The Case Against Mayor Berry’s Trail Through the Bosque

This is an excerpt from a report I wrote for another park 10 years ago. The dates but not the principles have changed, and some bosque-specific information has been added.

I. Multi-Use Trails

“Multi-use trail” is, in practice, a bicycle commuter highway that joggers and walkers shun. The asphalt surface injures joggers’ ankles, knees, and hips. Given a choice, they prefer to run on the earth alongside existing multi-use trails, according to the only recent survey on conflicts between users of  multi-use trails, done in Albuquerque, N. M.[i]

Two thirds of walkers on multi-use trails fear cyclists, according to a federal report on conflicts between users of multi-use trails. Bicycle traffic volume on weekends appears to outpace rush hour traffic all day, thus mimicking weekend auto traffic statistics.[ii] It also corroborates the Albuquerque survey finding that user conflict on multi-use trails worsens on weekends.

In the 10 years since the foundation of multi-use trails, there have been only two studies on conflicts between users, according to the 300-plus pedestrian traffic experts on the international e-mail listserv, Pednet.

The first study of conflicts between multi-use trail users was commissioned by the Department of Transportation when the funds were set aside nine years ago.[iii] User conflict was seen as the number one problem with multi-use trails. This prediction has proved correct. Recently, the city of Albuquerque, N.M. tallied the conflicts between the 368 respondents to a survey of users of their multi-use trails. The city trails coordinator concluded, “The only solution is either separated paths or wider paths, say 14 feet.  Otherwise it will forever be a problem.”

Lacking other precedent, four well-established principles of urban planning and traffic engineering are useful to inform speculation on the future of a multi-use trail.

The first is the certainty that widening induces travel. Senior researchers of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S. government academics, not the highway lobby, nor greens) have authoritatively concluded that every 10 per cent increase in the width of a highway leads directly to a 3.3 per cent increase in the number of vehicles traveling upon it.[iv]  This is a revolution in thinking previously formed by the highway lobby credo, “ease traffic congestion” by building more roads and widening extant ones. What actually happens is that gridlock is not eased, simply widened.

One career environmentalist and long-term observer of the bosque estimates 3 to 5 people an hour currently walk the main bosque path on a summer day.

Second,[v] an urban planning concept known as “eyes on the street” comes into play. A Jane Jacobs concept, the idea is that crime decreases as the number of pedestrians on foot increases. [I wrote this whole document about a proposed path through a neighborhood park in Washington, D.C.. I’m leaving this part in, because while specific to the D.C. site, it also explains in detail what will happen in the Bosque when pedestrians are chased out:

[The Rock Creek Park bicycle commuter path usage survey conducted by the Happy Trails Caucus shows walkers shun the bikeway. The bikeway which crosses west of the creek, and passes under the P Street bridge has sheltered repeated attacks. The first series of assaults were by an ice-pick-wielding bicycle thief (1994). The second series were by a rapist intent on assaulting lone female joggers (1996).  This crime zone was created – according to this rubric of eyes on the street – due to the fact that walkers shun it, and that it is out of the line of sight of motorists. Thus, the establishment of a multi-use trail in Rose Park would possibly create a crime zone by eliminating walkers from the mix, as they have been eliminated from the mix on the Rock Creek Park bicycle commuter path, for which a link is sought to Rose Park.

[If someone knows a similar crime zone on Albuquerque’s cyclist trails that demonstrably, with newspaper clips of the crimes, has become dangerous because pedestrians have been forced out of the area by cyclists, please do the research and make the point at the public meetings Sept. 4 and Sept. 18 on the mayor’s plan for the bosque. If you could give me your sources of info and corroboration, in a formal bibliography, I’d be delighted to include it here with a credit to you.

[In ABQ the Plan, city public safety authorities are quoted (p. 32) on this principle, saying an increase of visitors to the park will make it safer. They seem not to have taken into account that an increase of cyclist visitors, who are not considered eyes on the street, will run off all other law-abiding users of the proposed trail.]

Third, traffic engineers calculate that each pedestrian on foot requires only 1.5 feet of  what they term “shy space”. As speed increases, so does the amount of shy space required. Thus, two pedestrians walking very quickly side by side would each require 3 feet of shy space, for a total of 6 feet of shy space. A sidewalk of 6 feet wide would thus be recommended, under the best practices rubric, to accommodate just two fast-moving walkers. A multi-use trail would add even faster-moving cyclists and bladers to this mix. The proposed bosque multi-use trail is 10 feet wide. Given just two fast-moving walkers abreast, that leaves four feet of shy space for cyclists and bladers. Cyclists are usually calculated as needing six to eight feet of shy space apiece. No reasonable plan would increase bicycle traffic while expecting cyclists and bladers to confine themselves to four feet of shy space.

The fourth possible outcome for a multi-use path in the bosque is known to pedestrian traffic engineers as the “barrier effect.” As with Robert Moses’ Bronx Expressway,  a broad asphalt surface with induced traffic traveling upon it prevents pedestrians from crossing to the other side. The barrier effect creates dead space on the side of the highway to which people do not cross. Thus, a multi-use path could halve the space people use, could create a dead zone in the half of the park to which no one wishes to cross. In the bosque, amphibians like the soft-shell and painted turtles who live in the water and emerge to lay eggs on land have a low tolerance to lack of cover. A 10-foot paved trail along the river’s edge would prove a barrier to migration for reproduction that the turtles would be unlikely to overcome. According to one long-term scientific observer of the bosque, a 10-foot paved path would create a barrier effect which could drive amphibians from the bosque.

Click and scroll down for photographs and descriptions of the turtles of New Mexico. Save their species. No road through the bosque.
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