Las Positas Trees?

By an edhat reader

Did anyone else notice all the palm trees recently cut down on Las Positas Drive by Elings Park, heading towards Cliff Drive and Hendrys? Why were they cut down? It was so pretty to see them.

Avatar

Written by Anonymous

What do you think?

Comments

2 Comments deleted by Administrator

Leave a Review or Comment

12 Comments

  1. Not sure if you also noticed all of the construction in the area as well, but they are widening the road to include a safe bike path from the bottom of Cliff to Modoc at Calle De Los Amigos. It’s been going on for a couple of months, but should be a really beautiful and safe bike/walking path. I can’t wait for it to be done!

  2. I don’t like to see trees being cut down, but usually these projects make them plant more trees than they cut down. And they might plant native trees that will benefit the wildlife. When I had Queen Palms in my yard, only rats used them.

  3. The bicycle mafia is at work again. They are converting huge swaths of public space into their reserved domain. I am ambivalent about the Las Positas/Modoc route as the road is wide and the trees can be replaced. But they are going to move into the West Side soon. They have announced plans to remove very old Jacaranda trees on Mission near the 101. This is to accommodate a bicycle route that will interfere with local pedestrian traffic immensely. The trees are being removed so that bicycle riders would not have to dismount and walk their bikes for less than 100 yards. They will be able to traverse this intersection but pedestrians will have to make room for them in the new “right of way” they are building for their purposes. It is really amazing what power they have achieved in city planning.

  4. Mini, there is no food for them in that tree, right? So you are saying they used those for nesting or resting? What did those birds do for millenia before we imported those non-native trees to SB to fit our idea of what paradise should look like?

  5. Original plan was to turn Chino St into a bike friendly street. But the car mafia stopped that plan. The Mission connector to San Pascual was developed as an alternative, along with a Gillespie bike friendly street. I’d be okay with just the Gillespie route but someone thinks bikes won’t go 2 blocks out of their way to use a bike friendly street. I just hope the construction on this project won’t be as impactful as the Modoc project where they left the entrances to Hidden Valley rut-filled gravel pads for months.

  6. PITMIX Don’t know what they used before palms. What I do know is what happens with ours. The Orioles strip the fibers from the fronds and build hanging nests. Crows raid the nests for food. Woodpeckers do what woodpeckers do on the trunk. An owl has nested in ours for years and seems to raise a family. I have also wondered what the Monarch butterfly’s used before the eucalyptus trees came to the butterfly preserve Goleta?

  7. Pitmix, it was not the ‘car mafia’ that stopped the Chino Street takeover but rather the residents of a quiet street with limited parking and the need for them to be able to park work vehicles and such at their residences. The idea that a few bicycle riders have the right to destroy the neighborhoods for their recreation is amazingly selfish and city council should stop this usurpation.

  8. This is another collective public tragedy – As if we haven’t suffered enough!
    This pastoral drive down Modoc was one of my favorites in Santa Barbara County. I am also an avid cyclist and used to commute to my business in Old Town Goleta along this road. It never felt unsafe to me – there was at least a 5 foot wide lane all along Modoc. Nor was it necessary to remove the trees to widen the new bike/pedestrian lane.
    I would like to know who is behind this decision? The same people who let the beachfront carousel go?
    Or who designed the State Street barricades for the first 9 months of closure that looked like a crime scene? I’m bitter about how public officials are treating our beautiful city that we have worked so hard to live in. Really bitter…

  9. 9:08, my understanding was that no parking was going to be removed. What was going to happen was to turn Chino into a one way street with dedicated bikelanes So no parking lost. The only impact was they wanted to block certain intersections so cars would no longer be able to speed down the street- they would have to use Gillespie or San Andres. But don’t let facts get in the way of your lost parking fight.

Shooting During Family Dispute in Santa Maria

COVID-19 Cases Trend Down But Still Too High Says Public Health