CABQ repairs bike trails ahead of Balloon Fiesta

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Paths for Balloon Fiesta bikers will be much smoother, thanks to city workers.

Dave Simon, director of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, said they have a lot of repairs to do.

“About a year and a half ago, we inventoried the condition of many of our paved multi-use trails and our rapid inventory documented over 5,000 cracks in those in those trails,” he said.

The department knew they had to start working smarter, not harder, to fill those cracks.

Now they have two new crack-filling machines that fill cracks in under five minutes – speeding up the number of cracks crews can fill in a day, including along the North Diversion Channel Trail, the main line to Balloon Fiesta Park.

“Well, I live actually five minutes from balloon park on bike, I’m right off the trail, so it’s great – just a back way, no traffic” said biker Micah Shultz.

The city said the faster crack-filling will also allow for crews to spend more time maintaining the trails.

Every biker KOB 4 ran into on the trail said they don’t mind a few cones on the path if it means a smoother ride. The city said it expects the repairs along the North Diversion Channel to be done Thursday, and it will move on to other repairs around the city.