Braving the Balloon Fiesta Park & Ride

Every year I make an effort to go to the Balloon Fiesta – it’s one of my absolute favorite things about Albuquerque and I can not stand the thought of missing out on the fun. Of course, I don’t have a car, and since all my friends seem to be too busy with homework or just uninterested in the Balloon Fiesta, I have to take mass transit to the Balloon Fiesta, which means taking the park & ride. Last year I took the Rail Runner, but this year I decided to ride the bus from the Coronado mall lot.

Now before you start laughing, let me just say the one thing everyone who makes a bad decision says: it seemed like a good idea at the time. You see, I also had to work yesterday afternoon, so I wanted as much time as possible between when I got back and when I had to go to work. I had only two realistic options: taking the bus from Coronado mall, or taking the Rail Runner. Taking the bus from Coronado seemed like the best option, because there were very few Rail Runner trains serving the fiesta and the first one taking people back from the Balloon Fiesta shows up at 9:30, while the park & ride buses start taking off at 8:30 – a whole hour earlier. Surely that would be the most convenient option!

So the plan was put into action. I took the very first 766 bus east, which arrived at Uptown just before 6:30. I walked to the Coronado lot and first saw the huge line which wound around a few of the parking aisles. My spirits were high until I realized it was getting awfully close to 7:00 and the mass ascension was starting. Right about 7:00 buses seemed to stop showing up, so the line was still for about 10 minutes while they called in more. They finally came and we took off at around 7:15.

The bus driver took us on a speedy route up San Pedro to Osuna, then down Osuna to San Mateo, but then the speed stopped when she pulled in to the Cliff’s amusement park lot. Something was wrong with the tires (and there was a slight smell of burning rubber in the air now) and she wouldn’t be able to take us all the way to the launch field. Deferred maintenance. Great. Fortunately, she had called in another bus, which was waiting at the Cliff’s lot for us.

This second bus was able to get us all the way to the launch field, but not before taking the park & ride’s rather convoluted route up Edith, across a couple of industrial lots, and down a couple of side streets, by which point half of the balloons were already in the air. We got there at about 7:40, and the mass ascension was already half-over. This is where I was thankful I had gotten my ticket online in advance, so I could skip the line for getting tickets at the gate (although it was short) and head straight in.

Nevertheless, I still had a blast. I was still able to take lots of pictures, get up close to plenty of balloons, and witness the colorful spectacle yada yada yada.

At about 8:45 I decided to get in line to get back to the Coronado lot. This is when I realized that out of everyone who took park & ride or the Rail Runner (which was a lot of people, mind you), about 2/3 of them must have come from Coronado mall. The line already wound out onto the launch field, now almost empty of balloons, and I wound up standing in that line for about 45 minutes. By the time I got on a bus and got back to Coronado mall, it was past 10:00. It was only as I was walking back to the Uptown ABQ Ride stop that I realized that since they don’t ask for tickets on the park & ride buses, I could have taken the shuttle to the Rail Runner stop, paid for a Rail Runner ticket, and could have been home by now. This brilliant but delayed thought was rewarded with a slap to my forehead.

Ultimately, I wasn’t late for work, but I didn’t have any time to relax, choosing instead to slug down a cup of coffee and pray they would take me through the rest of the day (it did).

To their immense credit, the bus drivers and the people actually running the show were really well organized, calling in more buses when needed and still being friendly to everyone while doing their job. It was a mixture of bad decisions on my part, some flat out bad luck, and a little bit of poor planning on part of the folks who set up the park & ride that made the actual getting there and back part of the fiesta a real hassle.

Firstly, ABQ Ride: could we get earlier service hours on the Rapid Ride? Seriously.

Secondly, how about making sure all those school buses are in top notch shape before sending them out for the weekend?

Thirdly, could we get some more park & ride locations, particularly in the Uptown area? Coronado and Hoffmantown obviously aren’t cutting it if 2/3 of the riders are still using one park & ride location. I hear that the fairgrounds has lots of parking. So does Winrock, now that I think of it.

Fourthly, maybe we could even devote more buses to the Coronado lot? Maybe expand the Coronado bus bay at the launch field, so there’s more room for all the buses that are needed there?

Or even better yet: hey ABQ Ride, how about running some real routes to that part of town, so that I don’t have to deal with any of this messy park & ride business? A San Mateo-Jefferson Rapid Ride line with a stop near the Balloon Museum would be really nifty.