- Almost two years on, the effort is close to a recommendation on what to do
- The plan may well involve adding lanes and/or moving the freeway, ideas that have so far proved unpopular across the Greater Downtown/UNM area
- Two sides, two wildly different world views
— A Q&A GUIDE —
May 22, 2025
The marathon process of sorting out the options for straightening I-25 between roughly Lomas and Avenida César Chávez made its public debut nearly two years ago, but in a larger sense, we are only now near the end of the beginning. Following a blizzard of analysis, lots of poster boards illustrating different ways to position the freeway (and how to connect it to the surface streets), plus numerous public meetings, the New Mexico Department of Transportation and a consultancy called Horrocks are zeroing in on a “preferred alternative” plan for what to actually do. That’s due out this summer, though it won’t be finalized until the fall.
Even then, it won’t be close to the end of the matter. Should they ultimately decide to move toward a big groundbreaking, NMDOT will still have to raise (likely) hundreds of millions of dollars in an era when federal funding policy ranges from challenging to “anybody’s guess.” Actual construction would doubtless take a long time as well. Suffice it to say that it’s quite possible Greater Downtown’s conversation mills will still be dominated by S-curve talk for most, if not all, of what’s left of the 2020s.
But back in mid-2025, the issue is also evolving fast. As the state and its consultant ponder various alternatives, opposition to the project has congealed, grown, and worked up quite a head of steam.
Here’s a Q&A guide to where things stand:
What exactly is NMDOT considering at this point?
They are looking at a lot of things, including how to make “accommodations” for people who want to cross the corridor in something other than a car. But when it comes to the headline task of modifying the S-curve itself, they’re looking at two options: Alternative L and Alternative J. From a bird’s eye view (which you can see by clicking those links), the main trunk of I-25 looks roughly the same in both plans. A lane has been added in each direction, and the corridor has shifted significantly to the east between roughly Coal and César Chávez, thus straightening the double curve.
But the plumbing in and out of the freeway is quite different in the two options. J, for example, features a southbound on-ramp from Coal, while L does not. L also has an “advanced u-turn” – sometimes known as a “Texas turnaround” at Central. Zoom in and you’ll find still more differences.
What’s the status of demolishing homes?
That looks to be off the table. Some of the options considered earlier in this process would have straightened the curve by shifting I-25 into wide swaths of Huning Highland and South Broadway. The remaining two options would instead shift it east onto commercial property and a maintenance facility owned by APS. In both cases, the consultant is promising that it would result in “no residential relocations.”
So why is it still so controversial?
A whole host of reasons. First off, plenty of opponents are leery of the years of construction-related disruption an S-curve straightening project would likely entail. Others are still concerned about the land needed to make it happen: While the state promises not to demolish any homes, adding an extra lane in each direction could inch the freeway closer to residential areas. Plus, the plan calls for taking over commercial land to the east, which doesn’t sit well with everyone either.
Beyond that, opponents make a broader argument that the project fails on its own terms. One of the goals is to head off congestion in the coming years, but critics argue that induced demand – the well-documented phenomenon where new highway capacity attracts more traffic – will quickly return things to the status quo. Whether right away or by opening up possibilities for more development at the metro’s fringes years from now, the argument is essentially that you get what you pave for.
Safety is another main point of contention. Adding lanes – and therefore increasing the width of the corridor – won’t make the process of getting across any safer or more pleasant, the opponents argue. And while straightening out the S-curve might make the freeway itself look safer on paper, the critics say that the resulting combination of a straight-shot roadway and a higher posted speed limit (something the state has said is a possibility) will encourage people to drive faster. That, in turn, will make crashes more severe and more fatal, even if they are less frequent.
“Let’s think about humans and survivability,” Strong Towns President Brandi Thompson told a meeting last December.
So why is the DOT staying the course?
They start with their own arguments about safety – essentially that the S-curve as it stands today uses an outdated design that doesn’t jibe with modern best practices and adds up to a big crash hazard that’s only going to get worse. Not helping matters, they add, is the tangle of (sometimes quite short) on and off-ramps.
The DOT maintains that the crash numbers back up their concern: The area in question averages 173 per year. According to their models, that figure could rise to 296 annually by 2050 if nothing is done.
Capacity is another reason. Without more lanes, DOT expects the northbound morning commute from Rio Bravo to the Big I to stretch from today’s 5.3 minutes to just over 21 minutes in 2050.
As for the induced demand argument, officials don’t think it applies here because, at the end of the day, that new traffic would have to come from somewhere.
“Induced travel at the facility level will include traffic diverted from parallel routes,” said Summer Herrera, an NMDOT engineer. “This section of I-25 does not have sufficient routes parallel to it.”
As for the speed-and-safety question, Herrera said the department has done its modeling based on a manual published by an industry trade group and approved by the federal government.
“The detailed analysis considered roadway characteristics, including the curve geometry and speed,” she said. “The evaluation definitively concluded that the number and severity of crashes were significantly reduced with correction of the deficient curves compared to a no-build scenario.”
What does the opponent’s idea of a better I-25 look like?
Opponents are pretty well united against new lanes and moving the larger corridor (see above), but apart from that, they’re okay with targeted, surgical safety upgrades. Their vision also goes beyond just fixing the freeway itself: A top priority is making it much easier to cross I-25 without a car, whether that means better pedestrian, bike, or other non-vehicle connections. (In theory, this at least nudges toward a rare area of agreement with the DOT, but in practice, the opponents are suspicious of just how high a priority it ranks for the state.)
They also want to tackle the issue of speeding on the freeway by using a technology that seems to be getting results on city streets: speed cameras.
Finally, opponents argue that any real long-term solution needs to involve a lot of transit. Whether it’s new ART-style bus service in dedicated lanes, a vastly more frequent Rail Runner, or other options, the general goal is to give people more ways to get around – both up and down the I-25 corridor and throughout the city as a whole – without having to hurl themselves into the freeway congestion that opponents see as close to inevitable.
What does the DOT make of that?
They don’t see public transit as a realistic alternative to I-25 – at least not at the scale needed to address their worries about its capacity tapping out. Luke Smith, the DOT’s central region assistant manager, pointed to the Rail Runner’s relatively low ridership as evidence that it’s not up to the challenge, and argued that investing in it to the point where it might be could well cost more than fixing up the S-curve.
That said, the department hasn’t dismissed other ideas out of hand. Speed cameras are indeed on the table, Smith said, as is the idea of addressing I-25’s issues through a mix of smaller interventions rather than one big project.
“These elements are not necessarily a package,” he said.
It doesn’t seem like there’s much common ground to be found here
Correct, and that’s largely because the argument is about much more than one project on one stretch of freeway. The two sides are approaching this issue from completely different philosophical universes.
Opponents are essentially making the case that the dominant car-centric post World War II model of regional transportation – the one that took hold as Albuquerque was in a big suburban growth spurt – is fundamentally flawed. In their view, it prioritizes cars at the expense of safety, splits neighborhoods apart, and excludes people who can’t or don’t want to rely on cars all the time.
The relative popularity of nonmotorized transport in Greater Downtown and UNM area neighborhoods, which were largely planned out when streetcars and walking were the dominant forms of urban transport, likely goes a long way toward explaining the lack of local enthusiasm for the S-curve project. To its immediate residential neighbors, I-25 may often serve as a convenient transport link, but many also view it as something of an open wound – one that forces anybody walking the half-mile from the Imperial Motel to the 66 Diner to traverse a kind of no-man’s land filled with noise, vehicular danger, and pigeon poop.
Given all that, the argument when it comes to the S-curve is essentially that we’re in a hole and should therefore stop digging. But in the very long term, opponents would like to see a shift away from surface-level freeways cutting through Albuquerque, and are floating ideas like rerouting I-25 to the Westside or burying it under a kind of lid.
The DOT, on the other hand, is pretty well invested in the freeway system as it currently stands. They have specific chapter-and-verse goals about improving safety, ensuring travel time reliability, preparing for future demand, and replacing aging infrastructure – and they’re sticking to them. To be sure, one of those goals is to “accommodate nonmotorized transportation across the I-25 corridor,” as Herrera put it. But to opponents, that still sounds pretty car-centric.
Think of it as a clash of worldviews: One side is pursuing what they view as improvements to a system thousands of people use every day, having been ordered to do so by several generations of politicians at the federal and state levels. The other side views that as so much lipstick on a pig.
Traffic congestion is a good example of the intellectual loggerheads at play here. Reducing it is one of the DOT’s main goals, and they believe they’re representing a broad constituency and supporting regional economic growth by pursuing it.
Many opponents, however, aren’t generally that bothered by the prospect of congestion. They see it as an inevitable feature of urban freeways, not a bug. If anything, it helps make the case for alternatives like high-capacity transit, which can, in theory, move far more people per hour than the typical vehicle lane.
The contrast was neatly encapsulated recently at the Greater Albuquerque Active Transportation Committee in an exchange between Horrocks communications liaison Courtney Winans and Alex Applegate, a member of that committee.
“Commute times increase drastically without doing anything,” Winans said.
“Which is fine,” Applegate said.
We hear a lot about New Mexico having a stagnant population, and of course, the post-pandemic traffic volumes have been lower. How does the DOT figure I-25 is going to fill up anytime soon?
The state is basing its work on projections from the Mid-Region Council of Governments that show very modest but still steady growth across the region in the years to come, along with a corresponding bump in demand for I-25.
“It might seem contradictory given the recent observations since COVID of reduced volumes in some areas across the metro area,” said Nathan Masek, a transportation planner at MRCOG. “However, the long-range regional forecast to 2040 is showing a resumption in regional growth.”
Specifically for the S-curve section of I-25, Masek said demand is expected to increase by about 20,000 daily vehicles by 2040.
But those higher numbers tell only part of the story. The projections showing the morning commute from Rio Bravo to the Big I quadrupling in duration don’t assume that it is the result of a quadrupling of vehicles. Instead, they reflect how traffic flow deteriorates quickly once a freeway hits its limit.
“When volumes approach the roadway capacity, they become ‘unstable,’ and one slight blip will set forth a cascade of drastic slowdowns and congestion,” Masek said. “When a roadway is at or near capacity, that ‘blip’ could be a few additional vehicles that put it over capacity, or even a car parked on the shoulder with its flashers on.”
Who is likely to win in the end?
That is very much an open question. The opposition to the S-curve project might well be a minority of city residents, but they are organized, vocal, and highly motivated.
Opponents have rallied neighborhood groups (including EDo, Raynolds, South Broadway, and Huning Highlands) and civic organizations like Strong Towns under the group Rethink I-25, and have built a dedicated website to make their case. They’ve also been deliberate in their messaging, using the term “highway expansion” much more often than language about straightening S-curves. Earlier this year, they even organized a walking tour of I-25 crossings at Central and Lead to highlight how unpleasant – and dangerous – those routes are for anyone not in a car. There is no grassroots equivalent on the other side.
There are also some big X-factors to watch out for. You don’t have to get too far away from the S-curve before it drops out of public consciousness, but that could change if I-25 starts to experience the sort of cascading congestion Masek mentioned. It’s not hard to imagine, given the right conditions, frustrated commuters up and down the corridor contacting their legislators and the governor over the matter.
Federal funding is another wild card. The current administration has signaled it will prioritize transportation dollars for areas with growing populations and high birth rates – categories where New Mexico doesn’t exactly lead – which could complicate efforts to pay for it all (DAN, 3/4/25). The timeline is potentially so long that we could be in for several more rounds of surprises.
Or the timeline could be much shorter than expected. Transport planners doing studies have a certain professional obligation to immerse themselves in statutes, statistical models, and scientific analysis, and so they end up projecting an air of precision, momentum, and data-driven inevitability about their work. But in the end, freeways exist – or not – because of something much less predictable: politics. In this marathon, the DOT believes the process is grinding toward the end of the beginning. But opponents believe they have a shot at going over their heads and making it the beginning of the end.