As many of us excitedly and/or skeptically try to wrap our heads around the proposed Rail Trail, it’s perhaps helpful to look at precedence and perceived best practices. City o’ ABQ’s January 2024 document outlining current Trail thinking includes examples from two other U.S. cities: San Antonio’s Riverwalk and Indianapolis’ Cultural Trail.

Celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2023, Indy’s Trail seems a better comparative to what might be expected/hoped here than San Antonio (e.g., started much more recently, a loop with offshoot routes versus along a river, etc.) and the single greatest contrast between the wildly popular and generally considered successful Indy Trail and where ABQ is at present is summed up by the short Cultural Trail description found on its website:

Since 2013 Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit, has worked year-round to maintain and improve all aspects of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail: A Legacy of Gene and Marilyn Glick to ensure it continues to exist as a world-class public space for residents and visitors of Indianapolis. Your continued support makes it all possible.

Oh.

You might not be saying “oh” to yourself, so let me explain my “oh.” The Cultural Trail isn’t “owned” by a Mayoral Administration. It’s a nonprofit. Also, it commemorates Gene and Marilyn Glick after the Glick’s donated $15 million as a “lead gift” before the first shovel of dirt was turned in 2007.

Oh.

So if you’re first, continuing and pretty much never-ending question about the Albuquerque Rail Trail is like mine, “What happens after Mayor Keller is no longer mayor?” the Indy comparison isn’t much help. Or maybe it is.

Like, maybe to get some continued buy-in and sustainability to this thing we SHOULD make the Rail Trail a 501c3 and SHOULD get Jim Long and/or the Garcias to pony up $15 million. Because even if we somehow get much of the infrastructure built on our Trail by Keller’s last day in office (a tough ask on its own), what happens to continued maintenance, clean-up, safety enforcement, etc. in the next mayoral administration? And the next one?

I’ll let those questions linger at least long enough for Jim Long to get his checkbook out and move on, for now, to one other little thing I’ve found so far in researching Indy’s Cultural Trail. They have bikeshare. Pacers Bikeshare, as shown here in Downtown Indy Inc.’s (yeah, that’s a nonprofit, too) 2023 Community Report.

Yup, the text and graphics adjacent to the photo of the happy cyclist on a Pacers Bikeshare bike mentions that Downtown Indy population has increase 46% since 2010. And the Cultural Trail has been there since 2013. Yup. Cause, correlation and all that, but it wouldn’t be too crazy to think the Cultural Trail has something to do with this population increase, or even that Pacers Bikeshare might be having at least a tiny something to do with it, too.

So for now, let’s review what we’ve learned from the Indy experience that might help our Rail Trail:

1. *Take “ownership” of the Trail from the City of Albuquerque and give it to a nonprofit formed for this single purpose.
2. Make Jim Long sign and pass over that check for $15 million dollars. And yes, we must thereafter name it The Long Trail. Or the Garcia Trail. I’m good with that, too.
3. **Restart bikeshare in ABQ with location emphasis along the Trail. As shown here in “Bs.”

There’s more compare/contrast help between Indy and ABQ downtowns, and we’ll save some of those for a future post.

*Close reading of the City’s latest document on the proposal includes the following: “Establish a Rail Trail Inclusive Growth Task Force, including nonprofits, philanthropies, community organizations, and others.Use this task force to inform programs and planning around equitable community and business development.” Uh…”task force” is bullshit. Not the same thing as a permanent nonprofit. Not by a Jim Long shot.

**Here’s the skinny on Pacers Bikeshare: “Indiana Pacers Bikeshare is a program of Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Inc. (ICT, Inc.) Thanks to the generous gift of the Herb Simon Family Foundation, Indy’s public bicycle-sharing system is named after our very own Indiana Pacers basketball team.” So yeah, it would help if ABQ had a billionaire like Herb Simon who could buy an NBA team and whose foundation could fund bikeshare here just as long as we put the name of the basketball team on the bikes and bikeshare program. Yes, this admittedly would be helpful.