Old Las Vegas Highway Update

Hi neighbors:

Just a quick note to update you on the progress of our requests to the NM Dept of Transportation regarding the speed limit on Old Las Vegas Hwy at our intersection.

You might recall that last August, Booth Gallett, Candelora Versace and County Commissioner Kathy Holian met with some officials at DOT.

Since then, they have completed the following:

1. As requested, they repaired the broken edge of the asphalt in front of the mailbox pad, making U-turns from the mailbox easier.

2. They set up a traffic counter on OLVH to determine how much traffic is running on our section of the highway.

3. As requested, they evaluated the speed limit signs from the light at 285 to the end in Canoncito.

4 . They did some tree trimming over near the Hondo 2 driveway that was impacting line of sight.

Last week, Tim Davis (with a slide show of photos of our mailbox pad and entry), Candelora and Commissioner Holian had a follow-up meeting at which we learned there had been some staff changes since our previous meeting but the following actions have been taken so far:

1. The speed limits from 285 to Canoncito were incorrect; new signs have already been ordered and will be placed as soon as weather permits. The speed limit will be 40 mph for traffic in both directions from Canoncito to the light, and 50 for the rest of OLVH. (This is a direct result of our meeting!!)

2. OLVH from 285 to Old Pecos Trail is called NM 300. From 285 to Canoncito, it is actually considered part of the Frontage Road (FR) network instead. New signs will be placed on this part of OLVH that read FR 2108.

In August we had asked the DOT to please evaluate and remediate the now-buried culvert that runs underneath the paved state-owned apron on our entry. Last week we reiterated our request and were told they would come out as soon as the snow melted to investigate the culvert situation. We also asked them to please remediate the bar ditches and do anything else that might assist with proper run off from our part of the road, to eliminate or reduce the mess at the mailboxes and hopefully save some of our road material from washing down.

Based on our discussions with the Fire Dept and Hondo 2 regarding wildfire risk to residents in Apache Ridge (they have repeatedly told us that a fire starting on the highway shoulder would move up into our area very quickly), we suggested they could contact Greg Gallegos from the Fire Dept urban/wildland interface dept. to discuss removal of the dead trees, piles of brush and other overgrowth at our corner.

Finally, we asked them if it was possible for the cinder trucks to put a layer of cinders on our entry apron when they do the rest of the highway. They will evaluate the driving/cindering schedule and see if they can make that adjustment, although they did not have high expectations that the drivers would be amenable to adapting their habitual routes to accomodate a little wiggle into our entry with the cinders.

Additionally, Commissioner Holian suggested that moving the mailboxes to the Fire Station lot (or other location) could make mail retrieval and the turning out back onto the highway much safer; the DOT said the Post Office makes decisions about mailbox placement without consulting them in regards to safety or other issues but they agree that the current placement was not ideal.

Since we did not initiate this particular aspect of the discussion, we told them just to keep us posted on whatever was happening so we could keep the neighborhood notified. The DOT said that if they start a discussion with the USPS regarding the mailboxes, they will notify us about their progress and they also asked us to please get a feel for residents' opinions regarding the current location of the mailboxes.

Your comments are appreciated, on the mailbox location issue or anything else. Please note that all correspondence that comes to the address is shared with all the board members. These email updates are also posted on our website and public comments to the community in response to these updates can be posted there. Casey Ryan manages the website content. A condensed version of the email updates appears in the quarterly newsletters, which go out by post to those residents who are not on the email list.

And finally, the bad news is that this example of a possible approach to dealing with speeders in our neighborhood is probably not likely...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2xnWYx8YK8

Enjoy the sunshine and please be careful on the road; now that it's thawing, it'll be a mudbog for a few days!

~c
Candelora Versace, Apache Ridge Property Owners Association
ARPOAboard@gmail.com ~www.arpoa.blogspot.com
2011 Board: Candelora Versace, Kristin Ryan, Gustav Kocsis, Michael Jerry, Tim Davis and Booth Gallett
ARPOA, 44 Apache Ridge Rd, SF NM 87505