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STUCK ON PASEO, WAITING FOR TRAFFIC TO EXIT AT SECOND: Steve Powell emails this is what happens during the morning commute, and he believes the culprit is the “stop light at (southbound) Second and El Pueblo.”
He emails “most weekdays about 8 a.m., eastbound traffic on Paseo is stop-and-go from the river to the Second Street weirdo fast-lane exit. You stop, move ahead six to eight car lengths and stop again. When you pass the Second Street exit, traffic picks up to posted speed. Are there any plans to rethink the traffic flow at Second and El Pueblo so that that stop light doesn’t bring three miles of Paseo to a stuttering standstill?”
No. But there are plans to replace a component in the signal’s traffic sensor.
Robert Baker, who is in charge of signalization for Bernalillo County, says after a site check it looks like the problem is “the component that runs all the detection cameras. We’ve never had issues with this component, and we don’t have any in stock. I adjusted the green times (Monday) and (when I left the intersection it was) running pretty good, so hopefully the AM peak will run a lot better until we can replace this part. I will continue monitoring and making necessary adjustments until we can get this part ordered, which will take several weeks.”
In the interim, additional tests are planned to make sure the component is the problem, and the adjustment to the southbound green time seems to be working. Tuesday and Wednesday lines in the 8 a.m. hour cleared the intersection on green, according to Baker. I saw the entire line that had curved up the exit ramp from eastbound Paseo clear the intersection both mornings, as well.
And that’s a good thing. David Mitchell, director of county Operations and Maintenance, explains “there has been a big struggle with the volume of that off-ramp. One issue has been people trying to turn left across two lanes of Second Street in a too small distance to go to the Rail Runner station on El Pueblo. … People were coming to a complete stop at the end of the tube markers at the off ramp, making a partial U-turn into oncoming lanes and making another hard right to get into the left turn bay for El Pueblo. A Z-turn. At least nobody observed that activity this time.”
As for what Steve calls Second Street’s “weirdo fast-lane exit,” Mitchell says “the original PDN/Second interchange was designed with fast-lane exit ramps because the least disruption to the daily traffic during construction was determined to be by splitting the overpasses and allowing the old road to continue with — I think — two lanes minimum in both directions during the interchange build. It wasn’t apparently going to work to divert them far enough and wide enough around the outside of a single elevated six-lane bridge and then have off- and on-ramps outside of that as well.”
In the end, he says, “the design won some awards, and a lunch bet was won on the schedule. It was started after the Alameda river bridge but was completed before the Alameda river bridge.”
Assistant editorial page editor D’Val Westphal tackles commuter issues for the Metro area on Mondays and West Siders and Rio Ranchoans on Thursdays. Reach her at 823-3858; road@abqjournal.com; P.O. Drawer J, Albuquerque, N.M. 87103; or go to ABQjournal.com/traffic to read previous columns and join in the conversation.
