Lack of Response on
Traffic Safety Measures
August 11, 2009

Still no progress in getting our traffic safety needs addressed. While our Councilor Trudy Jones has more than enough money left in her $1 million/year discretionary account for such capital improvement projects for her District 8 and the City has a surplus of $52 million or more still unspent for road improvements we have still been unable to get our many needs addressed. Our dedicated neighbor Pam Duke devoted much of her personal time obtaining and then sending in over 50 signatures to Trudy supporting the speed humps on Kielich from Greenly to Malaguena. Only two opposed them. Our EANA VP Augustin Mata did the same for those on Overlook from the Eisenhower Middle School at Camero to Spain. Ms. Jones supported the City's Department of Municipal Development (DMD) traffic engineers who chose to ignore these needs while providing unsupported reasons for not doing the work. Their refusal to take action was based on several traffic engineering studies done in 2008-the results of which were only shown to us later after we had demanded to see them. The traffic studies confirmed the speeding and high traffic volumes on both streets particularly during GO'K and EMS school hours. The DMD's traffic engineers would cite an unofficial-never approved arbitrary standard that specified that 85% of vehicles must exceed 30 mph on our 25 mph streets in order to qualify. We would later learn that since 2002 the City's DMD ignored this same standard when it put speed humps on 157 other City streets that also did not meet this fabricated 85% criterion and most even had less speeding than on our streets. Before 2002, DMD had installed humps on 60 other City streets without even taking any traffic counts. For many of these 217 streets, we learned that there were never any of the required petitions with names of residents turned in. These seemingly arbitrary DMD decisions on who will and who will not get speed humps are a problem city-wide. Residents living on at least 75 streets throughout the City are still waiting for their justified humps. We recently learned that humps were installed on an east-west dead end street in an exclusive neighborhood off Wyoming near Paseo del Norte area without any traffic studies done or resident petitions turned in. The speed hump program is being run haphazardly at best with contractors now doing the traffic studies at a significantly higher cost than that previously done by DMD staff personnel. While ignoring these needs, the City has decided to spend an exorbitant amount of our tax dollars on medians spending an average of one-half million dollars per mile. They have also decided to spend even more of our tax dollars replacing perfectly functional green street signs with blue ones. Our EANA and our Academy Ridge East neighbors to our north also asked that the speed on Juan Tabo from Spain north to the Mountain Run Shopping Center be reduced from 40 MPH to 35 MPH. This would be consistent with this same lower speed limit on all other similar four lane collector roads and even on higher traffic six lane major arterials throughout the City. All of Juan Tabo (most of which is six lanes) is considered an arterial even though our four lane 1.5 mile stretch from Montgomery to Eubank meets all of the City's criteria for a 35 MPH collector road. It is also the ONLY road in the entire City that passes by an APS school that is not posted at 35MPH. The City Traffic engineers are also ignoring the significant development that has occurred along Juan Tabo since the current speed limit was set years ago. The newest development is the yellow office/condo building almost completed on Juan Tabo just southwest of Spain. A new four story La Vida Llena elderly care center may also be built on the vacant land on the SW corner of Juan Tabo and Lagrima de Oro just north of the Flying Star Cafe if the City Council approves this high density building, something we and other neighborhood leaders opposed. Yet our City is supporting the re-designation of a section of the four lane stretch of Southern Boulevard south of Central between Juan Tabo and Eubank from a 40 MPH arterial to now a 35 MPH collector street that is less qualified for this change than our stretch of Juan Tabo. There are few intersecting streets on that stretch of Southern while we have at least 15 on Juan Tabo from Montgomery to Eubank. EANA has asked Ms. Jones and the DMD for a crosswalk and traffic light on Juan Tabo at Malaguena Lane to allow our children from Eisenhower Middle School and our elderly to cross more safely there. We asked that street lights be installed in the ½ mile stretch of Juan Tabo south of Spain to Manitoba to improve the safety of walkers at night. We have asked for a radar speed indicating sign similar to those put on Academy Boulevard and elsewhere in the City and for a study to see if stop signs should be put at the intersection of Malaguena Lane and Kielich. The City's DMD remains unwilling to even do studies to evaluate these essential needs and our City Councilor Jones to date apparently doesn't seem to care. Over four months ago we also informed Ms. Jones of the lack of warning signs for the two sets of very costly and dangerous traffic- constricting concrete bulb-outs placed almost without notice on Lagrima de Oro between Morris and Juan Tabo. Our EANA VP Augustin Mata also ran into one of them at night on this unlit road and we were told by a neighbor that another driver had hit one several months ago that caused an almost serious accident. Our repeated appeals to both Ms. Jones and the City's DMD have fallen on deaf ears. Nothing will be done by the City as long as Councilor Jones doesn't care and to date, she simply doesn't. Please help by calling her at 880-7093 or 768-3106, e-mail her at-trudyjones@cabq.gov or write her at her City Council office-P.O. Box 1293, Albuquerque, NM 87103.

 

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Georgia O'Keefe
(revised)