ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – The City of Albuquerque says changes at problem intersections in the metro have been so successful that they’re rolling out similar set-ups all across town. The city has been using re-timing lights and installing roundabouts to create more pedestrian-friendly roads.
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They’ve been taking a look at problem spots across the metro. “We have what are called free rights here and those free right-hand turns or those turns where cars can just whip through an intersection at speed,” said City of Albuquerque Spokesperson Dan Mayfield.
The city recently completed a project, removing those free-right hand turns at Menaul and Wyoming after the area saw an uptick in pedestrian crashes. “People can now just walk safely to the bus stop which is great,” said Mayfield.
The intersection at Louisiana and Indian School has that same right turn, so the city wanted to tackle it early. “In this area, it was more the potential for all of those crashes we weren’t seeing a lot of pedestrians being hit but we wanted to make sure that doesn’t happen as this neighborhood grows,” said Mayfield.
Mayfield said the improvements are working. “On the west side of McMahon and Kayenta, there were a lot of crashes for a number of years and we were able to engineer some solutions,” said Mayfield.
A few years ago, the city added streetlights and widened the road to four lanes. Since then, the intersection has seen a drastic decrease with only eight crashes over the last six years. “We’ve seen other huge improvements too, Unser and Rainbow was a big, big project for us but it was just a light timing change,” said Mayfield.
Mayfield says data also shows nearly 20% fewer crashes on Lead and Coal since Rest on Red was installed last year. While progress is being made there’s still a lot of work to be done. “We’re seeing a lot of issues on east Central with pedestrians being hit and so we’re looking at expanding the road diet we did there from Juan Tabo East,” said Mayfield. “It’s a mixture of engineering, enforcement, and education to make sure that all the drivers are safe.”
The city said they are still testing out options on another problem intersection at Louisiana and Osuna hoping to slow down speeders.
