Albuquerque finishes Central Avenue pedestrian crossing at First Street

The new pedestrian crossing at Central Avenue and First Street is finished, closing out one of downtown Albuquerque’s most visible and closely watched rail corridor projects. What had been an awkward, disruptive spot near the heart of Downtown Albuquerque is now an open-air pedestrian and bike ramp leading to an at-grade railroad crossing, a change city leaders are presenting as a safer way to move through the core.

A ribbon-cutting was scheduled for Tuesday morning, turning the completion into a public milestone after nearly two years of demolition and construction at the site. The old pedestrian tunnel at Central and First began coming down in May 2024, and the city started work on the Central Crossing Bridge on June 16, 2025, saying at the time that the job would take about 10 months. The finished crossing arrived about a year after construction began and roughly two years after demolition started.

The project matters because Central and First sits where pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders and downtown workers all cross paths, including people headed toward the Alvarado Transportation Center and nearby businesses. City planning materials have said the rail corridor divided East Downtown and Downtown for a century, and the new crossing is meant to undo part of that separation with a more direct route. The city has framed the Rail Trail as both a practical connector and an iconic, artistic pedestrian parkway, with the broader route intended to link Downtown, Old Town Albuquerque, the Rail Yards and the Bosque.

The Central crossing is one piece of a much larger buildout that has been unfolding for years. Public input on the Rail Trail began in 2021 after a 2020 framework planning process, and the city unveiled an architectural vision on July 22, 2023. The first completed section opened in the Sawmill District in fall 2025, and in May 2026 city officials unveiled plans for a new half-mile link between Old Town and the ABQ BioPark. With the Central and First crossing now complete, the city says the full project will cost about $17 million as it works toward a 7-mile to 7.5-mile trail network in the downtown core.

For Bernalillo County residents watching whether the Rail Trail was more than a promise, the crossing offers the clearest test yet. It is a small piece of pavement and steel, but it is also the part of the plan most likely to affect daily movement, from transit trips and work commutes to short walks between neighborhoods that have long been split apart by the tracks.