Tuesday morning, I was riding my bicycle up Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., past Broadway toward the University of New Mexico, in the bicycle lane, when I felt the whoosh of a bus pass me. Its side mirror nearly bonked me, and looking down I could see its wheels well over in the bike lane.

The City of Albuquerque has provided us with fabulous technology to communicate concerns about such things, so I pulled out my mobile phone and opened the “SeeClickFix” app. I didn’t get a good look, but tried to remember the bus number and route number, and within moments had filed a complaint about a bus encroaching on the bike lane and nearly hitting me.

Nearing the top of the hill, I realized I must have gotten the route number wrong, opened my phone, looked up the bus routes on the fabulous ABQ Ride app (really these apps are great when they work!), and updated my complaint with the correct bus route number.

At this point, within perhaps five minutes of the incident, my report now had all the necessary information to track this down – bus route, time, and place. Yay technology!

The subsequent two days have become a Kafkaesque dark comedy as the SeeClickFix/311 team repeatedly closes my complaint, arguing that they don’t have enough information to act. I reopen the complaint pointing to the corrected information I have already provided which answers their request for information. They ignore the information I provide, complain that they don’t have enough information, and close my complaint.

My favorite bit was the one where the city closed my complaint saying they had no way to contact me to get more information. I found out about this when the SeeClickFix system emailed me to tell me.

We’re now in the fifth cycle of this. At this point it hasn’t been closed again, so I guess I’m ahead right now?

If anyone who works for the city happens to read this:

• Oct. 30, 2018, shortly after 7 a.m.
• Bus line #92, eastbound up the MLK hill just past Broadway

Update: