How not to perform a Complete Streets Study
- Oct 2
- 6 min read
Much of Albuquerque’s work on road safety in recent years stems from the adoption of our Complete Streets Ordinance, which governs all projects that affect road design in the city. Where this comes up the most is in the design of road diets, where the city identifies roads with more lane-width allocated to cars than is necessary—or safe or convenient—and redesigns the lanes, frequently adding bicycle infrastructure or on-street parking with the newly available space. BikeABQ frequently gets involved in these projects to ensure that the needs of bicyclists are considered, typically without much fanfare. What we have experienced in the discussions surrounding the upcoming road diet to 4th Street between Menaul and Candelaria is a disappointing deviation from that norm.
Currently, this region of 4th street consists of two lanes in each direction, with no bike lanes and limited on-street parking (although about 40% of the off-street space consists of parking lots). The road diet intends to reconfigure this to one lane in each direction, plus a turning lane in the middle. For the remaining space on asphalt, the Greater Albuquerque Active Transportation Committee asked for the inclusion of bike facilities, noting that this complies with the Mid-Region Metropolitian Planning Office’s Long Range Bicycle System plan. Beyond GAATC and MRMPO support for bicycle facilities here, the local community also supported their inclusion, with Father Vincent Paul Chávez of Saint Therese Catholic Parish offering his “formal support” for a configuration that includes bicycle facilities, on-street parking, and the road diet configuration. In response, the City turned to Toole Design, a local planning consultant firm, to perform a Complete Streets study of whether bicycle facilities should be included.
The report they generated was uncharacteristically flawed for Toole, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of roadway design, Albuquerque’s responsibilities under the Complete Streets Ordinance, and the broader environment in the near North Valley area. You can read it for yourself here, but we will dissect it below.
Toole’s key takeaways include the following:
Bikeways are not proposed in City planning documents through the study area or along other portions of 4th St
As Toole knows from their involvement in the Albuquerque Bike Plan, the Plan is intentionally modest: the primary purpose of the Plan is to identify projects that are worth pursuing on their own, respecting the balance of their benefits versus the costs and difficulties of their installation. Their specific wording for “City planning documents” for a road that passes through at least two other jurisdictions—the Village of Los Ranchos and Bernalillo County—is deceptive, especially given MRMPO’s designation, Los Rancho’s recent lowering of the speed limit along their sections of 4th to 25 mph, and Bernalillo County’s plans to install bike lanes on their section of 4th.
the Alameda Drain Trail provides a parallel low-stress option for traveling through the study area
Beyond existing concerns with the design of the Alameda Drain Trail (it mixes bicycle and pedestrian traffic, it is crossed by numerous roads with poor visibility and no design treatments protecting cyclists, its crossings at major roads are janky), Toole forgets that redundancy is king when it comes to safe infrastructure. We are experiencing this now with the upcoming long-overdue repaving of the North Diversion Channel Trail: with the NDC being the only safe north-south route in its area, how do we accommodate cyclists during the repaving? There are times when the Alameda Drain Trail is unavailable for cyclists—planned and unplanned—and having parallel safe routes is crucial to ensure resiliency.
[B]usiness access [to 4th street] can also be provided through neighborhood connections from the trail and enhanced crossings of 4th St
Beyond the value of redundancy, the ADT does nothing to facilitate travel between businesses on 4th. Toole expects Burquenos with multiple errands to run on 4th to travel all the way back to 2nd to perform their trip, which is frankly laughable.
[A] lack of connectivity between potential bike lanes along 4th St through the study area with other existing or planned bikeways would create serious safety concerns and significantly limit the usefulness of the bikeways
As Toole notes in their own report, this study region includes the east-west section of the Alameda Drain Trail at Matthew, and the Albuquerque Bike Plan lists installing separated bike lanes on Candelaria as a “Very High” “Plausible Near-Term” project, and painted bike lanes already exist on Candelaria starting at 4th going east. Providing direct access to the businesses and developments on 4th from these facilities is valuable in and of itself.
Finally, what I view as their core issue with bicycle facilities, and where they make their biggest errors, is in the following:
Other viable Complete Streets elements could be implemented along 4th St and are more highly prioritized along 4th St than bikeways, per City policy documents. As a Main Street corridor, the priority street elements for 4th St include pedestrian enhancements and on-street parking.
We do not dispute that the City’s design manuals prioritize on-street parking over bicycle facilities in Main Street corridors—-fixing this is a separate issue. It is perhaps worth remembering that the City’s design manuals also recommend speed limits of 25-30 mph in Main Street corridors, versus the 35 mph that currently exists on 4th—it will at the very least be important to remember this a couple paragraphs from now. Toole curiously does not include a speed limit reduction in its recommendations, despite the speed limit on 4th in nearby Los Ranchos being 25 mph. We should also remember that Albuquerque’s Complete Streets Ordinance is very clear about what the “overarching goal of any project” should be: “comfortable and efficient accommodations for all users” (emphasis added).
Instead, Toole’s proposed ideas for bicycle facilities reflect a remarkable lack of vision as to how to actually design safe bicycle facilities. For designing on 4th street, the typical section has 54 feet of asphalt to work with, as well as 18 inches of concrete gutter that can support curbside parking; there is a short 250-foot section where the amount of asphalt drops to 49 feet. Toole offers the following designs for what bicycle infrastructure might look like in these areas:
In this very limited sense, we agree with Toole: these are not desirable designs for 4th. But what sort of design is this? Toole remarks that 11’ is the minimum width for the driving lanes due to transit requirements: this is not strictly true, as ABQRide currently operates some 10.5’ lanes, albeit with difficulty. They also note that 12’ is the desired width for the turning lane, although 10’ “may be appropriate under lower speed conditions”—recall that lower speeds are recommended by the City’s design manual! The extra 2-3 feet Toole has left on the table might not sound like much, but opens up much safer designs, featuring either one-way protected bike lanes or a two-way protected cycletrack, depending on which is preferred.
Toole’s insistence on including on-street parking in the 250’ constrained section is also misleading: the constrained section currently hosts bus stops in both directions, severely limiting the amount of parking that could be installed even if you wanted it. Adding to the deception is the fact that the length of the constrained section is never mentioned in the report—that the constrained section is only one 250-foot long region plays a major role in what designs are appropriate for it! Instead, providing protected bike lanes leaves enough space for a bus boarding zone in the protected buffer space, reducing conflicts between buses and transit users and cyclists.
It is evident that safe bicycle infrastructure does not prevent the inclusion of on-street parking on 4th, especially if you go into this analysis with a Complete Streets mindset: how can we provide comfortable and efficient accommodations for all users. Regardless of whether bicycle facilities are installed, bicyclists will be users of this corridor. Toole’s shortsighted analysis opts for cyclists to either ride in the road where they will block traffic and risk serious injury, or on the sidewalk where they will conflict with pedestrians in this Main Street corridor. Councilor Baca recognized this same dilemma when he pushed for bike lanes on Central downtown—we hope he won’t be swayed by this poor excuse for a Complete Streets study when it comes to the design of 4th.
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