by Scot

BB recently mentioned the little bike route jog recommended on the ABQ Bike Map for those wishing to get from largely pleasant Claremont NE to the almost always wonderful North Diversion Channel Trail (NDC). Here’s the only problem with that recommended jog:

Photo: John Fleck, “Official Better Burque Staff Photographer”

Yeah, Candelaria approaching the NDC has one of those older generation bike lanes with three feet or less of lane “granted” by authorities in ye olden times, authorities made up of people who never, EVER rode a bicycle anywhere near a road.

Not much riding fun here today, including bouncing along the debris collected from the street cleaner making sure the driving lane is clean by dumping all the debris in the scrawny bike lane and adjacent gutter.

There are two ways to look at the Claremont-Candelaria jog to NDC: 1. We fix the situation by putting the proposed bridge over the arroyo from Claremont to the NDC; 2. We restripe Candelaria’s older generation bike lane from roughly the NDC to I-25 and make it a fully compliant “Complete Street.”

I favor the bridge, both as more desirable and more likely to happen, given the rather extended restriping timeframes in ABQ. Readers have pointed out that the Claremont-NDC bridge is recommended in the 2015 Bikeways and Trails Facilities Plan (although I must admit my “find in page” didn’t find that exact mention in the 312-page document). Apologies for missing that inclusion.

One thing that would help arguments for both #1 and #2 above would be solidly documented bike counts of those willing to put up with the current Claremont-Candelaria jog. I saw fellow cyclists out do the jog this past Sunday; if there are significant numbers of those willing to do it in the far less than ideal conditions illustrated above, think of how many NDCers would include a Claremont bridge in their travels in years to come.