We're told the project must go out to bid in September. This analogy is as unfortunate as it is absurd. The frontage roads are needed to provide arterials to reduce the traffic flow into neighborhoods. Anyone who has watched the unending stream of semis roaring down I-40 on a Sunday in their mad rush to make it to L.A. should try to imagine where they will go under the new plan. Imagine Carlisle to Lomas and past the University for starters.
Landscaping is essential.
What visitors see as they drive through this great crossroads makes a profound statement about our city and our state. Albuquerqueans ponied up the money to rectify the absence of landscaping when they could no longer tolerate the piles of dirt and bare concrete slabs. Aesthetics are important unless you're a fan of the design philosophy embodied in the eastern European industrial look of the Stalinist 1950s. Earlier this week I invited Secretary Pete Rahn of the Highway Department and Lou Gallegos, the Governor's Chief of Staff, to a meeting in my office with City Councilors and County Commissioners in which our concerns were expressed. They told of us of the constraints they were under and of their firm resolve to make the project succeed.