The city continues to roll forward with plans for the new Central Avenue rapid transit bus line, amid vocal expressions of support and disapproval from businesses and interested citizens, and Friday it announced that its station designs are about 90 percent complete.

Recently updated renderings of station and lighting plans, as well as lane configurations and cross sections of alignments along neighborhoods of Central Avenue that will be served by ART, have been added to the project’s website.

The new drawings, which can be seen under the “stations” tab on the main menu, show ART’s dedicated and shared lanes, station locations, landscaping and sidewalk improvements. They also clearly show which left-hand turns along Central will remain operational and which ones will be blocked by the center bus lane, which has been one of the public’s top concerns regarding the handful of changes ART will bring to the corridor.

Plans for the 15-mile rapid transit system, which will run along about nine miles of fixed-guideway lanes in the middle of Central Avenue, have been in the works since the fall of 2011. The line includes extended service to the Uptown area, Tramway Boulevard and the Central and Unser Transit Center, and a connecting line on University Boulevard is also being planned by the Mid-Region Council of Governments. Click here to read the full article.

By Blake Driver, Reporter for Albuquerque Business First

Blake Driver covers economic development and innovation. Reach him at (505) 348-8308 or bdriver@bizjournals.com.