. What a mess.
Urban Ribbon Park With Cooling Canopy
First, the Katy Trail is what’s known as an urban ribbon park that typically spring up in cities on disused railroad lines. They’re billed as being an oasis in urban environments.
What makes the Katy Trail different from a lot of other walking trails in Dallas is that you don’t need a heat shield from the driving sun. That’s because mature greenery lines most of the path in a cooling canopy – unlike the Northhaven Trail, Trinity Strand Trail, and others where a tree sighting requires a diary entry.
No Good View on Buena Vista
Knowing this, why would the Katy Trail want to widen the trail and grub up trees and vegetation along one side? The result has been an exposure of mismatched, sometimes poorly-maintained backyard fencing and parking structures serving townhomes and apartments along Buena Vista Street.
The Katy Trail website posts pictures of a heavily-treed trail on both sides of the path, but the reality is different from the Photoshop. Given the path of demolition, the new secondary “soft-surface path” will be veryclose to those townhomes. Lush vegetation requires depth as well as length. One-tree deep doesn’t result in concealment, let alone lushness.
The site further says this is the “fruition” of a 20-year master plan. They say the current mile under construction from Blackburn to Knox connects with the other 2.5-miles of existing dual-lanes. Fine. But it’s also the stretch that’s closest to residential structures.
Stay Inside The Lines
I’ve heard from some of those homeowners complaining of the Katy Trail’s encroachment. Typically, I’m unsympathetic to such protests figuring the property lines should have been understood before purchase.
However, in this case, I think the trail’s aesthetics will be harmed by seeing those structures where the green has been grubbed-up and its replacement a narrow strip. And the Friends of the Katy Trial would seem to agree that verdant greenery is integral to the experience (if their words, “… opportunity to enhance the landscape …” and Photoshopping are to be believed).
But again, depth of planting areas matters as does the maturity of what’s planted versus what’s been removed.
Build It and They’ll Come
The secondary point Friends of the Katy Trail makes is that use of the trail has expanded to over one million visits a year. So if you have more visitors, you need more capacity, right? Not really.
One assumes that since the dawn of mankind, we have unendingly expanded into less populous places. Ask Native Americans about that. For decades we thought that to combat congestion we needed more roads. We learned too late that the more roads, the more we will drive.
Believe it or not, limiting traffic requires limiting roadways just as limiting the size of the party means having it in a smaller room, not a larger one. Social distancing isn’t new, it’s just personal space on steroids.
So, increasing the capacity of the Katy Trail will only make it more crowded. The combination of diminishing personal space and enjoyment allows public spaces to regulate themselves. Add more capacity and people will re-space themselves enabling more people.
Not all Bad
While homeowners along Buena Vista are feeling squeezed, the existing, secondary soft-surface trails are getting resurfaced in bright red. While the old gray is scrapped away, we’re left with a Christmas-y red and greenery color scheme. I can just see the December Marathon renamed the Katymas Marathon.
The goal of the Katy Trail should be to enclose the tree canopy to increase shade, not widen its distance.
