Op-Ed: Lake Forest Park, it’s time to get our environmental priorities straight

By Robert Anderson

Lake Forest Park resident

Over the last few years, a controversy has arisen that pits environmentally-minded Lake Forest Park residents against one another. Sound Transit’s plans to expand the regional public transportation system, and specifically to widen Bothell Way to add an additional lane for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) to and through Lake Forest Park, has prompted major concern from residents about the loss of trees in the corridor and other environmental impacts.

Don’t get me wrong: I love trees, and I deeply value the forested ecosystems we have in Lake Forest Park and the benefits our tree canopy provides. I’ve made my career working professionally in the environmental restoration field in the region, including planting forests, restoring salmon habitat, and researching human-environmental interactions. 

I’ve also spent years restoring my own backyard with diverse native trees and shrubs – I’m about as much of a “tree-hugger” as you could ever meet, and proud of it. And I believe that in all the concern about trees being cut down, the bigger picture is getting lost when it comes to the environmental challenges facing our community and our world.

Global climate change, driven by our society’s ongoing burning of fossil fuels to power our industries and cars, is rapidly changing the face of the planet. It leads to drought, flooding, wildfire, and other hazards, contributes to biodiversity loss and the extinction crisis, and has major impacts on human health and wellbeing. 

And one of the most essential actions that we can take to mitigate these impacts is simple: get out of our single-occupancy vehicles, and start using sustainable green transportation such as walking, biking, light rail, trains, and buses.

This is the broader frame through which we should be seeing Sound Transit’s expansion projects: as an effort to build a world-class transportation system for the Puget Sound region that allows people to move about without relying on fossil fuels. 

Bus Rapid Transit in Bothell, Kenmore and Lake Forest Park will connect tens of thousands of people to the new high-capacity light rail line that brings us to downtown Seattle, the University of Washington, the airport, and other destinations, and this is just one leg in an extensive network of buses, light rail, and more connecting the entire region. 

Within this network, every dedicated bus lane we build can carry thousands of riders per hour, several times more transportation capacity than an equivalent car lane, and with a far lower carbon footprint.

As such, LFP’s BRT project is about much more than “saving just a few minutes” on a single bus route, as critics of the project often frame it. It is one step in the realization of a much broader vision for a sustainable future in the Puget Sound region, the construction of an urgently-needed, long-overdue mass transit system that allows us to shift away from the “car culture” that has fueled planetary environmental degradation. 

And it’s going to be a great thing for our community, allowing us to hop on a short, fast bus ride to Northgate where we can access light rail to speed us toward our workplaces, cultural events, and much more.

Does this come with costs? Yes: construction of the project will temporarily contribute to traffic and noise, some neighbors will lose a portion of their properties, and we will lose trees, including several hundred in Lake Forest Park. And these trees are a tremendous loss to our community, not to be taken lightly.

But I also don’t think they should be taken out of proportion. In a recent opinion article in the LFP Town Crier, city councilperson Paula Goode appeals to the ecosystem-service benefits provided by the trees to be removed, highlighting “five giants” that each sequester over 600 pounds per year of carbon dioxide. 

Let’s put that number into perspective: a single passenger vehicle emits over four tons of CO2 per year. In other words, getting even a single driver out of their car and into public transit would eliminate more carbon emissions than a dozen of these giant trees can sequester.

Moreover, many of the trees to be removed (including the single biggest one listed, a black locust) are actually non-native, invasive species that should be removed to promote healthy native forest regeneration. 

And the vast majority of the trees are far from “giants”: many of them are essentially large shrubs, such as dense thickets of smaller-diameter (6-12”) English holly and cherry laurel, also both invasive species, that are already at their full size and are actively degrading habitat conditions and reducing biodiversity by their presence.

Of course, large native trees have many other benefits besides carbon sequestration, and I’m certainly not trying to argue here *for* the removal of the giants that we do have. I would love to see as many native trees saved as possible in the construction process. 

But as a lifelong environmental advocate, activist, researcher, and professional, I am dismayed—and frankly, offended—by the attempts to twist this issue to claim the environmental high ground on the part of opposition to the project. 

In her opinion piece, Councilperson Goode spins pro-transit advocacy as anti-environmental and sweepingly lays claim to everything from indigenous history to climate action in an effort to center tree advocacy as the only valid form of environmentalism. This narrow, exclusionary idea of environmentalism is misguided and misleading.

Lake Forest Park, it’s time to get our environmental priorities straight. Trees and forest canopy are wonderful and valuable, but they are not the be-all, end-all of environmental stewardship. Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture, and do all we can to support real climate resilience through sustainable transportation.