Arthur Peabody

A local lawyer expatiates on the dangers. https://www.abqjournal.com/business/...baae36282.html

debade

I think the suggestion of more riders is a good one but I now believe the only way to get there is protected bike lanes as cities like Copenhagen do. A few key issues need to be tackled.

Level of Service (LoS) needs to be addressed. If your city is designing street infrastructure to comply with LoS, the design will likely not feel safe for those cyclists who do not want to have a motor vehicle behind them or one passing without some type of barrier. LoS adds complexity to street design that currently favors motorists since they are the majority of users, Consequently, when a decision is made to add a bike lane vs a motor vehicle turn lane, the turn lane is selected. Until LoS is eliminated, active transportation growth will at best be slow.

Traffic Calming might be a great idea but it requires two measurements. First did the design calm motor vehicle traffic. Second, did the design significantly increase bicycle traffic and protect peds. If bicycle traffic was not significantly increase, the design only met part of the objective. Same for ped safety. So, advocates should not allow their city to view traffic calming as a success if active transportation is not significantly enhanced.

While i am still developing this concept, the other (perhaps the final significant change) is to change our on-street parking rules. On-street parking obstructs miles and miles of potential bike lanes and blocks the vision of motorists as it relates to peds. City parking rules need to be created that favor the use of moving vehicles (bikes for example) vs parked vehicles. For example, if there is a street of homes, all with driveways and it happens to be a good connector for bicyclists, street parking needs to be eliminated. And/or, parking ‘near’ a residence should be measured by bus stop distance in the community vs home owner convenience expectations. It is likely your city parking regs have not taken active transportation (moving vehicles use of the street) into account. If they did, city parking rules would be challenged.

Paul Barnard

Arthur, was there nothing in the link interesting enough for you to comment on?

Rick

I clicked on the link and was immediately greeted with a lockup screen. I had to manually shutdown my computer then restart it to remove the garbage. Now from personal experience is my opinion. We are not in the Netherlands. The people here in the USA have no intention of acting like they are in the Netherlands. When well meaning so called activists promote what they call bicycle infrastructure and funding creates it, there is something left to be desired. I avoid poorly designed not well thought out so called bicycle lanes like the plague. A local mayor I happen to know asked my opinion on some new painted bicycle lane in the lower dessert. I told him that leaving the rode the way it had been prior to the changes would have been safer for everybody.

work4bike

Sucks to be a cyclist in Albuquerque

Arthur Peabody

It speaks for itself. My comments wouldn't improve it.

Sorry. I've never had a bad experience on this website.

I enjoy it. I follow the laws, look out for others, stick to back streets and multi-use paths, cross busy streets at lights.

50PlusCycling

It sucks to be just about anything in Albuquerque. I’m a third-generation native of the city, my great-grandmother owned much of what is the residential area around the downtown area today. Albuquerque has imitated many of the less well-thought-out policies enacted in other cities around the country, and these have increased drug addiction, homelessness, crime, and violence. This is in addition to a situation where gang violence has been an issue for generations. And then there is the rampant public corruption, terrible public schools (New Mexico finally edged out Mississippi to take the title of America’s worst public schools), and arguably the most poorly-trained and poorly-led police departments in America.

I enlisted in the Army to escape this “wretched hive of scum and villainy,” and have never looked back.

work4bike

Then what's the point of the thread? You're going to have to do a little better than provide a link that doesn't work.

Paul Barnard

One of the great things about discussion forums is discussion. When you don't discuss links with how they are relevant, what you thought was interesting, etc. then you become nothing more than a:



I am thankful that this forum is more than just a news headline feed. I think that it what it's all about. Would you be here if posts were nothing more than links? Most of us wouldn't.

Arthur Peabody

I'm at a public computer at the university library. I opened that link in Edge, Chrome, and Firefox. It worked in all of them. I've been using this website for 20 years, never had a problem. It's the daily newspaper in Albuquerque. I know lots of people who read the news on its website. I've never heard a complaint. I don't doubt your testimony. It's inconsistent with my long experience, and that of everyone I know. I've posted links here before, never had a complaint.

Would you have known about this article if I hadn't posted a link to it here? Town criers are useful. Read the article first, then have an informed discussion. I post here less than monthly. I don't make it anything, much less a news headline feed, or nothing more than links, just make a small contribution. This forum is better because people report the news as well as have discussions. I don't reply to most of them because I have nothing to say. I don't look for what I don't like and give the posters a hard time.

1989Pre 

I do not know what Mr. Barnard is on about, but I thank you for posting this article without trying to bias us, before-hand, with your own opinion.
In other news, when I clicked on the link (in Opera), I got just a blank, white screen. Maybe try to post again, from your personal device.

I-Like-To-Bike

The link worked just fine for me on Firefox browser. Works just fine on my Chrome browse too. Maybe you need to update your computer to a little better browser.

The OP doesn't need to do anything "better" to please would-be moderator/nannies applying their own rules of posting etiquette.

Mtracer

I read that article when it was in the paper. I live and ride in ABQ. While the author said he used to commute, he sounds a like a rider with limited experience and just plain afraid of traffic. I ride the streets he mentioned he would never ride again. I ride them weekly. These are roads with two lanes in each direction and a typical bike lane marked on the side of the road. I find that area to be pretty lightly used by cars. I haven't ridden them at rush hour, but certainly have been on them when late afternoon traffic is otherwise picking up all around the city and maybe I get passed by 6 cars in a half mile stretch. The road goes over I-25 there, but there is no access to I-25 there so I think this is why there really isn't that much traffic on that section of the road. So, I really don't get where he's coming from.

As for cycling in ABQ in general, I think it's pretty good. According to the city's 2020 bicycle map: "The Albuquerque metropolitan area has approximately 180 miles of official non-motorized multi-use trails and the system continues to grow every year." This is paved and unpaved. But there is a lot of paved path miles.

We have a ~17 mile paved path running parallel to the Rio Grande for most of it, north and south. You can ride all but the last mile, of one end, without having to cross a single road. We have another that runs through the center of town. It starts at the far north end, running about 80% the length of the city, not counting a rural zone in the far south. This also is 8 miles of never having to stop for a single intersection. It follows a large drainage channel that only the major roads cross. The path goes under these roads. Is it pretty? Not at all. Mostly the view is the back side of businesses. But I can move along at speed for those miles with never having to deal with a single car.

We have another path on the east side, that is about 10 miles long that parallels a major road (Tramway Blvd.) .It does have intersections about every 1/2 mile.But Tramway itself has a very wide shoulder on both sides that is wide enough for a whole other car lane. Riding this shoulder is popular with the more avid cyclists (like myself). I and many other believe riding the wide shoulder is safer than the parallel MUP due the intersections I mentioned and right-on-red the cars can take.

We have many arroyos (lined with concrete) that run east and west. Essentially all of these have a MUP along side. Many only cross major roads every half mile, though some do cut through residential areas and you have many more roads crossings there. I can do a 50+ mile ride, in town with 2/3 on paved paths.

I can't say how ABQ compares to other cities, but suspect it has way above average amount of MUP miles.

Also, it's very rare that a car doesn't make an effort to give me as much room as possible when passing. I take the lane often to make it impossible for drivers to try to squeeze by me in pinch points. Or simply at stop lights where I'm going straight and I know there are cars that would turn right on red if I weren't in the middle of the lane (I see those tire marks on the curb, I'm not waiting there for the light to change). I've never been honked or yelled at when I do this.

I do my best to make my intentions clear, I do my best to be visible, I choose my routes with some thought.

I didn't even touch on all the MTB trails in the Sandia foothills that the city butts up against. And the many miles of dirt and gravel roads in the valley along all the irrigation ditches. I think it's actually a pretty nice place to live if you like to ride bikes.

Is there room for improvement, of course. Most of the streets have no bike lanes, or some of those really crummy ones that make you wonder why they even bother. But the city is trying and working to improve all the time. I see a lot of other cyclists on the road, so I don't think it's as bad as the author of that article makes it out to be.

Arthur Peabody

I just opened it in Opera, it worked for me. I don't doubt your experience.
I posted it originally from my own device. I run Linux, don't have Windoze, so I made a point of testing it at a university computer because it runs Windoze and has Edge, a browser without a Linux version, that some people use.

badger1

No issue at all with either Mac/Sonoma/Safari or phone (ios17/Safari).

1989Pre 

Ah. It is working fine now. Thanks.

Korina

I do wish the author would do his homework; drivers are whizzing by at 50mph because the roads are designed that way. If it's in town, that's bad; if it's outside of town, that's fine. It sounds like the pedestrian infrastructure could use some work.
@Mtracer, you're making me envious; it sounds wonderful.