Dear Alibi (Letter to the Editor)

Dear Alibi,

ART has not received adequate (if any) coverage from the point of view of the daily bus rider. I am 76 years of age and my husband is 86. Neither of us has a driver's license. Hence we both depend totally on public transportation despite its limitations. We fail to understand how ART will improve travel for us (the elderly) when it requires crossing to the middle of the road while dodging oncoming traffic. The same applies to parents with strollers and young children as well as the disabled.
Spare me talk of widened sidewalks. Their only advantage—if you could call it such—is to narrow traffic lanes. Their major disadvantage will be to cause further havoc to pedestrians and vehicular traffic.
How, indeed, did one arrive at the magic figure of a “two times” increase of Rapid riders? (In a car town? Really?) Can one be sure it isn't simply a hoped-for guesstimate to justify the folly of ART and the waste of taxpayers' (local and federal) hard-earned dollars?
Surely, bus riders should have been considered and—dare I say—consulted when planning such a major and costly change to the current system. If that had been done and, moreover, all properly thought out, the architects of the scheme might have better provided for the needs of the passengers rather than the coffers of the “developers.” The real need is for additional buses and bus routes, particularly north/south.
An added disadvantage for these riders will be the access to ABQ Uptown, Coronado Mall and Winrock Center. With ART, riders will have to alight the Rapid at Louisiana and cross streets for a second bus—a major, and possibly dangerous, inconvenience upon returning riders, laden with packages such as groceries from Trader Joe's and Target.
The proposal should have been put directly to those of us who actually use the transportation system, meager as it presently is. At the very least, via a referendum. Public meetings do not hold. They are all merely a sham. Vox populi is never heard. Certainly never listened to.

—Marie G. Diaz, Letters to the Editor, The Alibi, vol. 25, No, 23 (June 9-15, 2016)