El Paso bypass

[kenw]

Hi. Enjoying the southern tier route a ton. Tomorrow I will hit El Paso. Time is tight as I have to meet someone that evening.  Getting around Phoenix was no fun. I see the ACA route has a bypass of El Paso but it’s 5 or so miles longer.  Anyone know what is fastest way though El Paso?   Thanks. 

[John Nettles]

Sort of hard to know unless you live locally as I doubt more than a few non-locals have ridden both routes and kept track of the differences.  My guess is that the bypass would be faster but not by much, i.e. maybe less than 30 minutes overall.  Any time savings based on not having to stop at lights would be off set by the extra miles.  However, there may be more places you might stop at and sight see, buy supplies, etc. along the main route so I guess that could change the equation.  My suggestion is to ride an extra hour or two earlier.

[staehpj1]

Sort of hard to know unless you live locally as I doubt more than a few non-locals have ridden both routes and kept track of the differences.

Yeah, I only rode the in town route.  It was probably slower for me as I got a little lost.   It was one of the few places where I found an ACA map confusing and got a bit lost.  To be fair it was probably my fault.  I think I was a little confused and off route about as much as on route there for some reason.  I am guessing it was more interesting though.  I was in sight of the border a lot.  I ate at a place where I was the only english speaking person present and the menu had no english language entries to even point to.  I had to rely on my very few spanish words and it was harder when they didn't make any effort to speak slowly.  It made it a bit more interesting.  I got the impression that they got very few english speakers and preferred it that way, but the food was good.

[OHRider]

I finished my ride in El Paso but did ride past downtown.  The link below shows the route I took (it ended up at the bike shop where I shipped my bike. The route bypassed part of down town and went over the Billy Rogers park.  Bit of a climb but it was very nice and included a closed road section for riding or walking.  I'm pretty comfortable riding in city traffic and there will be some but I thought it was a decent route.  I'm assuming you're going through on Saturday.

  https://ridewithgps.com/trips/78228051?privacy_code=J0XxpI7Gw5cyfdqw