West Side BRT study

For those of you haven't already heard, MRCOG is conducting a study on Bus Rapid Transit along the Paseo del Norte corridor, from the West Side to the Journal Center area. A kick off meeting for the study was held this week.

Now, I am a big supporter of light rail, and find the benefits of Bus Rapid Transit (that is, the capital costs for the system) to be short-lived when you factor in operating costs, maintenance costs for roadway, fuel economy, attractiveness of the system to new riders, spin-off benefits on development caused by a rail system, etc.

However, given the fiasco that was the modern streetcar proposal. For better or for worse, many citizens looked at this and asked "What the heck is this supposed to do for me?" Right now, any rail system proposals is going to raise too many eyebrows and given the current budget crisis, our local leaders aren't going to have the will to propose it.

So it's really nice to see at least some kind of serious attention being paid to a dedicated mass transit corridor project. The presentation MRCOG has posted clearly shows that the traffic congestion across the Rio Grande is getting worse and there's no room for more road capacity, so something has to be done immediately.

Although it'd be nice to see a slightly bigger scope for Bus Rapid Transit in Albuquerque. The BRT corridor MRCOG is proposing looks like an excellent link between the West Side and the Jefferson/North I-25 area, which is a major job center and probably the fastest growing job center in the city, but the combined UNM/Downtown area is the largest job center in the city - so where's the BRT corridor to Downtown and UNM? There's plenty of road capacity to turn the Rapid Ride Blue Line into a dedicated bus corridor; it'd be nice to see MRCOG looking into this as well, and I hope they do. And who knows? Getting a dedicated mass transit corridor might give us a little taste for some future light rail system in Albuquerque.