Eyes on the Street: Valencia Gets Trees and Decorative Streetlights

New trees and new roadway scale lighting. Photos: Matthew Roth

Now that the Valencia Street sidewalk reconstruction between 15th Street and 19th Street has given us sparkly new pedestrian space, the Department of Public Works (DPW) has begun putting on decorative touches. The DPW has planted two types of trees as well as pedestrian and roadway scale lighting, all of which reflects the decision from the community outreach process that began in 2004.

The DPW said the two types of trees are the deciduous London Plane (platanus acerifolia) and the evergreen Brisbane Box (lophostemon conferta). The DPW is planting 96 new trees across the length of the project, which project manager Kris Opbroek said were "just a hint of things to come."

The streetlights are two different heights: The teardrop shaped fixtures are approximately 27 feet tall for roadway scale and the harp-shaped pedestrian scale fixtures are approximately 14 feet high.

Now if they could just clear the bike lanes of gravel and fix that dangerous pavement edge near Mission police station!

The pedestrian scale light fixtures.

Trees waiting to be planted. Notice the roadway scale light pole without the fixture.