Stretch of Barcelona Road Gets Bike Lanes For 1st Time

barcelona bike lanes at the es
Fresh striping on Barcelona looking east at Barcelona ES; hard to remember now that this stretch was a beat-up dirt path only a few weeks ago during construction. Note also sidewalk on north side.

After suffering the necessary short-term pain for long-term gain, South Valley residents (and bicycle riders) are now enjoying the completion of Phase I of the Barcelona Road Storm Drain Project (proving again that there are no roadway projects in the SV, only “storm drain projects”).

Don’t ya love photos of new bike lane striping? Well, as Frank Zappa once sang, “here’s some more.”

barcelona bike lane at del rio
Looking east at Barcelona and Del Rio SW

 

del rio at barcelona
Del Rio SW was also repaved as part of Phase I south to almost Rio Bravo. Again, this road had been torn all to Hell for months, but the new pavement/drainage improvements are wonderful (no sidewalk, however).

 

barcelona before after at joe sanchez
Here’s the western terminus of Phase I. Phase II will take the lane/sidewalk to the Isleta Drain almost to Coors Blvd. (like I said, it’s not a road job, it’s a storm drain job)
barcelona new bike lane phase 1
Here’s the Phase I area circled as shown on the online ABQ Bike Map. You should be seeing Bike Lane Blue here shortly.
barcelona and del rio map
And for those “city folks” asking “Where the Hell is Barcelona and Del Rio SW?” here you go. Believe it or not, there are new-fangled  bike lanes and sidewalks being installed all the way down there. Like a city or something. Come check ’em out!

While the stretch of Barcelona improved in Phase I is short, the improvements are important and many:

  1. New sidewalk and bike lane anywhere on Barcelona is great!
  2. This includes the area in front of Barcelona Elementary School.
  3. Logistically, connecting a newly repaved Del Rio to Barcelona to Joe Sanchez makes it far easier to get from Rio Bravo to Blake, site of another road storm drain project, and from there to Foothill SW, the fabulous newly repaved north/south street we raved about earlier here at Better Burque.

We’ve been complaining down here in the South Valley about all the simultaneous road storm drain projects, but seeing the end result of Barcelona Phase I (and the near completion of Blake construction phases going west to Coors Blvd.) turns those whiny complaints into safer driving, walking and cycling.

Keep up the good work, Bernalillo County!

 

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s