That would be nice. But it will probably require a 20 year environmental review and 30 resident meetings and the sacrifice of a virgin first born.

Where would you put the snow piles?

Yeah I don’t want go full NIMBY but I see potential problems with this idea

The sad truth to this is the city has to adopt standards for things like parking spaces. If the tree grows bigger and the space shrinks by an inch some lawyer will successfully sue the city for every dinged bumper because the public parking space maintained by the city does not conform to their specifications.

So much of famously walkable Boston has very narrow sidewalks, often with trees narrowing down the sidewalk even more.

And I think we're all just used to it, because despite that Boston is still one of the, if not the most walkable bigish cities in the US.

But my point is, it would be great to have a wider sidewalks, although I very much doubt we'll ever see the trees planted in the street. And it would be very odd to get that before we get physical barriers between traffic and bicyclists.

That was actually fascinating. I’d never considered the idea before reading that.

How do those trees get enough water?

Snow removal nightmare

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They spent a fortune buying and planting trees constantly…and the vast majority are dead by a year. Our sidewalks are usually not wide enough for viable tree plantings…and the climate here sucks it raw.

Currently the city asks residents to water the trees. This is most necessary for young trees and during droughts. Mature trees in normal weather will generally get enough water to survive.

Towns with successful urban forests (e.g. Brookline) will make watering new trees a city service, but they still ask for neighbors to help. If you plan on living in a community a long time, it saves money in the long term to water trees. However areas that are poorer or with mostly short-term residents often have a harder time keeping young trees alive.

I'm talking about the ones in the picture. They're quite large but have almost no exposed dirt above them. So they're relying on roots to ground water. Trees that size struggle in Boston. See the larger trees that regularly fail on beacon Hill or the ones that die regularly in city hall plaza.

Boston actually waters new trees, but not nearly enough. We had a new tree put in out front mid summer. I watered it regularly in addition to Boston's contractor watering it every week or two and managed to get it to survive the dry as hell summer we had. The gallon of dog urine that it gets doused with daily doesn't help things either.

What do you mean by walkable?

it’s easier to get around boston on foot than by car most of the time (bar the mbta being non functional).

but generally when people say walkable they mean the city doesn’t prioritize cars over pedestrians. boston did that unintentionally bc it’s not a planned city, so the streets are a mess but walking around is pretty straightforward.

Parking spot savers have gotten out of hand

And street cleaning. You can see the litter around those trees. I would love more trees and much better tree care. However, I would have to see more information on how this works in practice.

Good point and money itself doesn’t just appear out of no where there has to be a carbon footprint to generate revenue for tax dollars. Not to mention trimming the trees and replacing sidewalks.

Wait until the roots start growing through the pavement. Wonder how much people will love the idea then