Monday, Sept. 12, 2005 | 8:52 a.m.
It's not likely Don Albietz would have wanted his death to result in banning bicyclists from State Route 159 through Red Rock Canyon.
Ditto for Ted Abrahams and Timothy Poore.
All three were riding bicycles when they were struck and killed by inattentive or speeding motorists on the popular state scenic byway.
Rather than address those issues, public officials are punishing the victims and leaning toward building a bike path they hope will remove bicyclists from the road.
Bicyclists, Red Rock volunteers and Blue Diamond residents have been begging the Nevada Transportation Department to return the speed limit to 45 mph since NDOT raised it to 60 mph in 2000.
They raised the issue again after Poore was killed in August 2002. And more than 450 of them sent petitions to state and local officials after Abrahams was killed in September 2004.
This spring, NDOT promised public workshops and a solution. But no meetings were scheduled until after the July 20 crash in which Albietz, an off-duty Metro Police officer, was struck by a hit-and-run truck driver. Albeitz died July 28.
His death on the valley's most celebrated bicycle route has ignited a frenzy of memorials, meetings and political grandstanding, launching bureaucrats and politicians into public-relations damage control.
They need a ribbon-cutting, which means a bike path. Transportation officials who spoke at an Aug. 31 Blue Diamond Town Advisory Board meeting waxed on about a vast "super-bicycle arterial" beside SR 159.
It'll have to be as wide as a regular road. Bicyclists hit upward of 40 mph on the downhill stretches of SR 159. And bicycle paths aren't designed to accommodate riders who travel at speeds higher than 15 mph. Most paths are unsafe at over 12 mph.
Toss in the joggers with MP3 players plugging their ears, strollers, unleashed dogs (no matter what the signs say), and it's a recipe for more crashes than ever happen between bikes and cars on the highway. Bike-path crashes aren't safer. You can suffer a major head injury at 10 mph.
For these reasons, the thousands of bicyclists who already ride out there won't use a path, no matter what they call it. They've said so over and over.
Blue Diamond residents on Aug. 31 also told Regional Transportation Commission Executive Director Jacob Snow and Clark County commissioners Chip Maxfield and Lynette Boggs McDonald that the path would be a waste of money.
One resident described how the old bike path through Red Rock was in a constant state of disrepair and obstruction because of flash-floods that undermined its foundation and littered it with debris. It also attracted as many motorized all-terrain vehicles and cycles as bicycles, she said.
Another resident said taking the bicycles off the highway would make it even more of a freeway by removing the presence of a slower-moving population. That's one problem with segregation.
A bigger problem, however, is perception. Those speaking in Blue Diamond illustrated perfectly the idea that if a bike path exists, motorists assume bicyclists are banned from using the adjacent road.
They aren't. Nevada has no such law. But everyone, from the transportation officials who know better to the residents who don't, assumed that placing an expensive swath of asphalt through a conservation area and endangered desert tortoise habitat will remove bicyclists from the road.
It won't. Those of us who ride out there daily or weekly will continue to legally use the highway.
Motorists also will continue to speed. Burros will continue to be hit. Commericial and commuting drivers will continue to use it for getting into town quickly. And the dangerous perception created by the path will increase contention among bicyclists and motorists, with additional fatal outcomes.
Making bicyclists unwelcome on a state road that is a designated scenic byway is a bad precedent. In how many other Nevada communities will this happen after Red Rock sets such a sub-standard standard?
But politicians aren't thinking about the future or a broader view. They want a ribbon-cutting.
NDOT wants the bad publicity to go away.
And bicyclists and law-abiding motorists who use the road want a real solution, starting with a lower speed limit and the minimum 4-foot-wide shoulders NDOT required in its own plan when the road was repaved three summers ago.
Albietz, Abrahams and Poore were competent bicycle drivers who died pedaling along a scenic highway they loved.
They deserve a better legacy.
We can only hope they don't name this silly path for one of them.
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