City Reviews Rio Grande Road Plan

City Hall is rethinking plans for a roundabout at Rio Grande and Candelaria.

The proposal might still go forward, but Mayor Richard Berry’s administration and City Councilor Debbie O’Malley say they intend to sponsor at least one more meeting to solicit public opinions on the idea.

That decision comes after opponents turned out in force last week to a city-sponsored information session on the North Valley project.

Michael Riordan, Albuquerque’s director of municipal development, said Wednesday that the emerging opposition may force the city to amend environmental documents it submitted to the federal government.

The city told the Federal Highway Administration that there was no strong opposition to the project, based on a series of meetings held about four years ago, Riordan said.

“We might have to reconsider that and inform the federal government that there is some strong opposition,” Riordan said. “A lot of that will depend on the next public meeting we have in late August or early September.”

The Federal Highway Administration, of course, could pull its share of funding for the project, Riordan said. The city itself will also have to decide whether to proceed, he said.

The project was initiated at the request of O’Malley, the city administration said.

O’Malley, in turn, says she is responding to neighborhood concerns about speeding and the safety of the intersection. She still supports the idea.

“I’ve actually received very few emails about it and calls,” she said. “We have a group of people that just don’t support it, a pretty small group of people.”

The Federal Highway Administration says roundabouts do reduce collisions. Converting a signalized intersection to a roundabout can result in a “78 percent reduction in severe (injury/fatal) crashes and a 48 percent reduction in overall crashes,” the administration says on its safety website.

“The benefits have been shown to occur in urban and rural areas under a wide range of traffic conditions,” the FHA said.

The city already has a roundabout at Central and Eighth, on the western edge of Downtown. Another roundabout at 12th and Indian School is expected to be done near the end of August.

Two others have been proposed, Riordan said: One at 12th and Menaul and another at Atrisco and Iliff NW.

Opponents of the Rio Grande roundabout say it’s impractical. They say reducing traffic to one-lane in each direction near the intersection – needed to accommodate the roundabout – will create a bottleneck for traffic trying to get to and from Valley High School, among other concerns.

The $1.5 million project is funded mostly from federal sources, though the city is contributing, too.

About $150,000 in federal funding has been spent on design, Riordan said.

The area now has two lanes of traffic in each direction. The roundabout would involve narrowing that to one lane each way about 600 to 700 feet approaching the intersection.

A separate study is under way on the possibility of making Rio Grande one lane in each direction from the roundabout to Interstate 40.

The mayor hasn’t said directly whether he favors the project, which got started before he took office in late 2009.

In a written statement, Berry said: “Councilor O’Malley and DMD are holding a variety of community stakeholders meetings to determine if this roundabout is indeed in the best interests of the people that live there. As the process continues to unfold the administration will take the final recommendation under advisement.”