Arroyo Chamiso/Rail Trail: Extension!

Arroyo Chamiso/Rail Trail is my home turf.  Both of these paths are steps outside of my front door.  Imagine my joy and delight when the City of Santa Fe started building on to my beloved stomping ground!

To give you all an overview, there is the Arroyo Chamiso trail which links up the downtown Railyard with South Santa Fe.  The Rail Trail runs all the way out past the Genoveva Chavez Center, past the Rodeo Grounds, and ends near the Sam's Club on Zafarano Street.

At Siringo Road, right by Santa Fe High School, you can link up to the Rail Trail, which runs east along the railroad tracks.  This crazy trial can be linked all the way out to El Dorado, although the pavement stops at Rabbit Road.  A point of annoyance with the Rail Trail is at the sketchy intersection with Zia Road and Saint Francis and how it is neigh impossible to cross St. Francis with your bike to get to the east side of town.  Am I right or am I right?

So, this is where it gets good.  A few months ago the City started doing some major trail building on the east side of Saint Francis.  What is going to happen is there will be an ADDITIONAL SPUR that goes underneath Saint Francis Drive (no more sketchy eight lane highway crossings!), along an embankment, and will connect up to the St. Vincent Hospital!  Hurray! Progress has been remarkably fast.  The other day, we headed out on foot to see the progress for ourselves.

Check this crazy project out!  This is where the tunnel under St. Francis Drive will be.

It looks like they're going to have a couple of hairpin turns along with a very large wall divider to prevent bike-on-bike or bike-on-pedestrian crashes.

Once out of the tunnel, the biker/pedestrian can continue up to the large apartment complex via this nice little bridge:

Or they can follow the new spur that goes up the embankment of St. Francis Drive like HDD and Lucy the Dog are modeling for us here:

Very nice!  I imagine that this whole project won't be completed and open to the public for another several months at the earliest.

I found this extremely informative map online.  The trails I'm referencing here are the hot pink lines, with the dotted hot pink line representing the spur.

Also, Santa Fe plows its paved bike trails in the wintertime so there's no reason to mothball your bike yet.   Now I just need to improve my terrible bike skillz and I'm set!