After a five-day backpack in the beautiful, if bark beetle-savaged, South San Juan Wilderness of Southern Colorado, I returned from nearly a week of incommunicado to catch up on all the news hell occurring in my absence.
It was not fun catching up.
Still, amid all the horror and divisiveness, it seems I missed some public display of truly good news. Namely, there was an “open house” last Thursday to show off the just about/nearly/right at 100% finished plans for improvements to the Silver Avenue Bike Boulevard (SABB, I guess we’ll call it).
In case you missed the meeting, too, the City has a project page, now updated to include the plans shared last Thursday. Many, your humble blogster included, have complained about the lack of bike-friendliness in the design of the existing “bike boulevard.” The SABB update appears to remedy many of these gripes.
In particular, the dangerous Silver crossing at Girard will be dramatically improved as shown in complex fashion below:
If I’m reading the above correctly, Silver/Girard gets both median protection and signs forbidding motorists from making left turns from Girard to Silver. Throughout the project, another big “win” is the small, but significant, step of switching stop signs along the route, including the dreaded Silver crossing of Stanford. That’s always been a toughie.
Those not quite so obsessed with cycling in Albuquerque might find the new SABB unappealing and much not to their liking, drivers in particular. And that’s a good thing. It’s supposed to be a “bike boulevard,” after all. The plans shared last Thursday, with work scheduled to begin quite soon, I’m told, appear to make Silver much more truly so, at least from Yale to Carlisle.
It’s good to return to at least a sliver (see what I did there?) of good news. Thanks to all who have worked toward such significant improvements.
Better Burque 
I went to the open house and was heartened by what I heard and saw. I like limiting the cars as Girard, and I liked removing the stop signs. It was weird having everyone just assume bikes would run them, which appeared to be the defacto assumption for both bikes and cars alike. I’m not sure how this solves the largest problem, however: cars circling for parking.
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Glad to see some improvements to that intersection. Off topic, but what part of the San Juan’s was particularly dry and beetle infested?
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Geoff: I was in the Conejos River basin, camping at the confluence and taking day trips up the Middle and North Fork. My camping buddies had been there several times over the decades and were aghast at the infestation and its impact.
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