One of Albuquerque’s “Top Ten Most Unwanted” cycling adventures has been captured transformed through a delicious “road buffet” of restriping. Up to now, cycling west of the very nice roundabout at merge of Menaul and Indian School Blvds. to Rio Grande Blvd. has been a harrowing trip of speeding drivers hot-rodding on what amounted to an airport runway.

No more.

BB reader Dan Majewski graciously passes along snaps below of what Indian School looks like after the restriping. First, here’s what it looked like previously (2019):

And here’s the new look from alert reader Dan:

We’ve gone from a view into complete streets hell to photos that would make excellent cover shots on the City’s “Complete Streets Program” annual report (acknowledging Mr. Majewski for the photos, of course).

Speaking of the City, everyone there who endeavored toward this restriping is to be thanked, perhaps no more so than City Councilor Ike Benton. While we can quibble, as we always can, that maybe the buffers should include physical separation (e.g., planters or curb stops), etc., this transformation via striping is helpful precedent for how we can similarly improve other roads with lanes and width too big for their traffic count (e.g., averaging between 6,000 and 8,000 per day on this stretch of Indian School). I’m sure BB readers can think up at least 100 area roads that would benefit from such work.

Meanwhile, this stretch is so good now I’m actually looking forward to riding it. Imagine that.