3/5/09
Long-delayed plans to straighten and widen the snaky and steep stretch of State Road 76 between Cordova and Truchas could be put into action this year.
State Highway Department officials met with about 60 area residents Feb. 26 at Mountain View Elementary in Cordova to unveil their plans for this section of the “High Road to Taos.”
The $7 million project calls for the reconstruction of 3.8 miles of the two-lane road. Construction would start just past the main entrance to Cordova and end in Truchas near the intersection where travelers must make a left-turn if they want to continue on the road to Taos. Each lane would be widened from 11 feet to 12 feet, and the road would be straightened in several sections. A wider shoulder would also be added to the road.
Despite delays that stretch back at least a decade to the days of governor Gary Johnson’s administration, planners said the project will go out to bid this year, or else the project will lose federal funding.
“We have to have the money obligated by August,” said Phil Gallegos, Department District 5 assistant district engineer. “We are kinda under the gun.”
Plans call for the project to go out to bid in October with preliminary construction to start in December. Full road work is not to begin until March of next year. Construction would be substantially complete by fall 2010 with some follow-up work done the following spring.
The Department still needs to decide whether it has enough room to add a left-turn lane at the intersection in Truchas. A steep slope and a morada and a couple of traditional crosses have left the Department with little leg room to move.
“The plan is not to impact those things,” Laurel Wallace, a Department cultural resources analyst, said. ”It’s going to be tight.”
The object of the project is to increase the safety of the road, which currently has a 40-mile-per hour speed limit. David Martinez, a Department technical support engineer, admitted that a wider road may increase drivers’ speeds.
“Then that becomes an enforcement issue,” he said.
The crowd that gathered in Cordova last week were all for improving the road, but they had concerns about how the Department would go about doing that. Truchas Land Grant members repeatedly told the Department that the state would be required to install cattle guards on the road to prevent cows from entering traffic.
This entire stretch of road passes through Grant-owned land necessitating that the Department buy some property from the Grant and also return ownership of the old road back to the Grant.
“We’re not getting anything that doesn’t belong to use already,” Grant member Wilfred Romero, of Chimayó, said.
Only one man in the crowd mentioned the possible impact road construction could have on High Road businesses that rely on the tourist trade. In 2006, when construction was done on the stretch of State Road 76 between Chimayó and Cordova, business owners complained road work led to traffic delays and lane closures that cut into their profits.
The Department learned a lesson last time — that traffic needs to continue on all-terrain surfaces despite the road work, Martinez said. Nevertheless, there will likely be lane closures, but the goal will be two-lane traffic at all times, he said. Martinez said he expects the project to stay within its budget because of a drop in the cost of gas and asphalt and because contractors are hungrier for work due to the economic downturn.
One thing that may increase the cost of the project is the United State Corps of Engineers. That is if they decide to exercise jurisdiction over the Acequia de Los Llanitos that runs by the road. If the Corps determines that the acequia is under its jurisdiction and its wetlands would need to be replaced due to the impact of construction, then the Department may need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a new wetlands area, Christina Kelso, a Department environmental analyst, and Corps regulatory specialist William Oberlay said.