BY GEORGIA STRICKFADEN
Los Alamos

Trinity Drive from the Hospital to Oppenheimer Drive is a residential street with multi-family housing on each side. Drivers needing to turn left in that stretch were in constant danger of being rear-ended when the street was 4-lanes because turning left required slowing or stopping in the left lane because there were no turn-bays or the middle turn lane we now have. The sidewalks were dangerous and miserable to walk along especially during snow and rain events as it was impossible not to get splashed by dirty road water. It was unsafe for the transit buses to stop for passengers, and bicyclists had ceased risking travel on Trinity. The road diet has been a very pleasant relief from the drag strip of 4-lanes.

True, the road diet has slowed rush hour traffic with the merging of traffic that normally would have taken Canyon Road. We know, though, that “this, too, shall end” by the end of the year. We certainly got spoiled by light traffic and cheap fuel in the past two years and now we seem to have forgotten how to ride the bus, ride our bikes to commute, or walk or adjust schedules.

It would help if LANL would get its internal transit going so that people who don’t work on South Mesa can get to other Lab sites by just transferring from the RTD blue bus, Park & Ride coaches, and Atomic City Transit, at the Transit Center. The commute times would be far less stressful and wasteful.

Los Alamos, let’s not retrograde by trying to fit those miserable 4-lanes in the residential part of Trinity Drive. Let’s keep the bike lanes and middle turn and pickup lane for those who live in that neighborhood as well as the service providers who work there. Let’s keep the traffic further away from the pedestrians.

Keep the road diet in place! We’ll live, and be better for it.

Georgia Strickfaden