On The Street: Bike Plan

In September the Comprehensive On-Street Bicycle Plan (CBP) will be introduced to City Council. A sizeable and detailed document, which has been years in the making, the Comprehensive Bike Plan contains some very powerful ideas.

The main one is to connect all of the existing major bikeways in the city so that people can actually use them for bicycle transportation!

Right now, Albuquerque has a fairly decent system of on-street bikeways, but only the most dedicated bike commuters use them.

Many citizens indicate in poll after poll that they would give bike commuting a try if it weren’t so dangerous. Well, folks, the CBP can be a powerful tool to improve the safety of our streets for cyclists, thus encouraging more people to try cycling as transportation.

Over the next 20 years, the CBP will do such things as: add striped bike lanes to streets that need them, complete the missing links between existing bike routes, provide bicycle facilities at 1/2-mile intervals, connect the on-street system to the trails (off-street) system, and encourage employers and merchants to provide safe and secure bike parking and other end-of-trip facilities such as bike lockers and showers.

It will provide for the education of bicyclists and motorists, encouraging motorists to share the road with cyclists and cyclists to respect and obey traffic laws (since they are, indeed, traffic).

A big bonus of the CBP is that approximately 80% of the on-street improvements included in the plan will not require the acquisition of any additional Right-of-Way; the space for the improvements already exists on the streets.

In short, the CBP will make Albuquerque streets safer and more useful for cyclists and will improve the quality of life for everyone in the city: cyclists, motorists, pedestrians, and businesses.

With construction on the Big-I continuing to wreak havoc with motorists’ lives, the CBP’s introduction to City Council comes at a very opportune time.

A vote for the CBP is a vote for clean air, healthy citizens, less traffic congestion, more economic development, and a better quality of life for everyone.