Cerrillos Corridor Assessment

Cerrillos is more than just a road. It is a corridor that impacts how we get around, how our economy functions, and is a representation of our culture and City aesthetics.

Many Santa Feans are frustrated - feeling like the Corridor is unsafe, congested, and lacking a sense of place. For the first time, the Cerrillos Corridor is now primarily owned and managed by the City of Santa Fe which represents a unique opportunity for improvement and evolution.

To best plan for the future, we need to critically look at the present. How does (or doesn't) Cerrillos Road serve the Santa Fe community? How can the road balance the needs for transportation, business, safety, housing, culture, and equity?

With this investigation into the status of the Cerrillos Road corridor, we are going to investigate how Cerrillos is functioning today through the lenses of design, safety, land use, social equity, community values, and transportation planning.

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Though the Cerrillos Corridor is more than just a road, the design of the roadway is important. Cerrillos Road has developed and evolved over time. Some parts are wide, some parts are fast, some parts are nicer to walk along, some parts have more access to businesses.

Roadway design affects safety, ease of transportation, access to businesses & services, and the surrounding quality of life.

Take a look at the areas below. Consider how Cerrillos Road functions (or fails) at different points depending on the roadway design?

Carrying 25,000 to 45,000 cars a day, Cerrillos Road is one of the most important transportation corridors in Santa Fe and provides space for buses, motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians. Balancing these different needs is difficult and sometimes creates conflicts.

Many people are frustrated about both traffic flow AND safety. Traffic flow, reliability and safety can be experienced much differently depending on whether people are driving, walking, biking or taking transit. Future design considerations will seek trade-offs depending on the desired values of the citizens and the City.  

Beyond the road itself, parking lots, drive-throughs, and other car-centric design in the corridor endanger Santa Feans as they run errands, drops kids off at school, or commute to work.

Dangerous design impacts drivers too - busy roads are congested and hard to navigate. Views are blocked and bad intersection design makes crashes more likely despite drivers' best efforts.

The below presentation highlights the concept 'dangerous by design' and how design can be reversed.

The Corridor isn't just a road - it is also a corridor that includes the surrounding housing, schools, businesses, and services.

Today, single family housing is the predominate use bordering Cerrillos Road. How could the corridor better provide for the future needs of Santa Feans?

This is an example of the projects found in the current MTP including Cerrillos. This engagement effort and the companion survey will inform future projects along the corridor.

 Santa Fe MPO website 

 2020-2045 Metropolitan Transportation Plan 

  Dangerous By Design  - explore this urban planning concept and nationwide statistics related to pedestrian fatalities

Roads and Streets are different in many ways.  Find out more about those differences here .

The City is undergoing a Land Development code update. The code delivers the land uses and their design adjacent to the corridor. Changes are critical to the future of Cerrillos.  Visit the website here. 

Learn more about the project partners, Albuquerque-based  Sites Southwest  and Santa Fe-based  Little Globe .