Broadcasts From The Multiverse

We got some strange interference this week, you may hear parallel universe versions of the Streets.mn Podcast!

Episode chapters

00:00 | Intro
00:57 | Midtown Freeway Coalition
07:35 | Carless Whisper
08:08 | Skip Traffic
09:43 | Bike Maintenance ASMR
12:47 | Sponsored by Hondle
13:19 | Muni Squad
29:45 | Streets.nm

Attributions

Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.

This episode was hosted, edited, and transcribed by Ian R Buck. Segments on the show were written by Jeremy Winter, Parker Seaman, and Stina Neel. Voice talents include Erik Brandt, Brian Mitchell, NJ Hanson, and Jason Nesler. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].

Sound effect sources:

Transcript

[00:00:02] Ian: Welcome to the Street- [static], Stratoj punkto Mo No Podkasto, la elsendo- [static] how transportation and land use, [static] plibonigi niajn komunumojn. [static] Coming to you from beautiful Supraurbo de Minneapolis, Minnesoto, I’m your host, Ian R Buck. We have a very special episode for you today, La Unua Tago de Aprilo.

[static]

Sorry everybody, it looks like we’re getting some interference from… alternate reality versions of Streets.mn?? I’m not sure exactly what you’re hearing. We’re gonna try to get it sorted out, but in the meantime enjoy whatever comes through, I guess.

[00:00:57] Jeremy: Have you ever driven down Lake Street and thought to yourself “Oh no! I’m driving my unnecessarily large SUV down Lake Street and I’ve come face-to-face with society’s most pressing issue – traffic!”

What a nightmare! How dare you suffer even the slightest inconvenience. We here at the Midtown Freeway Coalition have have come up with the perfect solution to your woes!

Spanning from Lake of the Isles to the Mississippi River, the Midtown Freeway will allow car traffic to easily, breezily speed through the city from east to west. Featuring 12 lanes of pure American asphalt going in each direction, the freeway will replace the three city block span between 28th St on the north end and 31st St on the south end. To deal with Lake St traffic, we’ve realized that the issue must be addressed from the source. That is why we are removing Lake St entirely! Hooray!

Featuring a 90 MPH speed limit, the Midtown Freeway will be an enormous safety improvement for pedestrians. After all, there will be no grade crossings! Such progress!

For the transit enthusiasts out there, we will be building new BRT stations along the Midtown Freeway, so you can still get off at all the old B Line stops! These will be comparable to the current I-35W & 46th St Orange Line station in South Minneapolis. We’re even throwing a single managed lane in to keep the bus going speedily! Wow! Truly the investment that South Minneapolis needs.

To truly revitalize the neighborhood, we’re also going to bulldoze the block from 27th to 28th St to be redeveloped as a brand new commercial corridor, with shops easily accessible from the new freeway. We’ve already locked in our first corporate partner, KMart, who will be developing a new store on Nicollet Avenue! With more parking than any current store on Lake Street could dream of, the store’s obvious future success will spur development all along the corridor. Big thanks to our partner, Vibrant Nicollet, for helping us arrange this deal!

To accommodate cyclists, the project will compensate the annihilation of the Midtown Greenway by widening the sidewalk – erm, I mean, the *shared use path* – on 27th St – by three whole inches. With the massive, 2000 foot bridges over the freeway making pedestrian travel incredibly impractical, we have no doubt that bicycling will be a more compelling transportation option than ever for nearby residents. Thank us later, bike lobby!

We’ve talked to a number of nearby residents and neighbors and have been delighted to hear such excitement and enthusiasm! Nobody can seem to wait for such a massive improvement to their neighborhood. Here’s some testimony that we’ve received from gleeful Minneapolitans.

[00:03:55] Saren: Hey dude, my name is Saren Johnson, and I’m a resident of the Powderhorn neighborhood. I for one cannot wait to be evicted in the name of progress. I feel good knowing that my former home will be put to a better purpose – shaving 3 entire seconds off of average commute times!

[00:04:12] Thomas: Hi! My name is Thomas Lowry, and I live in Uptown. I run a restaurant up the street on Hennepin Ave. I for one am incredibly excited for the free flowing traffic that this new freeway will bring! More cars means more customers. Finally, people will recognize that my restaurant has the best land use on Hennepin Avenue after all!

[00:04:34] CJ: Howdy there, my name is CJ Marpio. I live in Philips and I strongly support this project. I’m really into coughing, and sometimes I wish the air was just a bit more polluted. After the shutdown of Smith Foundry, I was starting to despair that I’d never breathe unsuccessfully again. All that has changed! Thanks to the Midtown Freeway, I know I will always get my daily dose of PM2.5 whenever I go out, just like Vitamin D! Thank you so much, Midtown Freeway Coalition!

[00:05:05] Mitchell: Hey! I’m Mitchell Prozac, rhymes with Wojcik. So here’s the thing: aren’t cars so cool? I love watching them go really fast! I’m going to relish every minute of the 12 minute walk it’ll take me to get across the pedestrian bridge each day. Zoom zoom! The traffic engineers really cooked with this one. I mean, twelve lanes!! That’s gonna solve traffic!! We freaking did it!!

[00:05:30] Jack: Hey, my name is Jack Mansplainer. While I will miss all the wonderful businesses on Lake Street, this is actually the price we must pay as a society if we are to truly enter the motor age. You may not realize, but in the past, I had to drive down Lake Street, waiting at traffic lights. Now, I’ll never have to wait at a light again! How convenient!

[00:05:45] Thomas: My name is Thomas Latimer, and I am a resident of the Seward neighborhood. I’m so excited for this new freeway right in front of my house. Sometimes I think about how I-94 disconnected my neighborhood from the rest of the city… and now I realize that planners clearly didn’t go far enough! I see my neighbors getting together, getting to know each other in recent weeks… and I hate it! I spend all day doomscrolling miserably, alone in my house, and I don’t understand why everyone else gets to have fun and get to know each other. Clearly, we as a society need some more disconnection, some more atomization, so everyone else can be as miserable as me. Thank you so much, President Trump, for fully funding this incredible project.

[00:06:42] Jeremy: We here at the Midtown Freeway Coalition have partnered with the Rethinking I-94 coalition, who have been looking for a source of dirt to fill in the I-94 trench. With the help of the Midtown Freeway team, they’ve found it!

Here’s testimony from an I-94 neighbor over in St Paul:

[00:07:00] Sandy: Hi there! My name’s Sandy Ringer. I’m so glad that I-94 is being filled in! Having to breathe in that horrible, polluted air every day… boy, I sure can’t wait for that to be someone *else*’s problem! Now if you excuse me, it’s 8pm and I need to get to bed.

[00:07:19] Jeremy: Phase one, where we gleefully bulldoze Uptown, begins… tomorrow! Good luck stopping us – we’re creating jobs! Sincerely, the Midtown Freeway Coalition.

[the saxophone solo from “Careless Whisper” plays, but the instrument appears to be bicycle bells]

[00:07:49] Ian: That was, of course, a beautiful rendition of Carless Whisper by the peerless Christina Neel. You’ve been listening to Bike Things Considered here on NPR. Thank you for joining us and have a good night, everybody.

[00:08:08] Ian: Today, we are very excited to announce that we have a local celebrity joining us on the show. Skip Traffic, the mascot for Metro Transit, who delights kids and adults alike when he appears at public events, is joining us today in the studio. Skip, why don’t you say hello to everybody?

[LRT horn]

Well, Skip, welcome to the studio. I hope that you’re enjoying all of the transit-related artwork that I’ve got on the walls.

[announcement chime]

I was definitely hoping that you were going to notice the Metro Map shower curtain. Did you know that it’s available on the Streets.mn merchandise store? You can find it and lots of other cool stuff at [https://streets.mn/shop]. Anyway, let’s talk about you. How did you get interested in being Metro Transit’s mascot?

[announcement chime]

That’s a good point. You do seem like you were born for this job. What’s your favorite kind of event to appear at?

[celebration chime]

That does sound so fun and rewarding. Why do you think it’s important to get people excited about buses and trains?

[announcement chime]

I couldn’t agree more. What’s the toughest part of the job?

[loud horn]

Oh, wow. Yeah, porta-potties were definitely not designed with you in mind. I don’t think we need to get into any of the specifics there, though.

[“please exit from the rear door” announcement]

No, please. Our audience doesn’t need to hear that.

[a malfunctioning bus kneeling beep that sounds like a cackling witch]

All right, that’s it. I’m cutting off your mic. We’re done here. Next time I’m going to Spain to interview Bussi.

[00:09:43] Ian: [whispering] Well, everybody, it’s about that time of year. The summer cycling season is coming up soon, so it’s time to get your summer bikes out of storage. I just pulled mine down off of the wall. Let’s get a little reacquainted with it. I’m going to run my fingernails over the frame. [tinkling of nails on frame] Get a feel again for the handlebars. [rustling of handlebars] How these grips feel. [sound of palms sticking to grips] The tackiness of the bar tape. [rustling of bar tape] What the spokes sound like when I flick them. [twanging of spokes] All right, now let’s check everything on the bike. Let’s make sure that those tires are pumped up nicely. [bike pumping] I like to go for a nice sensible 70 psi. We’re going to lift it up off the ground and let’s pedal for a little bit. [bike pedaling and freehub spinning] We like that. That’s the sound of a nicely lubricated chain. Let’s check the shifting. [chain shifting] That’s sounding very good too. How’s your bike sounding? I’m looking forward to seeing you at some of this summer’s group rides here in the Twin Cities.

[00:12:46] Ian: And thank you to today’s sponsor, HONDLE. HONDLE is a subscription service where, for $15 a month, you can. I’ve been using HONDLE for a long time and it’s been great. HONDLE comes fresh and we package every time, always. Founded on a strong set of principles, the HONDLE staff work diligently to continue the HONDLE tradition they’ve been carrying. To get $10% off your first, you can go to HONDLE nom cot dom, and don’t forget the coupon code!

[00:13:18] Ian: Welcome to My Cyclist, My Cyclist and Me, the comedy advice show for the urbanist era. I wanna Muni!

[00:13:27] All: Squad!

[00:13:29] Ian: I want a Muni!

[00:13:31] All: Squad!

[00:13:34] Ian: Welcome to Muni Squad, a podcast within a podcast showcasing the latest and greatest in municipal press releases. This one comes to us from the St. Paul Public Works Department on September 19th, 2025, which, by the way, September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Should I read this entire thing like a pirate?

[00:13:55] Jeremy: Nar.

[00:13:59] Ian: I’m hearing a Nar and no Yars. I’m going to do it normal. All right, so St. Paul completed sewer repairs and reopened West 7th Street in downtown. Good for them.

[00:14:17] Parker: Thank God they finished 7th Street so they can move on to 6th Street.

[00:14:22] Ian: So West 7th Street from Chestnut Street to Walnut Street was limited to business access only since May 9th.

[00:14:30] Parker: How many streets in St. Paul are named after tree nuts?

[00:14:33] Ian: Yeah. Somebody pull up a map and just look at that area and tell me, how far did this theme go?

[00:14:43] Parker: And is it consistent? Are all of the tree nut streets around each other or is there just like somewhere off like on the border of West St. Paul? Is there like a peanut road that like they forgot to add until the end?

[00:14:56] Ian: Yeah. Did these all have to be tree nuts? Are some of them legumes? Are they all allergens?

[00:15:03] Parker: There’s an orange street in there for some reason.

[00:15:07] Stina: Could you, Ian, can you nut me again? I mean, can you tell me the Walnut and the other nut street?

[00:15:12] Ian: Chestnut and Walnut.

[00:15:13] Stina: That’s only a block.

[00:15:15] Ian: Okay. Huh. I honestly, I wish that they had commitment to the bit, you know, like Northeast Minneapolis where they’ve got all of these named after the presidents. The most yikes version of a themed street naming scheme that I have seen was, Stina, do you remember that tiny town that we passed through in the Minnesota River Valley where every single street was named after like a person from that town who joined the military and died during their service?

[00:15:49] Stina: Right? It was like, it was weirdly like heartbreaking and confusing.

[00:15:55] Parker: That’s, that’s a lot. Huh.

[00:15:58] Stina: Okay. So they finished work on this one singular block. It was closed for five months.

[00:16:08] Ian: Right. Yeah. And let’s not get into the fact that the previous press release about this had claimed that like, oh yeah, this might be closed for like a couple of weeks. So St. Paul Public Works, tooting their own horn here. Say, “today the city of St. Paul reopened West 7th Street from Chestnut Street to Walnut Street after four months of repairs due to damage caused by a sinkhole. St. Paul Public Works, St. Paul Regional Water Services and several contractors safely completed challenging repairs to a 30 foot deep sewer tunnel and the surrounding utilities after a major void occurred in the roadway on May 8th.”

[00:16:48] Parker: That sounds like they’re trying to give the most explanation for, “I know we said it took four months, but you’ll understand this hole was deep. This hole took collaboration between multiple departments. This hole was a big deal, guys. I’m not bad at my job. It’s a big deal. It’s hard.”

[00:17:02] Ian: He doth protest too much.

[00:17:04] Stina: We’re going to close this portal to hell, everyone. It took a long time.

[00:17:10] Ian: I love, I love the phrasing like “a major void occurred.” It’s like the new, it’s the new “mistakes were made,” right?

[00:17:19] Parker: No, to me, that’s just like trying to hype up like how important and critical this work was, which to be fair, a sinkhole in the middle of downtown is quite the deal, but describing it as a “void” is like really giving a whole nother mental image.

[00:17:33] Ian: Right.

[00:17:35] Stina: A rip in space and time.

[00:17:36] Ian: Mm-hmm. Also the, uh, so “St. Paul Public Works, St. Paul Regional Water Services, and several contractors.” How many contractors does it take to fill a sinkhole?

[00:17:51] Jeremy: Do you remember the sinkhole in uptown last year or a year or two ago that was that 27th in Girard? I remember people were having like barbecues there. Like it turned into a block party because it blocked the whole intersection. I like to imagine that the contractors were just like chilling, like playing some cornhole, you know, enjoying a good time.

[00:18:08] Stina: Oh, you just score the points really easily if you’re playing cornhole with a sinkhole. Everybody wins. That’s a very St. Paul. Everyone wins here in St. Paul. It’s cute.

[00:18:19] Parker: I know this is a different hole, but the, my favorite thing about the-

[00:18:25] Ian: Okay, where is he going with this?

[00:18:27] Parker: The uptown sinkhole, calm down. Was that it only happened like a week or so after the, after they removed Lake Chipotle. I am convinced that this like severely disrupted like the subterranean water flow systems of uptown and Minneapolis to the point where it caused the sinkhole itself. I have not consulted with any geologists. I have not read any, like done any like land studies or anything, but I’m confident that I am right and will not explore this any further.

[00:19:00] Ian: Well, you know what they say when, when God closes an unintentional lake, he opens a sinkhole.

[00:19:09] Parker: My mom says it to me all the time.

[00:19:13] Stina: All right. Tell us more, tell us more.

[00:19:15] Ian: Yeah. So West 7th street was closed to through traffic from Kellogg Boulevard to Grand Avenue, which is a little ways, right? However, the city maintained one lane of traffic on the affected block to ensure access to nearby businesses. Now I want to ask all of you, if you were driving on a street and you knew that there’s a 30 foot deep sinkhole somewhere on that street, like how, how far away from that sinkhole do you have to be to be comfortable traveling?

[00:19:46] Parker: Probably a block. I don’t know why you needed to keep this open. Could you have gotten more equipment in there? Could you have gotten it done faster if you just completely closed off the street? Would this happen in the original four week timeline?

[00:19:59] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. And like they kept the, well, I think we’re probably going to get to this, but I think they also kept like the sidewalks open. So it’s like, okay, we talk so much about like, well, we maintained access to the businesses by keeping one lane of traffic in each direction. Like you could just, you could just keep the sidewalks and that’s maintaining access to businesses, right? “This project has been a good example of public private partnerships where that’s easy to say public private partnerships where city department’s local businesses and several contractors quickly came together to keep the area safe and repair aging infrastructure,” said Sean Kershaw, director of Saint Paul Public Works. “We greatly appreciate the regular communication, patience and partnership of the surrounding businesses as we work together to try to minimize impacts wherever possible.”

[00:20:50] Parker: Is consistent communication him saying, yes, I heard you complaining about the construction every day?

[00:20:55] Stina: I love Sean. He’s a great guy, friend of the pod.

[00:21:00] Ian: I shudder to think what his email inbox must be like.

[00:21:09] Stina: That’ll be a segment next month, is we say Sean, bring us your emails and let us read some out loud.

[00:21:18] NJ: This inbox is actually just a sinkhole.

[00:21:25] Parker: It’s actually a void, not a sinkhole.

[00:21:28] Ian: I wonder how hard would it be to write like an extension for Thunderbird so that I can replace the “archive” button with just “sinkhole,” right?

[00:21:38] Stina: If you email the void and the void emails back…

[00:21:49] Ian: So he says “where city department’s local businesses and several contractors quickly came together to keep the area safe,” like what was the owner of Mancini’s just like going out there and orange vest and being like, “hey, everybody stay away from the sinkhole. Don’t walk over there!”

[00:22:03] Parker: Ian, you’re a guy, same as me. Do you ever just like have the male urge to dig a hole or just like kind of go stand and stare at like a construction thing? Genuinely, I think the part of the goal of the safety is just like barking at dudes, walking up and going, “hey, no, stop. That’s dangerous. Stay away.” Which then begs the further question. If they had to keep people away to keep it safe, why did they keep the road open?

[00:22:32] Ian: Right. I mean, the fences are important because they tell the retired men where the standing area is for yelling unsolicited advice at the construction workers. Maybe they should provide benches from now on at construction sites like that. All right, continuing “the void on West 7th Street was caused by a number of factors that gradually eroded the soils above the tunnel, causing the roadway and surrounding soil and rock to collapse into the sewer tunnel. These factors include unique subsurface geology and movement of water and sewage leaking above the-” oh, I didn’t want to hear that, “water and sewage above the main tunnel.” It’s a, yeah, it got gross all of a sudden.

[00:23:23] Parker: Oh, it’s a dirty hole.

[00:23:27] Stina: It’s a poop hole. [00:23:31] Stina: I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for the pee-pee-poop-poop humor. I couldn’t help it.

[00:23:36] Parker: Hi, I’m 30 and laughed at poop jokes.

[00:23:41] Ian: “The sewer repair work consisted of removing debris, reinforcing and lining the sewer tunnel ceiling and walls with shotcrete.”

[00:23:48] Parker: Shotcrete sounds like a BBEG from like a D&D thing.

[00:23:51] Stina: A big, bad evil guy. Like a Digimon, not a Pokemon.

[00:24:01] Ian: In Star Wars, anytime that they’re talking about, you know, like something that’s, you know, made of metal, but they can’t just be like a normal metal from earth, they’re like, yeah, it’s made out of… dura… steel. And this one, you know, the canopy for the cockpit here on this spaceship, it’s made out of transparisteel because it’s got to be really tough because we’re in space. It’s shotcrete. Oh man. Tuck pointing. Okay, so they lined the sewer tunnel and ceiling with shotcrete. “Tuck pointing of the brick lined invert, cleaning the tunnel and repairing the roadway. The unlined sandstone tunnel ceiling and walls were reinforced with 70 to 100 cubic yards of shotcrete.” Okay, but how many feral hogs did it take?

[00:24:58] Parker: [laughter] Can it withstand several feral hogs? 40 feral hogs underneath St. Paul.

[00:25:05] Ian: They placed all that shotcrete over rock bolts, rebar and wire mesh to make the needed repairs.

[00:25:11] Parker: Like a guy named Rock Bolt owns it?

[00:25:15] Ian: Or Brock, Brock Olt. I don’t know.

[00:25:17] Parker: Brock Olt!

[00:25:21] Ian: I do love that in Pokemon, the rock type gym leader is named Brock. Like, yeah.

[00:25:30] Parker: Bradley Rock, Brock.

[00:25:32] Ian: Some nominative determinism there, right? Yeah. “To make the needed repairs, the city had to first construct a new sewer access shaft to safely enter the void to make assessments-“

[00:25:42] Parker: [laughter] To realize they entered the void?

[00:25:47] Ian: Sorry, I, I kind of lost the plot when I just heard “shaft,” “void.”

[00:25:55] Stina: No, spray bottle, bad Ian!

[00:26:00] NJ: I would also lose the plot.

[00:26:03] Stina: They safely enter the void.

[00:26:05] Ian: Yes, to make assessments and do repair work. I mean, thank goodness, thank goodness these men decided to make assessments in the void before trying to do their work.

[00:26:17] Parker: You gotta assess the poopy hole before you can make any fixes.

[00:26:22] Stina: The void is for everyone, not just men. You don’t know anything about the workers. The void is for all.

[00:26:30] Parker: That’s the contractor. They exclusively hire gender neutral contractors.

[00:26:34] Ian: I would definitely, I would definitely hazard a guess that men are more apt to try to just get to work in a void before making the needed assessments and determining what it is that the void actually needs from them. You know what I mean? And this is why it’s so important to have a diverse workforce, because the ladies are going to think about, the non-binaries are going to think about this kind of thing more readily.

[00:27:09] Parker: You need a broad perspective when you tackle a void.

[00:27:16] Ian: “The water main on West 7th Street was first constructed in 1874 and replaced with a larger diameter water main in 1888 to support surrounding development. The sewer tunnel was constructed in 1879.” Wow, okay, so this is the same-

[00:27:32] Parker: I have no, I have no jokes there. That’s just really interesting.

[00:27:35] Ian: It’s really interesting and honestly like, okay, we’ve had this sewer tunnel since 1879 and now it collapsed. What other tunnels do we have sitting around that have been around since then? Like, it does make me a little bit nervous.

[00:27:50] Parker: This void saw World War One and Two.

[00:27:53] Ian: The tunnel, the tunnel is ancient. The void is new, right?

[00:27:57] Parker: Sorry, yes.

[00:28:00] Ian: “Although West 7th Street has been reopened to traffic, this area will have additional work in the coming months and years from a variety of utilities in advance of MnDOT’s road.”

[00:28:10] Parker: I’m talking about downtown St. Paul. Hell yeah.

[00:28:13] Ian: “In advance of MnDOT’s road rehabilitation project slated for 2028 to 2029. More information on this project can be found online at” a long URL that I’m not going to read. God, I love that we can’t just coordinate everything. Like, hey, we’ve got the sinkhole. We’ve got to do a bunch of work now. Can we do all the other utilities as well?

[00:28:38] Parker: No, we actually have to make sure it takes much longer and cost extra. We’ve got to give the contractors a break. Really just show all the opportunities we have for public-private partnership.

[00:28:53] Ian: Those PPPs.

[00:28:56] Parker: Got to use those PPPs effectively.

[00:29:03] Ian: And everything has to happen on MnDOT’s schedule because this is MnDOT’s world and we’re all just living in it. So, all right, so that was…

[00:29:14] Jeremy: PPPs are made of these.

[00:29:21] Ian: So there you go, everybody. That is West 7th Street construction repairs completed. Yay, it’s reopened. Excellent.

[00:29:33] Parker: Enjoy it while it’s reopened until they have to do it again in a couple years.

[00:29:36] Ian: Yeah, yeah.

[00:29:38] Parker: Thank you for bringing us to this Moonie Squad?

[00:29:40] Ian: Muni Squad!

[00:29:45] Ian: Welcome to Streets.nm, your premier destination for transportation and land use news in New Mexico. BikeABQ has submitted a letter to the Albuquerque Zoning Hearing Examiner opposing a proposed Maverick fueling station at 2101 Carlisle Boulevard northeast. The site sits along Indian School Road, a corridor designated as a network spine, in the city’s Albuquerque 2024 Bike Ways and Trails Facilities Plan, where separated bike lanes are planned as a high priority. Here’s the full text of the formal letter that BikeABQ sent.

Dear Zoning Hearing Examiner,

BikeABQ is a volunteer nonprofit organization dedicated to making bicycling in Albuquerque safe and accessible for people of all ages and abilities. On behalf of our members and the broader bicycling community, we submit this public comment in opposition to the Conditional Use Approval for the proposed Maverik fueling station at 2101 Carlisle Blvd NE.

Our opposition is grounded in the City’s adopted 2024 Bikeways & Trails Facilities Plan.

The 2024 Plan designates this stretch of Indian School Road as a Network Spine. Network Spines are identified as corridors that support longer-distance bicycle travel, connecting key destinations and neighborhoods, and anchor the citywide bikeway network. The Plan emphasizes that these corridors must provide—or be improved to provide—low-stress conditions suitable for riders of all ages and abilities. Projects along Network Spines are prioritized in the bikeway evaluation process.

This specific segment of Indian School is identified as a very high-priority, plausible near-term separated bike lane.

The effectiveness of a Network Spine relies on minimizing vehicle conflict points and ensuring predictable travel conditions for all road users. High-volume fueling stations generate frequent vehicle trips throughout the day, with repeated turning movements in and out of the site. Maintaining or expanding curb cuts and access points along Indian School would increase the number of intersections where drivers will cross future bikeway alignment, intensifying conflict points for vulnerable road users where the City has explicitly prioritized separated bicycle infrastructure and low stress connectivity.

Approving this Conditional Use would undermine the purpose of the Network Spine designation, complicate implementation of the planned separated bike lane, and increase safety risks along a corridor identified as central to Albuquerque’s bicycle transportation system. Such approval would conflict with adopted transportation policies and the City’s Vision Zero and Complete Streets commitments.

BikeABQ supports development that aligns with Albuquerque’s adopted mobility and safety goals. However, this proposal, as configured, moves Indian School further away from the City’s clearly stated objectives for this corridor.

For these reasons, we respectfully urge denial of the Conditional Use Approval for Case No. CU-2026-00005.

Sincerely,

BikeABQ

[00:33:03] Ian: And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Streets.mn Podcast, and for bearing with us as we sorted through these broadcast interferences from other dimensions! Attributions for any interdimensional materials that made their way into the episode are available on our website.
The show is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative license. So feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it, and you are not profiting from it.
The music in this episode is by Erik Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet.
This episode was hosted by me, Ian R Buck, edited by Parker Seaman aka Strongthany, and transcribed by Stina Neel.
We’re always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.mn Podcast, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Streets.mn is a community publication, and relies on contributions from audience members like you. If you can make a one-time or recurring donation, you can find more information about doing so at streets.mn/donate.
Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag StreetsMNPodcast.
Until next time, take care!

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