TAC studied five options and Transportation Board recommended a different concept

As directed by the County Council, the "Technical Advisory Committee" (TAC) was supplemented by two new members, bringing it to about 20 members, including representatives of County Staff, LANL, NMDOT, and County residents. The TAC met about 5 times between October, 2011 and January, 2012. This group heard presentations by Ourston Roundabout Engineering and Parsons-Brinckerhoff and considered five options for NM502. Three are shown and briefly discussed here. Pros and cons of these options were presented to the Transportation Board its January 12, 2012 meeting.

I developed a short presentation for Transportation Board, but the public comment was set up in such a way that it could not be presented. This presentation was later emailed to the County Councilors.

After the January 12th meeting adjourned, Kyle Zimmerman, Los Alamos County's Traffic Engineer, informally presented sketches of what became known as the "Zimmerman Option". This option has one through-traffic lane in each direction, a roundabout at Trinity and Central, a 2-to-1-lane merge in the Eastbound direction after the roundabout, a median with turn bays, and two "traffic calming" deflectors at Tewa and Airport. The sketches he displayed are shown below, as obtained from the Los Alamos County Public Works Department. The roundabout option as discussed was a single-lane roundabout plus slip-lanes to enhance traffic flow.

At the January 19th Transportation Board meeting, after limited public comment and a little discussion, decided to recommend the "Zimmerman Option with roundabout" to the Council. The motion passed by a vote of 5 to 1. Affirmative votes were cast by Janie O'Rourke, Richard Dunn, Ronald Moses, Khalil Spencer, and Robert Weeks. Wayne Hardie voted, "No". Eugene Dougherty abstained as chairman.

The after-TAC, after-meeting presentation of the details of this option put the recommendation in a strange procedural limbo, so the concept was presented at the Council meeting by Anne Laurent, but no formal recommendation was made by the Transportation Board.