Road Committee
Road Committee
By Nolan Zisman 466-2968 (email: pnzisman@aol.com)
May 2, 2008, 07:45

Problem Reporting:  Your Contribution to the Eldorado Community!

If you spot a stop sign that is down please call Gaby at the County Public Works Dept. at 992-3010 and report the intersection where the sign is down or missing. If you see a street name sign that is missing, a pothole or other hazardous road problems,  you can now submit a road problem report by clicking on the "Got Road Problems?" hot spot on the ECIA home page. (You can also use this to report a missing or downed stop sign). A member of the Road Committee will follow up with an on-site inspection and get the report to the County.

Eldorado Road Improvements

Gavilan Place-Jan, 2008-- Base Course

Encantado Place- Feb, 2008-- Base Course

Moya Place-Feb, 2008--Base Course

Gualdo Road- Aug, 2008 - Base Course

Future Plans (as provided by the County)

Encantado Road (on hold, awaiting funding to be made available)

Balsa Road (on hold, awaiting funding to be made available)

Herrada Road, Av. Amistad, Av. Buena Ventura (on hold, awaiting funding to be made available)--Paving and Drainage Repair:

"AT THE CROSSROADS"

        (Monthly Comments from the Road Committee Chairperson)

October, 2008: DIRT ROADS 102- - In the last issue of Vistas we covered washboard. In this issue, let’s review some factors regarding rutting. As you may have noted the County has been trying a slightly different approach to grading our dirt roads. Where practical, the grader is pushing the side of the road back toward the original bar ditches, where they exist, thereby opening up water flow access to driveway culverts that haven’t been exposed for many years. Several additional roads have been earmarked by the County for this special grading and your Road Committee is in the process of putting together a list of even more candidates. This grading technique has two advantages. Runoff will keep the culverts open and water that used to pool on or at the side of the driving lanes will be diverted off the driving lanes. Where water stays off the top of the roadway, deep ruts and excessive muddy spots are less likely to form.   Hopefully, unless we get some heavy deep snows this winter or a deluge like we had in July, the roads should be more passable where they have been graded in this manner. During our recent road inspection, however, Road Committee members noted many instances of driveways that have no culverts. In many of these cases, the driveway sits at a higher elevation than the roadway. The result of both these conditions is that water running alongside the roadway, if it can’t go through a driveway culvert, will run in front of the driveway and form a small gully. After the July rains, some of these gullies were fairly wide and deep. So, between lack of culverts and speeding vehicles, the grader will be required to maintain the roads more frequently and ultimately the roads will get lower and the gap between the drive and roadway higher. You can help reduce this cycle by keeping your culverts open and free of things that may otherwise inhibit the flow of water through them.

September, 2008:

Dirt Roads 101:  (This is the first of a series of “At The Crossroads” articles dealing with the nature of our roads in Eldorado and what we as residents and users of our roads can do to and for them.)

I get the most complaints/reports, by far, about the washboard surface on our roads. Recently I was somewhat flabbergasted when I received a call requesting grading on Gavilan Road—one that received new base course only last year. I went over and drove the road and my worst fears were concerned. How did the road get in such shape after such a short time? I did a little research and found the following information from “Science News”, Aug. 18, 2007, by J. Rehmeyer:

“Driving on a dirt road can rattle the bones. Every foot or so, a ridge of dirt up to several inches high lies in wait to jolt passing ears and trucks and their hapless occupant. In many places, road crews battle this "washboard" effect by frequently scraping the roads with bulldozers. But as soon as more vehicles pass, the ridges, phoenix-like, return…. Now, a team of physicists has explained why a washboard forms…. Any bed of dirt or sand, even a very smooth one, has minuscule irregularities that slightly jog a rolling wheel. Each time the wheel hits a bump, the computer simulation showed, it pushes the dirt forward a bit, enlarging the irregularity. Then, as the wheel passes over the top of the bump, the force of its descent pushes dirt forward into the next bump. Repeat these actions a hundred or more times and the familiar pattern of ridges appears. The research has a dispiriting message for road crews: Scrape often, or give up. Washboard is inevitable. The researchers found one, and only one, solution: The critical velocity below which [the surface] would remain flat is about 5 miles per hour. Slow down—a lot. While I'm not advocating going 5 miles per hour, I believe that if we all stay within the speed limit on dirt roads (generally 25 MPH) we can slow down the effect of washboarding and save a few dollars on car repairs as well. If you see speeders on your dirt roads, please try to capture their license numbers. If we can report these to the Sheriff's office, perhaps they can issue warnings and get the worst offenders to slow down.

August, 2008: Did you ever wonder why runoff rarely runs through the culverts under the driveways, but rather flows along the edge of the roadways and in front of the driveways? From having looked at many miles of our roads over the course of the past three years, it appears that at one time the original bar ditch alongside the road carried the water through the culverts under the driveways, away from the edge of the roadway.  Over the years, wind erosion, speeding cars creating dust and removing base course from the roadway, and the grading of the roads for snow, ruts, and washboard have resulted in the original bar ditches filling up and becoming overgrown with vegetation, forcing run off to follow the path of least resistance, i.e., the edge of the roadway. As a result, we have seen quite a few similar roads in Eldorado where the runoff from the heavy rain from two weeks ago created deep ruts, especially where the driveway meets the road. The county has come out to a couple of roads to re-cut the bar ditch so water flows away from the road surface and through the driveway culverts. A contingent representing ECIA will be meeting with county officials soon to discuss this issue and other issues regarding Eldorado roads.

July, 2008:   Musings: Work should have started on application of new base course to several miles of our dirt roads. This work was funded by a $675,000 appropriation from the NM Legislature……. This was a summer that saw a rather large amount of vandalism - - smashed mailboxes, damaged or destroyed road and bike path signs, egged windows; do you know what your kids did this summer?......The heavy torrential rains during mid-July did some damage to individual roads, but, on the whole, the roads held up rather well; very little rutting and erosion damage; this can most likely be attributed to the post-winter grading during which the operator put a nice slope along the sides of the roads so water would drain off the roads, rather than puddle on them.

June, 2008: Unnecessary Expense:  It seems like our kids are getting bored a lot earlier in the season these days than in prior years. Even before school recessed for the summer we’ve had several instances of vandalism along our roads that are taking funds away from other, more positive expenditures (such as filling in cracks in the bike paths or getting additional gravel and grading on our dirt roads, or more potholes filled).  In particular vandals damaged a considerable number of crossing signs on the bike path along Av. Eldorado, bent or knocked off several street signs and painted graffiti in one of the drainage culverts. Do you know where your kids are?  If they are caught are you prepared to reimburse the expenses incurred? Road projects are either recently completed or are expected to start soon. As of the date of this publication, work should be completed on (chip seal) paving of Camarada Road between Av. Azul and Camerada Loop. This problem area was identified by the County Road Advisory Committee as one of the worst in the County and by a petition from the residents along the road. The County has put out a request for bids for laying new base course on several miles of our roads and should have awarded the contract in  June. Work is expected to begin later this summer. The Road Committee is currently in extensive deliberations on future community policy towards paving of additional roads in Eldorado. Not only is the question of   “should we” under consideration, the questions of what criteria to use to identify candidates and how to fund the expenses are also being considered.  Watch this column or Vistas for more information.

May, 2008: June 3 is an important day for the Eldorado community.That’s the day we have an opportunity to express our feelings as to the best candidate to represent our community on the Santa Fe County Commission. There appear to be some pressing political issues of great concern to Eldorado property owners and renters - - our roads being among them.  While we have made some important strides in getting attention and funding for our county-owned and maintained roads, we still have no comfort level that there is a solid plan in place for ensuring safe and reasonably smooth road surfaces on a constant basis. We only have to see tire ruts heading off a road onto a resident’s property, or a car stuck in the mud in the middle of a road’s driving lane to know our roads need some greater attention. We need the strongest candidate possible to represent our interests on the County Commission. Hopefully you will become well informed about each candidate’s qualifications and express your feelings in this matter at the June 3 elections.  The County "Rocks": After this winter’s snow, rain, and mud, we had over 16 miles of dirt roads that were deemed in bad shape. Kudos to the County in promptly responding to our request to grade these and other roads and fill holes in several roads where the dirt meets pavement. The grader operators also did a terrific job in lowering the sides to prevent water runoff onto driving lanes, and in getting whatever remaining base course there was along the sides of the roads back onto the driving lanes. New rock was also put onto several of the worst cul-de-sac roads and onto short sections of through roads where there was only dirt (and large ruts). As of the writing of this column, the county has also received a list of intersections with downed street and hopefully will get to these once our spring winds have died down.

April, 2008:Volume matters…The Road Committee has begun deliberations on dirt roads where traffic volumes may warrant their being chip sealed to extend the useful life of the road surface on such roads. This is a process that is just in its beginning stages…. more on this in the coming months. Thanks go out to the many Eldoradoans who have sent in Road Problem Reports via the ECIA web site to help us identify problem areas. Since that function was established a year ago we’ve heard from 72 residents and have seen many of their reported problems rectified.

March, 2008: Thanks to Rep. Peter Wirth and the 2008 N.M. Legislature, we received another $99,000 for applying new base course to our dirt roads. This, hopefully, will cover another couple of miles. While the amount received is significantly less than requested, we were lucky to have received anything as many capital requests went unfilled due to the significantly lesser amounts available to this legislative session. We expect work to start later this year on the application of new base course funded in 2007 by the Legislature and Governor Richardson’s office. Hopefully, this will cover about 10 miles of our dirt roads. Your Road Committee has also completed our latest road inspection. And thanks to those of you who submitted Road Problem Reports identifying particular problem areas. The results of both were used to compile a list of roads with the greatest amount of rutting that can serve as a target list for the grader.     

February, 2008: Road Surfaces:  Having formally received authority from the State Dept. of Transportation, Santa Fe County is in the process of drawing up a Request for Bids to have a private contractor lay new base course on approximately 10 miles of our roads. Funding for this work came from the 2007 Legislature and Governor allocating a total of $675,000 earmarked for resurfacing some of our roads. The ECIA Board plans to go back to the 2008 legislature to request additional funding for base course. The County is also looking for funding to pave 6.4 miles of road previously identified in their long-range planning as being among the most heavily travelled and worst dirt roads in Eldorado. Herrada Road, Av. Amistad, Av. Buena Ventura, and Balsa Road are among these.

January, 2008: A partial loaf is better than no loaf…..As we live, and in some cases slog, through the 2007-2008 winter season, many of you have the opportunity to become deeply re-acquainted with your local mud hole…er, road. While it is easy to condemn the whole road as being unfit for human traversing, quite often it is just one small stretch of road that is the source of the expletives. We want to know about roads that are hazardous when muddy. But to increase the likelihood of remedial correction, it’s important to identify short segments that are the biggest culprits. It is more probable that the County will come out with a load of gravel to cover an individual spot problem area than to try to address an entire road. So a range of house numbers, or an estimate of length from a defined starting point in a defined direction will be helpful in getting some attention. Use the Road Problem Report form on the ECIA web site to report your “sticky situations”. 

Minutes of Past Committee Meetings: