City councilor, safety advocates do walk audit of Central's deadliest stretch

Katie Hall says she has been on both sides of the street.

She was once a truck driver who said she made a lot of money and never really thought about the conditions and safety of city streets. Then Hall became disabled and now relies on a wheelchair to get around her neighborhood in the International District.

“It’s been brought to my attention that this is not a very equitable place to live, if you are disabled in any way,” she told the Journal. “There’s just something wrong here.”

Hall, an advocate with Together 4 Brothers, was one of two dozen people who took part in a walk audit on East Central, between Louisiana and Pennsylvania, on Saturday.

The audit, organized by T4B and area City Councilor Nichole Rogers, had attendees take the short stroll and mark down the safety deficiencies they saw in the area on an online form.

T4B Co-Founder Christopher Ramirez said the area has too many lanes, high speeds and not enough crosswalks. He said many improvements suggested in a 2020 pedestrian safety study on the area haven’t been done yet.

“We want to see action now,” Ramirez said. “We can’t wait another four years.”

The audit walk came a week after a report was released, Dangerous By Design 2024, that found Albuquerque was the second-deadliest metro area in the nation for pedestrians. The last time the biennial report was released, in 2022, Albuquerque was also ranked second.

The report found the city had 343 pedestrians deaths between 2018 and 2022, an 84% increase over the 186 between 2013 and 2017.

The report said those most at risk for being killed by a driver were “people outside of vehicles, older adults, people with disabilities, people of color, and people walking in lower-income areas.”

One part of Albuquerque, the International District, is home to a large portion of that population.

The 3-mile stretch of East Central between Eubank and San Mateo has had the most pedestrians killed over the past several years. Since 2018, according to a Journal analysis, at least 34 people have been fatally struck by a driver in that stretch.

Rogers said there are at least 8,000 people in her district who largely depend on the bus or their own two feet to get around. It also has a high number of people with disabilities, like Hall.

Ramirez and Rogers said the city’s neglect of that part of Central has been “deliberate.”

“Again and still, generations who live here have felt it. We just don’t feel like they care about our area, bottom line,” Rogers said. “When it comes to the priorities of the entire city, we always get left behind. And that’s historic, that’s not an opinion, it’s the truth. ... I have to think of ways to get around that.”

She said she would be trying to drum up funding from the Legislature to do what she says the city has failed to: make the area safer. Rogers estimated it would take $2 million to make necessary improvements — cut the lanes from six to four, add protected bike lanes and pedestrian lighting.

Those improvements were suggested in the 2020 safety study, and other portions of Central, which have seen only one pedestrian death since 2018, have already seen such improvements.

Staci Drangmeister, Mayor Tim Keller’s spokeswoman, said $1.7 million has been secured for 198 pedestrian safety lights on Central, between Louisiana and Eubank. She said the design phase is wrapping up with “construction timelines to follow.”

“The Mayor has been ardent about the need to reverse decades of underinvestment in the International District and has directed record amounts of funding into the area,” Drangmeister said. She cited tens of millions used to build the International District Library, Albuquerque Community Safety Headquarters, repave roads and install streetlights and signaled crosswalks on Central.

She added, “The administration will continue to fight for our historically underserved and overburdened communities.”

Department of Municipal Development spokesman Dan Mayfield said — for safety along the most deadly stretch of Central — they are also testing a wildlife detection beacon to see if it can warn drivers of pedestrians in the road and, in 2026, will add two new pedestrian signals east of Louisiana.

“We are aware of the issues on East Central and are using engineering, education, and enforcement to address pedestrian safety,” he said. “Road projects take time to design, fund, and implement, but we are working diligently to deploy these safety measures.”