Avoid Driving Yourself Crazy This Month
by John Weckerle
Today, we would like to salute all the wonderfully astute and proactive folks involved with the westbound lane closures on I-40 between Tijeras and Carnuel. We had to travel to the Albuquerque airport yesterday to meet a flight. Just after we passed the Tijeras exit, we saw a sign that said “Road Work 1 1/2 miles.” Shortly thereafter, traffic slowed to a crawl, and a little later, we saw a sign that said “Left Two Lanes Closed Ahead.” After more than 30 minutes, we passed through and, fortunately, made it in time to pick up our returning resident.
As it turns out, we had to make a trip to the emergency room (everything’s fine) a little later in the afternoon, and only the fact that we had passed through before prevented this from becoming a real mess. As we passed by on Route 66, we couldn’t help noticing all the trucks and cars crawling through, as we had done earlier, pumping unnecessary carbon dioxide and other lovely compounds into the local airshed. So, to our dedicated public servants, we ask: “How about putting a sign BEFORE the Tijeras exit, so that people can seek an alternate route, especially if the trip is urgent?” We hardly consider this unreasonable, and neither do we think it a particularly brilliant or difficult concept.
As for the future state of affairs, NM Roads (which does not work in Firefox; for shame!) advises us:
Saturday 3/7 through Saturday 4/4 from 7:30am to 5:30pm weekends and from 9am to 5am weekdays (Qualcom)– I40 westbound at mile marker 170 (Carnuel) will have various lanes closed for bridge deck repair.
We recommend finding an alternate route during those times; that really was quite the tie-up yesterday. Happy driving!