With its lack of I-25 access (as shown above), Odelia/Indian School’s overpass crossing of the Interstate already makes this route a favorite of cyclists. Now it looks like we’re a step closer to making Odelia/Indian School NE even safer by addressing its speedway engineering.

In what was a very short City Council meeting Wednesday, Councilor Isaac Benton led passage of R-249, reallocating funds for roadway improvements in his District, including:

“City proposes to design a striping pattern for the cross-section of Indian School/Odelia road between Broadway Boulevard and Carlisle Boulevard and Indian School Road from Rio Grande Boulevard to the Indian School-Menaul Traffic Circle, for the purpose of reducing traffic speeds and adding bike lanes…”

While Odelia/Indian School already has bike lanes from Broadway to Carlisle, they aren’t at a Complete Streets standard of width, and, perhaps even more importantly, driving lane widths and other components make the street a metaphoric, and sometimes veritable, drag strip.

A “road diet” combined with the “Look Ma! No exits!” aspect of Odelia/Indian School offers not only an even better route from near downtown to UNM, North Diversion Channel Trail, and other attractions/places of business, modernizing it to a Complete Streets standard will serve as a model of how at least one or two I-25/I-40 crossing might be redesigned in future decades.

It will be nice to point at the new iteration of this important street and crossing, and say “can we make any other no Interstate access crossings that look like this?”