Members of the Santa Fe Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) spent a substantial portion of their Jan. 13 meeting discussing safety and procedural questions stemming from the Galisteo Road redesign associated with the Zia Station development.

Resident and Candlelight Neighborhood Association President Aku Oppenheimer told the committee the intersection and roadway configuration “is maximally dangerous” for bicyclists and pedestrians and urged BPAC to have “some kind of voice to register for the record that mistakes are being made.” Oppenheimer said the redesign has eliminated a previously usable striped shoulder and placed cyclists into narrow travel lanes bounded by a raised median.

BPAC members asked staff to show the approved plan set and staff said the engineer of record is Bohannon Houston. Staff explained the segment was designed to the city’s sub-collector standard: nine-foot travel lanes, five-foot sidewalks and a three-foot raised median; under that classification there is no required bike lane. Member Judith Gabriel said that standard and the tight turning radii are safety concerns for residents who use the route daily.

Committee members who visited the site described a five-foot striped shoulder that becomes a landscaped buffer at the new curb and sidewalk, removing space cyclists had previously used. Margaret Marshall, a Candlelight neighborhood resident, said the realigned Galisteo “was done to accommodate the developer” and that the new configuration is not an improvement for multimodal access.

BPAC discussed process options: staff said private development projects often build public right-of-way improvements and that changes to an approved plan set would require concurrence of the engineer of record and action by land use staff or the planning commission. The committee agreed to organize a public field visit so members, staff and engineers could inspect the corridor together and determine whether BPAC should make a formal recommendation to the land use director.

Next steps: BPAC asked Member Judith Gabriel to coordinate the field trip with staff; staff advised the event may need a minimum three-day public notice if the full committee attends. If BPAC chooses to transmit a formal recommendation after the visit, staff said the land use director would be the first point of contact to advance any change to the approved plans.