Cyclists along Pen Road in 2016 | Courtesy Santa Fe Conservation Trust
In terms of scope, the Rail Trail connecting project approved at Wednesday night's City Council meeting isn't large. It's two blocks running south along the railroad tracks from the intersection of Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive to Alta Vista.
In terms of significance, it's much larger. The stretch is the last part of the city-bound Rail Trail to be completed from Rabbit Road at the south end to the Railyard in the north. It crosses busy Cordova Road. It also has a price tag of nearly $1 million—at least it used to.
And while the wheels are now rolling, councilors who dissented in the 6-3 vote had harsh words for the communication they'd had with city staff over the years about a project much less flashy than the nearby St. Francis underpass, which merges the Acequia Trail with the Rail Trail on the other side of the Cerrillos-St. Francis intersection.
The trail's path to this point is lengthy. It was funded in 2012 with the passage of a bond issue dedicated to city parks. Design work—more than $200,000 has been spent so far—began the following year, and last year, the city awarded the bid to a local company. The plans call for a dedicated bike path along Pen Road that continues through the South Capitol government complex and connects with the paved trail at Alta Vista. Marked crossings would go in there and in the middle of the project at Cordova Road.
In February, bothered by the price tag and hopeful that the city could tie-in to an existing bike lake on the state Department of Transportation property that makes up half the distance, the City Council gave staff the go-ahead for construction on just part of the trail.
"We didn't approve the portion from Cordova down Pen Road," District 3 City Councilor Chris Rivera tells SFR.
The Department of Transportation wasn't fond of the city's idea to split the project, however. When Santa Fe asked NMDOT for permission to connect the Rail Trail to the bike lanes that run through the South Capitol complex between Cordova and Alta Vista, the department refused, citing safety concerns if the project wasn't completed as promised and planned.
The department had been watching the city's process and was never under the impression that the existing lanes would be used. The real issue, wrote Bill Craven, the head of the state's rail division, was the Rail Runner and its station at the government offices.
"We are not willing to allow the project to be built in pieces when that segmentation would channel more bicyclists into the South Capitol Station area, but not provide them a safe way past that area," Craven wrote to the city in March. The state refused to grant right of way, stopping the project cold and forcing a meeting between attorneys where the state held tight to its position.
Wednesday evening, the city relented—reluctantly in the case of Rivera and his colleagues Mike Harris and Roman Abeyta.
"I find it a little appalling that we didn't understand that if we didn't do the work it would be an issue," Rivera says.
Harris approached the vote from a cost perspective, though he, too, was disappointed with what he felt wasn't a clear picture from city staff. Earlier in the meeting, Harris had praised a city staffer for comprehensive communication.
"That's the information that I believe [the City Council] needs from the beginning," he tells SFR. "Things change in capital programs, but you document it as you go along. You understand it as you go along."
Harris, who says he uses the city's bike paths all the time, still has a hard time swallowing what looks to be a price tag that will top $850,000 for two blocks.
Both Rivera and Abeyta pointed out that the city has hemmed and hawed over a tiny, expensive stretch of premier trail while bike thoroughfares in the Southside District 3 sometimes terminate unceremoniously in a patch of dirt.
