Wilson and Company engineer Ted Garcia found no joy at the Jan. 8 city of Espanola’s Public Works Committee meeting.
Garcia and Ricardo Peña, representing the state Highway Department, presented the Committee with a change to the Railroad extension project. The Committee in November had asked Garcia to change the A2 plan to include a left turn onto Bond Street from northbound Paseo de Oñate, which had been eliminated from previous plans.
Garcia managed to get through a few slides, including Oñate traffic flow (17,611 cars daily), level of service at the light in front of Hunter Ford and a diagram of where Railroad Avenue would join with the Los Alamos Highway, but that’s as far as he got before Councilor Robert Seeds stopped him.
“Mr. Garcia, we can’t have this discussion without talking about the light at Fairview Lane and Railroad,” Seeds said. “We can’t move forward with this project without addressing the light on Fairview.”
Garcia said he was only working on the Railroad extension project. Anything the city wanted help with from the Department outside of the extension project would have to go through District 5 engineer Ruben Garcia.
“We call that scope creep,” Ted Garcia said. “We need to keep the project at Railroad and Oñate.”
Committee chairman Pedro Valdez tried to bring the group back to task.
“There are certain things the Department won’t do,” Valdez said. “We have to take our first step.”
Construction would begin about 2017, according to Ted Garcia. He tried to move on to the Oñate Bridge options but was again stopped.
“We’ve been talking about this for decades,” Seeds said. “The Fairview intersection is more important than the bridge.”
Valdez, who represents the west side, said he was concerned if the city doesn’t make some sort of decision soon, it could get left behind.
“If we don’t do this (pass a resolution) I’m afraid the Highway Department will build the bridge and work with the pueblo (Santa Clara) and Espanola‘s west side doesn’t get attention put to it,” Valdez said.
Valdez had requested and received a cost estimate from Ted Garcia to have an independent traffic study done of the Fairview and Railroad intersection. Ted Garcia estimated a full nine-hour car count would cost the city $2,170.
Seeds asked why the city was paying the same company to do a third study when the first two they had done resulted in Wilson and Company determining a light was not warranted at the intersection.
“They’ve already done two studies,” Seeds said. “Why are we paying them to do another?”
Valdez said this would be an independent study and would take into account peak traffic and Northern New Mexico College traffic, both of which had been ignored in the first two studies.
However, no one was sure the second study had been done.
Ted Garcia went through the costs and options for the Bridge but then Councilor Cory Lewis wanted to come back to the Fairview intersection.
“These gentlemen have done a lot of work and we’re just wasting their time,” he said. “All we’re doing is study and study and study and nothing is getting done.”
Lewis said he did not need another study. He was responding to his constituents, who want a light there.
After Ted Garcia said he couldn’t answer questions about the Fairview intersection light, Lewis made a motion to recommend to the full council that the Committee recommends a light at the Fairview and Railroad intersection.
Seeds asked Ted Garcia if they could recommend the Railroad and Oñate extension project with the caveat that a light be installed at Fairview and that Railroad be expanded from the city lot south to Oñate. Garcia said they could ask but again said the project was separate and had a 2017 construction time line.
The motion passed unanimously.
Mayor Alice Lucero said at Monday night’s city council meeting the state Highway Department could not meet the council’s schedule and would come before it in February.