Transportation Board - Regular Meeting

It's 05:30, so call us to order. First item is roll call. I'll just go through it. Looks like we're all here. Member Edwards, member Muck, chair Hampton, member Lesowski, and member Chappell are here in chambers. And we have vice chair Talley and member Altier online. Next item is the agenda. And, if there's no objections, I'd like to hold the, officer election until March since we're probably gonna have two new members then. Sure. Go ahead and make

Move that we table election of chair and vice chair until our March meeting.

Second. All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

I thought I didn't hear you, Ira.

I I'm in favor of tabling.

Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. So are there everybody okay with the rest of the agenda? Alright. The agenda is passed. The amended agenda is passed unanimously. Does anyone have anything on the minutes? Did they like corrected or changed? All right. The minutes are approved unanimously. And with that, we have our first presentation, in m five zero two improvements. Miss Morrow.

Hi there. Can you guys hear me okay? Let me share my screen.

Sorry. I forgot one thing. Is there any public comment for items not on the agenda? Alright. Sorry about that. Go ahead, miss Ma.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Can everyone see that okay? Right. Let me get over to the microphone. Hi there. My name is Jennifer Morrow. I work in the public works engineering division. I'm pretty new with the county.

I've been here about five months now, and, I wanna present to you some safety improvements that we're doing on New Mexico 502. Some of the safety concerns is there are a lot of crashes along the that corridor in front of the airport area. And in September 2024, there was a fatality. This led to Lennell having an RSA done, a road safety audit, and the, the county received a draft of that of, the August 2025 draft of that RSA. So the RSA study area is kind of the eastern side of the airport all the way to just east of Eastgate Road.

And this is the crash data that was provided as part of the RSA study. It's, data from 2015 to 2023. If you look at the intersections, like at Camino and Trotta as well as Eastgate, as is typical of intersections, you see a higher rate of crashes. But we also have several crashes along where there are no, intersections, where they're just road departures. So, the county looked into two different prod projects to try and help with some of the crash issues out there.

The first one was restriping of Camino and Trada, and the second one is to install a a rumble strip along New Mexico 502. So at CaminoEntrada, the striping, this was completed back in November 2025. You can see there were some medians striped in there, some added turn arrows, as well as, like, a stop bar over for the, Holiday Inn Express and just to make it a more clear and well defined intersection. The New Mexico rumble strip project, out there, it starts, at Airport Road, and it continues east to just past Eastgate where there are existing rumble strips that are part of, NM DOT installed on the New Mexico 502. And part of this project is currently, you guys probably know that there's a passing lane that exists right in front of the airport.

So we will be removing that passing lane and putting in a double yellow center line. And we are also making sure that all of our main left turns, there's gaps in the rumble strips for those that turning vehicular motion. We have worked closely with NMDOT on this project, and we have obtained a letter of support for this project from them. That's been included in your packet. So this is the extents of the project.

As I stated, starts at Airport Road and goes to where the existing rumble strips, start at east, East of Eastgate. I love saying that. It sounds like a lot of easts. Here's just a little snippet of the plan set that shows that we are putting in the rumble strip along the centerline. This is at Camino Entrada, I believe.

And it shows some old striping, obviously. It doesn't have our new striping in there. But it shows that we'll be ending the rumble strip installation in that double centerline. And then after the intersection, we repick up the rumble strip installation. The intent is if it's not separating traffic, they're going to put the rumble strip off center of the centerline so we don't have to replace it in in, certain locations.

And if you guys are curious about rumble strips, a rumble strip is a ground out section of asphalt that is seven inches by 16 inches and a half inch deep. You put in a seven by 16 rumble strip with a five inch gap, and then you put in another one, and then you have a two foot gap, and rinse and repeat. So why do we want to install rumble strips? They're a great safety countermeasure. They reduce lane departures.

They reduce head on collisions, and they're great for alerting distracted or drowsy drivers that they are departing the road. We also like to look at the data behind this. And studies have shown that rumble strips can reduce head on collisions by up to forty five percent. Next steps. We are currently working with a contractor to get these installed. Did learn as part of this project that there is only one rumble strip machine in all of New Mexico, so, that limited the contractors we could work with. They have given us a quote. We are putting a contract in place. They are eager to get out there because this is their slow season, so they're looking forward to the work. So you might see them out there in two to three days or two to three weeks.

And the project itself should take about two days. One day, they'll be mobilizing the rumble strip equipment out there to install the rumble strip, and the next day, they will replace the centerline along that stretch. Do you have any questions for me?

Any questions or comment comments from the board? And if you're online, go ahead and raise your hand.

I'm sorry, I can't find the hand raise symbol.

Go ahead, member Alt here.

So I have a couple of things. One is I saw no source for the data suggesting that rumble strips decrease accident rates by forty five percent. I think data needs to be when things like that are are stated, they need to be provided. So that's just statement number one. Number two is I see the Erics are there.

So hopefully, they'll be able to comment on the impact of the rumble stick strips on snow removal. But I presume saying is there is some of that there already that shouldn't be a big issue. And then I I think significant issue with that section of road is really lack of enforcement both from a speed and a cell phone usage perspective. I have been rear ended on Trinity myself by a person who was using their cell phone at the time they ran into me. And when I went to check on them following the accident, they were finishing their text.

So I think, you know, there's a lot of enforcement on Diamond. I don't know what the accident rate is on Diamond, but I would anticipate much lower. And that would be a a pretty useful thing to do, I think, to increase presence of police officers. Just having them sit there in their cars oftentimes is enough to get people's attention. So, putting in a rubble strip is probably a useful thing, but, enforcement would probably be much more effective. End of comment.

Chair Hampton, board member, I I will address the first one, and I apologize for not putting it in that. I had found that data from the FHWA, the Federal Highway Administration, website was where I obtained that data. And I will let one of the Eric's address the snow and and enforcement.

Mister chair and board members, so regarding snow removal, I don't see any impact there. Main Hill already has rumble strips, and we see snow removal operations are unaffected. So, I don't expect any impacts. Regarding enforcement, I do see that LAPD does regular enforcement, during the peak traffic hours, you know, in the morning and the and the and the evenings, quite often. I'm not sure what their schedule or what their frequency is, but just from anecdotally, from what I see is is they are there quite often along that court section of roadway. Thank you, mister chair.

Thank you. I I'm curious. And the road safety analysis that the laboratory did, did they come up with a root cause or some reason for the for all the accidents that they found?

Chair Hampton, board member. I mean, a lot of those were departures, lane departures, and I think distracted driving. I don't think they had that kind of detail in the report. Keith, you had looked through the report. Did you remember anything specific regarding that specific of of a reason why it was happening?

So the so the one fatality that happened was a lane departure. Someone crossed the center line and hit the person coming opposite direction head on. And there is a number of those types of crashes along along the corridor. So but, you know, what causes the lane departures? Drowsiness, distracted driving, texting, or on their phone, and things like that.

So, the this countermeasure is not a fix all for every type of crash that's gonna occur there or even those types of crashes, but at least it'll be a a signal to those drivers, hey. I'm getting out of my lane. And then just on the the the road safety audit was kind of focused on that Camino And Trada intersection, so that's why we had there was a pretty bad crash there where someone turning left into Camino will try to hit someone else. So that's why we kinda implemented those striping to try and define that intersection, stop people cutting across in front of the cars. Hopefully, that helps.

So another comment. I I do think these rumble strips are pretty effective. I drove into Los Alamos last night. And early before you get to that area along the Main Hill Road, there is a rumble strip, and it is very effective to alert you if you're crossing the center line.

Anyone else?

I just wanted to say thanks for the presentation, and I really liked your description of the rumble strips. Now I can totally imagine them. And, I think what you're doing to enhance safety along that corridor sounds like a really good idea for the the speed along there, and distractibility could definitely be decreased or awareness would be increased by those rumble strips, I think, if you veer off a little bit because you're on your phone or something like that. So sounds good to me.

Chair Hampton, board member, thank you very much. One thing I thought was kind of entertaining was after I learned about centerline rumble strips and shoulder rumble strips are different. When I drove down 502, I realized that I think they'd put shoulder rubber strips in the center, it works just as effectively.

Mister Chair, just a quick comment. And one of the reasons why we're we're looking at this and having discussions with DOT and and the lab and, you know, the road safety audit was because, you know, of some of these accidents that that we've seen kind of in in recent years. So to address that, council did support a budget item for us to utilize and come up with some of these solutions. So these rumble strips are a result of that and council support for allocating a budget for some of these traffic safety countermeasures. So you may be hearing of of another project that we're working on currently to address another issue, but so more to come.

But, you know, just wanted to let you know that council did support this, and, that's why we're moving forward with some of these, initiatives. So

Thank you. And have any of these discussions with DOT include the possibility of putting a traffic circle at that intersection in Trotten 502? I know that when it was first developed, that was under consideration if it if it actually made enough traffic on Entrada.

So I'll take that one, mister chair. So that discussion did come up during the meetings, regarding the road safety audit. One of the and and so it's it it could be a potential countermeasure. It would have to be studied in more detail. One of the concerns about it would be the backup of traffic down the hill, especially during implement inclement weather. So that was a concern that that was brought up, you know, regarding, implementing a a roundabout solution at the intersection. But, yes, it was discussed.

Thank you. Is there any public comment for this item? If there is, go ahead and raise your hand or use the raise hand function, I guess. Go ahead, member Edwards.

I was just wondering, the implementation of the safety measures in response directly to the fatality incident or had those changes been planned longer range? And just to add, I think it's no matter what the answer is, that it's just good that it seems that we are being responsive when we know there's such a high stakes area that we try and implement something in response to a fatality. Seems like a good idea, but I was just curious about that.

Mister chair, board member Edwards, so to answer your question, yes, it was in response to that, but it was also being performed in response to a larger traffic safety concern that the laboratory, was looking into through their initiatives to improve traffic safety. So that effort kinda dovetailed this project into or this, this road safety audit into Bean. So they were very supportive of kinda expanding their efforts to look at this intersection because of some of the recent accidents that have occurred there.

Thank you.

Chair, if I may. I'm sorry. Again, I can't find the hand function on this thing.

Go ahead.

I I like the the concept of the roundabout. I I think that it would do well. Again, I'm a lot less concerned for people trying to escape from Los Alamos, which we have East Jamez Road, which, works quite well for people leaving the lab. That would be a good, traffic calming measure, I would think. And I would support such a recommendation.

Thank you, member Altair. And with that, thank you, Ms. Morrow Mr. Martinez. And Our next item is the revised attachment a for our work plan. And if everyone's okay with it, I went ahead and I checked the boxes that corresponded to the ones we'd already approved, and we're lucky none of the new ones really apply to us. So, I was gonna go ahead and and, list which ones are check would be checked if we're in the same configuration as as we approved. And if anyone sees anything else they'd like or speak up.

Mister chairman, with the new board members coming in next month, will this potentially change a little bit? Or will it will we need to vote to update it again?

No. It, it'll say the same even though the members will be changing.

Thank you.

Okay. So the first item is under quality governments. We have communication engagement checked, intergovernmental tribal regional relations and partnership checked. Then going down to operational excellence, we have infrastructure asset management checked. Going down to economic vitality, we have downtown revitalization and promote tourism, etcetera, etcetera.

Under quality of life, we have mobility checked and open space parks and recreation checked. And that's it. And if, would someone like to make a motion?

The work plan as amended in or as reviewed in, section a or you called it section a? Attachment. Attachment a. Yeah.

Second? I'll second. I think member Lesowski got the second. Barely beat him. But, anyways, alright. Is there any discussion of the motion? All right. All in favor, raise your hand or say aye. Member Talley or vice chair Talley?

Aye. There we go.

Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Our next item, the election of chair and vice chair is tabled until March. And, our next one, before, we go to the next one, I'd like to, welcome councilor Havelman as our new council liaison. And do you have anything else for tonight?

Any questions for councilor Havlman? Alright. And I I

Screw question.

Sure.

I just wanted to welcome you personally and just we're just so glad you're gonna be working with us on this board. And if you have any anything for us in terms of focus or, any comments that steer us going forward, that's always welcome. But thank you for being with us.

The next item is the chair's report. And, in addition to welcoming councilor Havamand, I'd also like to thank, vice chair Talley and Member Altier for their service to T Board. And as you guys know, probably, from serving on other boards, there's certificates for you which you can pick up in the public works office with Ms. Brill, I think. And thank you so much for all that you've done for the board.

Next item is you should have this thing, disclosure, where you basically say there's no conflicts of interest. Please try and do that before you leave. It's really short, and, give it to Ms. Brella. Alright. Do any of the members have any reports? Member Altier?

Thank you, chair. I wanted to, comment on on a couple of, exchanges that you you and I have have shared that regards the distribution of signs around the county on public right of ways. I do appreciate that the council, as you informed me, addressed this earlier this week. But I would be very much interested in bringing a a motion to support some type of of legislation or or ordinance to regulate what I believe is becoming not just an eyesore, which I guess the Supreme Court has decided it doesn't count, but what is a a potential distracted driving hazard by having these signs plastered around the community on the rights of way, most egregiously up at the roundabout on on Diamond, but but scattered throughout the community. And there should be some process, and I understand it's being studied.

So if if there were some way that we might put forward a a motion to support the the the work of of mister Isaacson and and others that are bringing these items before planning and zoning and the the full the full console, I think that would be a a a useful thing for us.

Thank you, member Altair. We'll I'll talk with mister Martinez about that. Vice chair Talley.

Oh, thank you, chair Hampton. And, I just wanna I just wanna say real quick, thank you to chair Hampton and members of the board. It was a pleasure serving on this board for the last couple of years. I had sent an email to chair Hampton just letting him know my husband retired, December 31. And so our lives have now changed a little bit, and we're going to be, a little more sporadic in our trips out of town.

And so, anyways, I'm not gonna apply for the next term, maybe down the road a little bit. But I also wanna thank, mister Martinez, Eric Martinez, and his staff. You guys have been very professional. I was very impressed, and diligent with what you've brought to the board and how you presented things. And I just wanna thank thank everybody for, the rest of the board members for your volunteering, your time and effort and diligence with that. So thank you so much. That's all I had.

Thank you, Vice Chirtally. We're gonna miss you guys, and you guys are always welcome back. And with that, anybody else have a member report? Anything you want to bring up? Right. Staff report.

Thank you, mister chair, board members. First, I'd like to welcome counselor Heavenman to T Board. It'd be nice having you. If I can support you in any way or you have questions, feel free to contact me, and I'm I'm happy to help. So mhmm.

Got it. And I also wanted to thank Nancy, Talley, and Michael Altier for their service to the board. We're gonna miss them here. So we truly appreciate their time and talents and contributions to the board. So I'll say I'll I'll I'll ditto what chair Hampton says about your welcome anytime, and we appreciate your all your work and and, and time to to the board as well.

As far as the the staff report, I'll I'll touch on a few projects, mister chair. I I like to note that, thanks to mister Wilson's efforts, the county got redesignated as a bronze level, bicycle friendly community. We're, I think, making good progress on trying to get to the next level. And so, you know, with a a little bit more work and a few more initiatives, I think we're we're on our way there. But it's reassuring that we got re recognized and and we're able to renew our status.

So it's a pretty lengthy application process. It seems to get longer every year. So thanks to to mister Wilson for taking the time and putting the work into it. So appreciate it. Just like to mention that the Denver Steel's roadway and utility project is underway.

We've had great weather in, you know, February, which is amazing. So contractors gotten started over there. So they're working one kind of road length at a at a time given that, you know, we we don't know how weather's gonna change from one day to the next, but it looks like February is still gonna be a fairly dry month, unfortunately. But, that helps us in our construction. So, so the contractor is is getting that project going.

You might have seen a press release come out on that recently. So thanks to Eric and his his team for, getting that project rolled out. At county council recently, council approved the installation of a hawk signal at the New Mexico 4 Roadway between La Vista and Sherwood as part of the New Mexico 4 Trail crossing project that Keith also was instrumental in in managing and gave a great presentation at council providing all the details of the project and and the recommendation that the transportation board recommended to them. So that part's done. We're currently waiting on DOT to submit to us for review a signal and lighting agreement is what they call it for that installation.

And then we're currently working on finalizing the plans, getting all the required certifications so that we can put the project out to bid and award the the the contract to a con to a construction contractor and start work. So more to come on that. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Did have a question? Yeah. K. Next thing is, it's not in the report. It'll be then in the in next months, but our traffic and, and, streets crews have started installing wayfinding signs again this year. You might see a new one installed there in front of the Bradbury Museum.

So we're looking to try to make steady progress this year in getting more of those signs installed. I think there's probably quite over a 150 signs that we're looking at installing. So we're trying to utilize our own crews. So we've taken kind of an all hands on deck approach to get, you know, various crews to since we're not removing snow as often as we should be this year, getting their help to with some of these sign installations. So, hopefully, make some good steady progress there.

Regarding transit, we had a a successful what we call a successful Saturday service pilot program. We had been evaluating that. We performed a survey. Now we're looking to hire a consultant that specializes in transit modeling to see if we can utilizing existing staff or or not, what it would take to have a successful Saturday service program going forward. So there's a lot of analytics involved with scheduling routes and all that.

So we're looking for a little bit of help there to, better define that and what the needs are. So, James Barela and and Keith will also be front and center in in that as well. So more to come. We're looking to have a presentation to T Word at some point in the future about that. And then, I saw that, Stephanie Nacholi is on the line, so I'm gonna give a shout out to her.

We had a really good conversation about Vision Zero. And so, you know, we've talked about that before here at here at T Board and kinda what you know, kinda the county's approach to that. So thank you, Stephanie, for her time for talking to us about that. And then lastly, we're are receiving applications currently for the vacancies on the transportation board, and we have a potential member that may be applying with us. So Jacqueline Connolly, you know, we're looking forward to see your app application come through. So, thank you for your interest. So that's all I got, mister Chair. Thank you. I'm open to, any questions.

Thank you. Any questions or comments?

I was just wondering. First of all, that was congratulations on earning the bronze level for bicycle access. Is there a similar program for rating a community for pedestrian superstardom? Because maybe walkable a walkability, bronze, silver kind of rating that you know of.

Thank you, board member Edwards. I'm gonna look to my left. I'm not aware of any. I'm not sure if Keith might be aware of any sort of similar designations. There

was an organization that a few years ago had something similar. I'll I'll have I'll I'll go back and see. It kinda dropped off the radar, but I'm not sure if they still do it. But I can I can research that, and we can look into seeing if it's something we can pursue?

Thank you.

Here. Yes. Thank thank you, guys. You you you I I wanted to congratulate you as well on that. As a follow on to that, I was curious if you have a a bike to work day plan for this spring.

Also, I wanna congratulate you for all your efforts to get that hawk signal installed. I it's it's really been an interesting part of participating on this board to see how how the process works to bring something from concept to fruition. I've been on the board four years, and I think this is, the the fruit is, you know, been on the vine for about two and a half of those four years. So so it is, it's been a, really gratifying for me to see that actually completed. And then, with regard to, this year's weather, I think it does portend, badly for us in terms of fire, danger.

And I'm wondering if you have started to work on, fire egress plans, whether there should be some kind of community awareness, promulgated, things of that nature. So that's that that's, probably the last time you'll have to hear from me.

Thank you, board member Alteria. I'll I'll address the question about bike to work. Yes. We are planning to, hold another bike to work event this coming May, proclamation. That's something we like to do every year going forward.

So, look forward to that. Regarding fire hazard preparation, yes, we have been having those discussions and the fire department and our new fire chief Eric Litzenberg is well aware of, you know, the potential fire danger dangers coming up because of the dry weather. So they are already preparing outreach for that. We have been talking to our environmental services crews currently about enhanced brush and yard waste collection pickup like we did last year. So there are gonna be things rolling out, as far as communications for, fire hazard mitigation. So stay tuned.

Thank you. Anyone else? Alright. Next meeting. Looks like we have election of officers, maybe a Trinity Drive update.

And then in accordance with what Member Altier suggested, I know that the signs might come before P and Z at the last meeting we have this month. So at the very least, Councilor Haberman and myself could give an update. And I'm sure you'll have it too. And then we could do a vote to encourage that the, the process happens. And with that, we're adjourned.

Yay.