Sound Transit, the City of Shoreline, and King Conservation District in Washington State have announce a Trees for Rail program, a partnership to re-green the Lynnwood Link light rail corridor with native trees and shrubs as it passes through Shoreline.
The first-of-its-kind partnership seeks to utilize King Conservation District’s county-wide Urban Tree Canopy program to establish native vegetation and tree canopy to reduce the impact on corridor-adjacent homeowners. This partnership leverages the resources of Sound Transit and will serve to meet Shoreline’s landscaping requirements.
Shoreline requires landscape buffers between the light rail corridor and residential neighborhoods, but in some locations there is not enough space on Sound Transit owned property or in the city right-of-way to plant these buffers. By working together, Shoreline, Sound Transit, and King Conservation District developed a plan to offer trees and shrubs to be planted at nearby homes or adjacent city rights-of-way in the impacted neighborhoods.
"This program builds on our existing commitment to plant thousands of trees along the Lynnwood Link alignment," Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff said in a statement. "We think teaming up with the City of Shoreline and bringing the expertise of KCD to homeowners in these areas will be a big win for residents and the environment."
Though construction of Lynnwood Link involved removing some trees, the reduction is only temporary. Sound Transit will be planting 20,000 trees, nearly four times as many as it had to remove. The agency will maintain the newly planted trees along the alignment for up to 13 years, which the agency says would improve their survival rates.
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SOURCE: Sound Transit
