When we last spoke, in that blog way where I “speak” and you tend to not say/write anything, I was going on and on about the lack of continued bike infrastructure on Academy Blvd. east of Ventura (the ABQ road, not the highway/freeway/neighborhood in Los Angeles). Let’s use this example as a springboard to expressing some ideas concerning creation/use of an Albuquerque/BernCo Low-Stress Bike Network.

We begin (okay, I know, it’s actually just me, but work with me here) with assumptions, contentions, and related things that might be stated as a “Low-Stress Paradigm” (LSP) if I was getting paid more to write this up and was still a “Political Scientist” (esp. big scare quote for the “Scientist” part):

1. Foremost, the idea is to avoid high-stress roadways as much as possible.
2. Realizing this is not ALWAYS possible, we are not averse to occasionally riding the sidewalk (this will be the first of many blasphemies in the LSP.
3. We are recreational riding, not commuting, UNLESS we are deep into the LSP that we’re okay wandering even to/from work.
4. We generally avoid multi-use paths and favor residential streets (did I mention blasphemies?).
5. We prefer mid-block crossings over signalized intersections.

Realizing you, dear Better Burque reader, might not agree with any/all of the above to the point that your head is metaphorically exploding, let’s get to our example using Ride With GPS routing:

Above is the “straight shot” up/down Academy from Ventura east to Tramway Blvd. There’s no bike lane, the average daily traffic count starts at about 18,000 at/near Ventura and winds down to about 11,000 at/near Tramway, and the sidewalk combines “features” of so many other ABQ sidewalks (narrow in places, buckled in places, tree branches hanging low in places, etc.). The straight shot is 2.6 miles.

And here’s a LSP version:

Okay, calm down. I know what you might be/are thinking: “That’s ridiculously crooked and I should have the same rights as drivers to get anywhere are efficiently as possible and this is blasphemy!” Which is good, because I thought you were going to piss on the idea because it still has some Academy sidewalk riding included.

Nevertheless, getting to your possible “crooked/rights/blasphemy” concern, here’s the LSP tenet that I should have put on top of the list above:

Riding a bicycle is fun; riding it more (distance and/or time) means MORE FUN.

In the case of the 3.7 miles of fun outlined above in what I call “Academy Wander” (only 1.1 miles longer than the straight shot!), my unnamed riding buddy and I did a variation of the above this past weekend.

As is true for neighborhood streets just about everywhere these days, you get to see more than plenty of large vehicles that don’t fit in garages, people watering their lawn when it’s already 95 degrees, and other signs of the human-caused apocalypse. That said, I personally find each and every such neighborhood bike ride endlessly fascinating, INFINITELY more interesting than riding a bike lane on, for example, Academy Blvd.

Safer, too. Definitely safer. Especially on crappy, winding 40 mph posted stroads like Academy Blvd.

Email me at betterburque@gmail.com or comment if you want a link to the Academy Wander route, but all you gotta do is piece together your own version using the tenets of LSPism. One big complexity in this particular example, in addition to the near universal ABQ tendency for residential streets to loop about and/or hit arroyos, is that Tennyson NE and other parallel roads to Tramway don’t get you to Tramway without the need to do higher stress things like get on Academy for a bit.

It’s almost like these subdivisions were built to keep outsiders cyclists out of “their” neighborhood. Well, screw that. We’re invading, slowly, slowly invading.