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I grew up in ABQ, but have been gone for the past 8 years. I lived in San Francisco, and now in Chicago. Traffic in both of those cities is hurrendous, and sadly I've become accustomed to experiencing the freeway parking lots on the way to work.
Traffic in ABQ is nothing compared to other cities in the country.
Hopefully regional traffic planning and public transportation proposals (like a light rail system) will become realities and help keep the traffic in ABQ less of a problem.
Hopefully the consiousness of ABQ's citizens about public transportion and new roads, will progress from what seems like a NIMBY majority to a majority with more community foresight (with less selfish, individual interests). Maybe ABQ can avoid the mistakes of other, larger cities, and focus on what really worked in those cities.
> Hopefully regional traffic planning and public transportation
> proposals (like a light rail system) will become realities ...
I hope not. Light rail, IMO, is just a very expensive bus on a
horrendously expensive road that sucks tax dollars that could
be used to expand and improve the 'normal' bus system and/or
in the case of bigger cities prevent and slow the development
of rapid rail.
For some reason, if it has metal 'tires' people assume it's better.
ABQ motorists have a limited tolerance for high gas prices. At current rates, you're already seeing a modest uptick in bus usage.
If you're pulling in $7/hr and drive 50mi/wk, you'll tolerate short-term gas prices because you have the car already. But when it comes time to replace your ride, you'll give the bus a much harder look as a long-term approach.
Every driver who hangs up his car keys and takes the bus is one less car on the road, so every commuter benefits from long-term high gas prices.
> But if you can enlighten me on an alternative to SOV's and low
> occupancy, emission transmitting, vehicles ... that doesn't also
> have an impact on tax dollars than maybe I'll admit that I'm
> wrong about wanting ABQ to progress from the bus and other
> emission transmitting vehicles to higher occupancy "people movers".
Note that I started a lightrail thread, so if you respond, please use
that. I'm double-posting this response to both here and there.
I'm assuming that you are referring to the bus as a "low occupancy
emission transmitting vehicle" (?)
The alternative to the SOV *is* the bus. If you are concerned about
bus emissions, there *is* such a thing as an electric bus. Dayton, OH
has them.
Lightrail run on electricity simply moves the emissions to another place,
so lightrail is *not* zero emission. There is also no reason that a bus
cannot be built with good emission controls and hybrid technology would
be ideal for such a stop-go-stop sort of vehicle.
I rode the bus last Saturday afternoon and the double bus on the Central
Avenue express was packed. If only half of the people on there were
car owners then despite the evil bus emissions, I'm guessing that total
emissions were reduced.
> In the larger cities that I've lived in, it seems that the light rail
> sytems are highly used by both people ....
If you ran a bus line down the exact path that the lightrail systems
were being run on in those large cities, people could still use the
system at far less cost.
While it's good to get data and make comparisons, you're right to question the source and point of view of the critiques of Albuquerque. You chose to move there for good reason, I'm sure. You will find it to be very different from D.C. or any other large city, and the differences will be both positive and negative. Overall, I think you'll like the nearby mountains, open spaces, not-too-hot climate, etc.
If you are open-minded and flexible, you'll do just fine. If not, you may dislike it, as you might dislike anything you are not accustomed to. I'd like to know how you fare and your assessment over time so do hope you post your impressions.
(By way of reference, I've never been to Albuquerque but am looking for somewhere more affordable to move to within a few years. I now live and work in Orange County (CA), where I've been for 25 years now, having moved from Mexico City. I want to stay in the Southwest to be near my family in AZ (which is way too hot for my tastes). I prefer a college town, but Flagstaff is overpriced.)
Albuquerque is not as bad as Washington, DC or New York but there a lot better places you could spend your relocation dollars then here. Boise, ID is one place that comes to mind but there are others too.
I lived in Albuquerque all my life and it is is pretty with the mountains and the view but it is getting over crowded and traffic is pretty bad it takes awile to get to places. The people here are not to bad they are mostly nice. Housing here is ok there is a lot of old and a lot of new,They are little expensive in most areas. The pollution is not to bad compared to the more poppulated cities. The weather is hot in the summer and a little chilly in the winter.It is really a great place to live.
I have lived in Albuquerque now for two years and would disagree that it is absolutely the worst place I've lived. This is my third long term move and I can only count down the days until my husband changes jobs and we can move back to the east coast. Although I do not think it is fair to compare ABQ to a more established and historically rich area such as DC there are certain factors that need to be addressed. Crime is only an issue in certain areas of the city. Pollution, at least air pollution is not bad at all - especially by comparison. Water however is completely unsafe to drink unfiltered or unbottled - our house, on the westside was said to have very high levels of arsenic, yummy. As far as entertainment - if you are not into drinking yourself silly to forget where you are, there is not much entertainment. I suppose it is more for family life - so if you don't have 13 munchkins to entertain you...and by entertain i mean run around the neighborhood causing absolute chaos as all my neighbors children do, then maybe you should try living somewhere else. Also noted - the culture here is horrible. I am an art historian by education and have always heard that NM was a great place for art. Untrue my friend, unless you are only into burying your head in the sand and seeing Southwestern art. The people are not about diversity - As far as the museums go there are no in house collections of modern and impressionist or post-impressionist art. Yep, unless it has cowskulls and cacti and speaks spanish....it's not cultured.
I find this account troubling. If you move to Albuquerque's west side, it's usually not to find culture (well, bacterial culture maybe) and art, but it's to buy a newer affordable home to raise children, surrounded by other newer affordable homes and families doing the same.
If you lived near Old Town or in Santa Fe, I imagine your experience and viewpoint would be far different. There are more museums per capita in this metro area than almost anywhere in the US. If you only consider certain genres of paintings to be art, then you might be disappointed here, but you'd be in the minority. If I wanted to see Rembrandt's art, I wouldn't go to Tokyo. If I came here to see southwestern art and didn't see any, that'd be a much better reason for disappointment.
You implied the arsenic was in your water for pollution reasons; arsenic occurs naturally and it's very difficult to remove from water systems. It's also almost harmless even in the levels out there. They actually feed trace amounts of arsenic to cows, because even though it's poisonous, it has some nutritive properties as well.
> blackmagickatt griped:
> > I have lived in Albuquerque now for two years and would
> > disagree that it is absolutely the worst place I've lived.
I would also "disagree that it is absolutely the worst place"
[sic], but then I *like* it here and moved back on purpose.
> > This is my third long term move and I can only count down
> > the days until ... we can move back to the east coast.
I can easily see that someone used to East coast or West coast
life would not like being here in Albuquerque. I'm not troubled
by them saying that they don't like it here because I'm not
really interested in seeing this place fill up.
I like it here because of the open space and the more people
who find it distasteful the better. However, if someone is
interested and shares my feelings, then I welcome them.
I don't much care what culture we have here other than 'red
or green.' All I want from the area is the ability to see
sunsets, clouds, mountains and go hiking in them - especially
when the Aspen trees change color.
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Have you moved to Albuquerque yet?
