An OPEN LETTER to:
City of Albuquerque
City Council
Dear Albuquerque City Council,
Bicycling in Albuquerque today is a tale of two cities. On the one hand, our relatively mild weather combined with our network of arroyos, multi-use trails, and bike boulevards allows for excellent and practical cycling year-round, where that infrastructure exists. On the other, our bicycle facilities—particularly our low-stress facilities—are limited and fragmented, with many destinations nominally connected by bike routes unsatisfactorily divided by uncontrolled crossings across high-speed, high-traffic roads.
The 2024 update to the city’s Bikeways and Trail Facilities Plan promises to mitigate this inequity. This plan proposes a practical and ambitious roadmap for improving all Burqueños’ ability to bike safely and conveniently to wherever they wish to go. In addition to the new and upgraded facilities in the proposed bike network, the plan also improves connectivity through safer road crossings, and provides a toolkit for designing effective bike boulevards and multi-use trails within our city.
Studies and personal experience repeatedly show that safety is the number one concern preventing people from cycling. We need only look at the Bosque Trail and the North Diversion Channel—the latter especially during Balloon Fiesta—to recognize that when given the opportunity to bike safely, Burqueños take it. The network and crossings envisioned in this plan will substantially increase both the total mileage of safe bikeways and the number of destinations that can be reached using safe bikeways, and in doing so enhance the utility of the existing safe bikeway network.
In recent years, Albuquerque has adopted a Vision Zero Action Plan to reduce traffic fatalities, a Complete Streets ordinance to ensure streets are designed for all Burqueños, and a Climate Action Plan to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Increased bicycle usage is core to the success of all these goals, as personal motor vehicle use is a primary source of air pollution in the city and the predominant cause of traffic fatalities.
We strongly support the proposed Bikeways and Trail Facility Update vision of bicycling infrastructure in Albuquerque, and encourage the Albuquerque City Council to approve the plan and take strong efforts to provide the funding and staffing to ensure its implementation and maintenance.