В Санта-Фе планируют реконструкцию главной магистрали для безопасности пешеходов и велосипедистов

Sam Burnett initially moved to the City Different in 2001 to attend the College of Santa Fe, which meant he spent a lot of time on St. Michael's Drive. Now the public works director for the city of Santa Fe, Burnett said the road appears more or less the same as it did 25 years ago. But that could soon change. Earlier this summer, the city struck a deal with the New Mexico Department of Transportation for a location study assessing the feasibility of reconfiguring the road to be safer for cyclists and pedestrians and less easy to speed on, potentially by narrowing it. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Agenda documents for the $400,000 study state it will explore reducing the street from seven to five lanes of car traffic, though Burnett said any specifics about what the project might look like are "presumptive" at this point and the study will inform what would or would not make sense. "I think it's important for us to take a really careful, long-term look at how St. Mike's can better serve the community," he said. Dangerously large? St. Michael's Drive was constructed in the 1950s as a "bypass highway" connecting Cerrillos Road and Old Pecos Trail, according to information from Santa Fe Metropolitan Planning Organization Director Erick Aune. It was widened in the 1970s and is now one of the city's main connectors, with six lanes of traffic plus a center turn lane. Advertisement Advertisement In 2018, ownership of the segment of road between Pacheco Street and Galisteo Road was transferred from the state to the city of Santa Fe. The road is adjacent to the former College of Santa Fe campus, which is being redesigned into a mixed-use residential and business hub in the midtown neighborhood that eventually could include more than 1,000 homes. It is also adjacent to or close by a number of other important facilities, including LaFarge Library, Santa Fe High School and Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, and intersects with the Rail Trail, a popular bike trail that currently has no dedicated crossing on the busy road. Despite being one of the city's largest roads, Burnett said St. Michael's currently receives less traffic than the volume it was designed for, which creates safety issues. Advertisement Advertisement "When you have a six-lane road that isn't carrying the appropriate amount of traffic, you end up with speeding," he said, describing the street's current configuration as "overbuilt and underused." He said the study, funded by Federal Highway Administration money sent to the state, would assess about a mile and a half of roadway from Cerrillos Road to Botulph Street to see how it functions today and identify safety concerns. Recommendations generated by the study, which he estimated could take about 12 to 18 months, would then be used to propose a project to the city and go through the standard construction design process. Burnett emphasized the study does not automatically kick-start any kind of construction, and that future steps would include soliciting input from the public. Advertisement Advertisement "We wouldn't rush into anything without making sure we were engaging the community," he said. Construction concerns Santa Feans' main concerns with a project on a road the size of St. Michael's would likely revolve around the kind of disruption it could cause for residents and commuters, particularly following the reconfiguration of Guadalupe Street, which disrupted access to businesses downtown for about two years. Aune with the Metropolitan Planning Organization said he believes a road project on St. Michael's could be done in a much less disruptive way than the Guadalupe Street project, adding that would likely be more financially feasible as well. Advertisement Advertisement "We can do this in a more incremental way that may not be like as efficient as coming in in one fell swoop, but it's going to honor the existing business and then of course the schools that are there," he said. While Aune said both the city and the state have been exploring road improvement projects on St. Michael's for years, including a city effort to create an underpass at the Rail Trail intersection, ongoing increases in construction costs have posed a challenge. "For each consecutive year of design and effort, the cost estimate has gone up," he said. Currently, he estimated a major overhaul of the city-owned portion of the road would cost "at least" $50 million, though he said he believes the city could undertake a scaled-down version of the project for $20 million and still be successful at slowing cars speeds and improving multimodal transit options. Advertisement Advertisement That would be a major shift from the way the road was designed in its early years, Aune said, which was as a connector to move people quickly from one location to another without stopping. Now that the city is focused on the corridor as a residential and economic hub, Aune said there's a sense of urgency to make St. Michael's "a street that builds wealth and moves people safely — whether they're walking or biking or taking transit or driving."