Roads and traffic planning aren’t working
Idrove a few streets to see how bad things are before writing this piece. After a quick rain, the streets were much worse than I thought: each crack and pothole in the street full of water — ready for freeze-thaw cycle to cause even more damage.
When I worked at the New Mexico Highway Department, it had a Planning Division Library that contained a 1950 report done for the city of Santa Fe. The report called out three needed things: downtown parking, a bypass around the traffic gridlock points and a parallel road to Cerrillos Road to alleviate traffic. Fast-forward to today, and the issues are the same.
The Highway Department and city sponsored an Arterial Roads Task Force from 1994 to 2006, when a formal plan was issued. The task force planned Meadows Avenue, Governor Miles Road, N.M. 599, the Richards Avenue roundabouts, Rabbit Road, Caja del Rio Road, County Road 70 and Via Veteranos. In a sense, building a grid network of roads that people could use to access all areas of the city. The city of Santa Fe discontinued this planning in 2007. We are living with this lack of planning.
On the way to a family birthday party at a restaurant on Guadalupe Street, there was construction on Cerrillos Road. The power in the city went down during a lightning storm, so all traffic lights were off. Family members came through West Alameda, Agua Fría, Rodeo and St. Francis roads. It took all of us two extra hours to reach the restaurant. It is amazing how fragile our entire transportation system is. To have a drone aerial of this traffic gridlock would be striking.
The city has been collecting fees from developers to improve intersections, but since city traffic engineer John Romero left, I believe there hasn’t been an accounting of it. This is probably millions in escrow unless the city has spent it elsewhere.
The city seems to let roads go bad. Officials never replaced the city engineer and are using contracts to hire a city engineering “position” on each development and road project (like the West Alameda culvert collapse). I cannot imagine this is cheaper than having an actual city engineer. Because it’s been one contract per firm at a time, there is a risk of no consistency in how work proceeds. Further, I think when you have multiple firms jockeying for position or a permanent gig, they tend to tell you what you want to hear.
Pavement standards have been relaxed by the city on access roads/parking lots that developers have made. Yet, the roads are all dedicated to the city. It is said that in 10 years all of this new construction will just collapse because there isn’t enough good-quality asphalt to hold it all together. This cost will fall on the city.
The backlog in road repairs for the city was more than $250 million in the 2022 report from the mayor. As repairs are neglected, they will get more expensive. In the past, the city has floated a $30 million road bond issue every two years. The last one was $6.3 million in 2020 (they skipped the ones in 2018 and 2022). So, say the new figure is $300 million for backlogged repairs in 2024; at $30 million every two years, it could take 20 years to fix all the roads.
Of course, it is not that simple. Roads that have waited 10 years to be fixed will cost more than twice the money to repair, and those waiting the full 20 years could cost at least four times as much money. What does all this mean? We probably will never see city roads in good repair in our lifetimes.
William Mee lives in the Agua Fría village and watches the city deteriorate.