By John Fleck

Six days ago a member of the Better Burque Tactical Urbanism Team filed a report with the City of Albuquerque regarding signage failure through a construction zone on Atrisco NE. The construction, as the above BBTUT photo illustrates, collapses the northbound care lane into the normally luxuriously safe bike lane.

This turns the bike lane, without warning, into a danger zone for cyclists.

No “bike lane closed ahead” or “share the road signs”, as required by the Manual On Uniform Traffic Control Devices – the much-maligned MUTCD.

The city’s quick and helpful response

Advantage Barricades has been informed to have the split maintained by email. Monday was off holiday.

That was Tuesday. Still not fixed as I write this on Saturday. And given that it’s a weekend, and no one works on weekends, it’ll be several more days before we have a fighting chance of having this fixed.

So maybe not a helpful response?

Trying to ride up Atrisco today I was passed by four cars that dangerously swerved through the barricades into the oncoming traffic lane to pass me, one honking, one driving so fast that they clipped the barricades when they swerved back into the bike lane ahead of me.

So maybe we have a broken system, here, if the solution to a clearly dangerous situation is to send an email to a contractor, who seems free to ignore it.

To reiterate the basic principal, as outlined in the MUTCD, and which we’ve discussed here in the past:

The needs and control of all road users (motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians within the highway, or on private roads open to public travel (see definition in Section 1A.13), including persons with disabilities in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), Title II, Paragraph 35.130) through a TTC zone shall be an essential part of highway construction, utility work, maintenance operations, and the management of traffic incidents.

I realize that better signs won’t protect me from dangerous drivers, but can we at least improve the odds by trying to follow rules written in an attempt to help? Is it unreasonable to expect the city’s road work contractors to respect rules written to respect and protect “all road users”?