After community criticism, the New Mexico Department of Transportation has agreed to fix the rumble strips on I-40 East. The NMDOT hosted a community meeting at the Village Hall of Tijeras last week to discuss the next phase of construction in the Tijeras Canyon.
The NMDOT will fix the rumble strips by moving them outward after receiving noise complaints and safety concerns from Tijeras Canyon residents. Kimberly Gallegos, NMDOT’s District 3 public information officer, said before the meeting last week that officials would explain the construction process to the community.
“They will go over the plan to go in with a machine that fills [the rumble strips], which will alleviate the noise and then they are going to repave over that as temperatures become warmer,” Gallegos said. “I think they said late April or early May because ultimately we want to do it at night, but we have to reach those temperatures in order to get that done. It could be late May or early June, but we’re going to try to get in there as soon as possible to get the noise component worked on first.”
The alert strips were implemented last year and placed directly on the pained line, rather than the standard 12 to 16 inches outside of the line. Residents contacted Rep. Stefani Lord (R-Sandia Park) about this issue, emailed NMDOT and submitted a petition with more than 250 signatures. Then, in March they hired Joseph Karnes, partner at Sommer Karnes & Associates, LLP, who wrote a letter to the department, resulting in NMDOT solving the issue.
At the meeting, officials presented a video that shows the process of filling in the rumble strips. View the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqlpJkap6JY.