MRCOG studies options to ease traffic
By Glen Rosales / For the Journal on Sat, Mar 23, 2013 .
Even though the interchange at Paseo del Norte and Interstate 25 will eventually be reconfigured to ease congestion, the growth along the West Side of Albuquerque and in Rio Rancho will ensure that commuter traffic will remain high.
To help ease that commuter crush, the Mid-Region Council of Governments is looking at ways to encourage greater use of public transportation on the Paseo del Norte corridor as it feeds workers to and from their jobs.
The MRCOG is studying several different strategies for this, said Tony Sylvester, special projects manager for the organization.
Those strategies will be on display and experts on hand to discuss them during two open house meetings this Wednesday.
A MRCOG study showed Paseo del Norte carried 81,800 vehicles per weekday across the Rio Grande and it is projecting that number to rise to 180,000 by 2035 as the West Side is expected to see a growth of about 250,000 people in that time period.
So anything that can be done to reduce that total number of vehicles – or even hold it static moving forward in time – is worth researching, Sylvester said.
Nearly 40,000 people work along the I-25 corridor, Sylvester said, and when student transportation to the University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College campus is factored in, that number rises even more.
The goal of the ongoing study is to “identify a high-capacity transit system that uses the Paseo del Norte river crossing to link the northwestern portion of the metropolitan area with the Journal Center and potentially other activity centers east of the Rio Grande,” according the mrgog-nm.gov website.
The study seeks to determine the appropriate type of transit service, routes and destinations, along with a plan to understand the financial investment necessary to implement new service, the website said.
One of the important aspects to the study is determining how to make public transportation as efficient as possible, Sylvester said.
That could mean the use of bus queue lanes and priority traffic signals, he added.
“A lot of it is ensuring travel time reliability,” Sylvester said. “People want to know that the buses will be there on time. We want to make it competitive for commuters who drive to think about using buses two or three times a week.”
It is too early in the process to even begin to estimate how much adding any new routes or enhanced transit services might cost, Sylvester said. Likewise, there is no timetable for when the work might be started because officials are still trying to determine the best methods for meeting those needs, he said.
“We’re really trying to find out how we can meet the transit needs now and into the future,” Sylvester said. “That’s why we want input from people in the community.”
— This article appeared on page 23 of the Albuquerque Journal
http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2013/...e-traffic.html