New Bike Bridge by I-40

The City of Albuquerque spent $7 million to construct a free standing bike bridge across the Rio Grande only 5 yards north of the I-40 bridge.

When this was proposed, we thought the design and cost were excessive. How much cheaper would it be to just attach a bike lane with brackets to the side of the existing I-40 bridge?

Now that it is complete, you can see it is a grand (garish?) structure. I took my first bike ride over it 4-16-11. It was a 12 mile round trip from our home.

This view is from the bike bridge over I-40 looking down on the approach to the new bike bridge over the Rio Grande. Even though the vertical distance between the I-40 bike bridge down to the approach to the Rio Grande bike bridge is only about 20 feet, the new bike path circles for about a mile to reach the point where I took this picture.

View looking east

Carol was not biking with me so I tried to take my own picture on the bridge. By the way, these are all cell phone pictures.

You can see how over built the bridge appears to be

Embedded into the concrete of the bridge are various objects like paw prints or leaves made of bronze.

View up river. The notch in the left bank is where we used to live at the West Cliffe condominiums.