Life, food, events, and community in Albuquerque, NM
Traffic in the Duke City?
In responding to another discussion, I once again came up against a question that has baffled me since I've been a DCF member:
Where's the traffic in Albuquerque?
Are my daily life patterns so different from most Burqueños that I somehow miss the traffic that inspires such passionate comments from DCF'ers?
Or is it just a point of reference thing? Having grown up in the metropolitan area with the worst traffic in the US , attended college in an area that made the top ten list for worst traffic, and now working in the fourth worst metropolitan area for traffic, by comparison, Albuquerque traffic doesn't even register. I mean, in a year, I might allow time for traffic issues during Balloon Fiesta week, but other than that, I just get in my car and go - no checking for SigAlerts, no adding on an extra hour to drive 2 miles across town during rush hour, etc.
Or is it a point of reference in time - people comparing their childhood memories of Albuquerque traffic with what they are now seeing?
I really do want to know...
Where's the traffic in Albuquerque?
Are my daily life patterns so different from most Burqueños that I somehow miss the traffic that inspires such passionate comments from DCF'ers?
Or is it just a point of reference thing? Having grown up in the metropolitan area with the worst traffic in the US , attended college in an area that made the top ten list for worst traffic, and now working in the fourth worst metropolitan area for traffic, by comparison, Albuquerque traffic doesn't even register. I mean, in a year, I might allow time for traffic issues during Balloon Fiesta week, but other than that, I just get in my car and go - no checking for SigAlerts, no adding on an extra hour to drive 2 miles across town during rush hour, etc.
Or is it a point of reference in time - people comparing their childhood memories of Albuquerque traffic with what they are now seeing?
I really do want to know...
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kitson Harvey on -
It's not at all bad for me, with the caveat that I avoid Menaul, the Big I, and the Costco parking lot at certain times. My problem is that I think it's too good, and as a result budget only the amount of time I'd need to get some place at 3am. As a result I am always late. But it's not traffic's fault.
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Permalink Reply by Hairy McLairy on -
Its not the volume of traffic that baffles me, it the unsafe practices: Using a blinker is NOT a sign of weakness people, the speed limit is not a suggestion, why do you have to drive so close behind me at 70 mph, veering across 3 lanes of the freeway to exit suddenly is not a safe practise, Right of Way please, why wont you let me merge with the traffic?
I commute 30 miles a day, there and back, and it takes me about 20 minutes each way, crazy when you think in Los Angeles, we would have to allow 1 hour 45 mins to get to Westwood that was only 3 miles East of WLA.
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Permalink Reply by mombat on -
For Albuquerque I would say that San Mateo and Montgomery , Lomas and Carlisle and 4th and Montano at about 5:15 are bad. They are not stuck on the Beltway bad or I-70 on a summer Sunday bad or LA freeway bad.
If you grew up here and learned to drive in empty parking lots and had the luxury of waiting until all the lanes were empty to make a turn or cross traffic then it is really bad. If you come from a large city not so much.
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Permalink Reply by JMG on -
I clearly remember a time when it never took more than 15 minutes to get to one corner of Albuquerque to the other corner of town. Now you have to allow at least 30 minutes (or more if you're going corner to corner, partly because the corners are much farther apart!) I tend to avoid the freeway, especially at rush hour. Coming into town from Santa Fe, you're likely to come to a halt and creep along for some time. I like to take my dogs to the dogpark on Unser across the river from me in the north valley, but never try to cross Montano between 5:00 and 6:30pm. Much of the sitting-in-traffic in this town seems to also stem from roadwork narrowing streets to one lane. Candelaria has been like that. I know there are cities that are worse, but Albuquerque is much worse than it used to be! That's my only frame of reference.
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Permalink Reply by sophie on -
Have you noticed that all the google ads for this post are from therapists? Fascinating!
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Permalink Reply by Barelas Babe on -
So what triggered this - the phrase "childhood memories" or "unsafe practices"?
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Permalink Reply by Hairy McLairy on
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Unsafe memories of childhood practices, like pushing wires into electrical sockets and getting smaller siblings to hold the wires and make sure they didnt fall out when you quickly went to get something...
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Permalink Reply by jeff on -
i don't think the volume is bad here at all (except bridges during commute), but the bizarre driving habits of too many mean that even crawling along the freeway requires a hyper-vigilant stance.
coming from a west coast perspective, i could be stuck in crawling traffic but at least i could relax and just move with the flow.
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Permalink Reply by Barelas Babe on
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OK - that makes some sense.
Last 4th of July, while driving home from Placitas, I was dumbfounded to see cars stopped on the southbound lane of I-25 to watch fireworks - not stopped on the shoulder, which I could understand, but actually stopped in the LANE! I still shake my head over that one...
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Permalink Reply by Kenny on -
River crossings at rush hour (as well as the feeders to those crossings) and I-25 from Paseo to the Big-I (both N and S bound) are the only places I've experienced consistently bad traffic.
We still think we're a small town. It's going to take some public education and time to create the cooperative atmosphere that I've recently experienced in Southern California.
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Permalink Reply by Brendan on -
The traffic you're missing is on Alameda, west of I25, from 5:00PM-6:30PM. Boy did that get bad in the last 15 years.
There's a neat feature on maps.google.com- bring up the city, select traffic view, then switch from "live traffic" to "time of day traffic." Move the little widget to the time of day and it will report average traffic congestion for that time of day wherever it has data (Which seems to be I25/I40).
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Permalink Reply by Doug R on -
Barelas Babe - you know where the worst traffic is and will be.... The LA Basin is numero uno. The SF Bay Area, with it's lack of room to expand it's freeways, is second for a while....
I can't wait to see what Albuquerque can throw at me in the way of traffic. I've been in stop and go traffic, 135 feet above the bay at the highest point on the San Mateo bridge. The winds are stronger at that level than you think and feeling the bridge sway is really exciting.
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