It’s only been a few weeks since voters overwhelmingly approved a 20-year continuation of the Regional Transportation Authority, but the City of Tucson is wasting no time.
Earlier this week, the Tucson City Council got an update on the post-election RTA and new projects on the horizon tied to RTA Next. This is in addition to all of the city-related projects carried over from the 2006 RTA election, like the Grant Road widening.
Don’t let the thought of seemingly permanently blocked lanes on your daily commute get you too bummed out — figuring out how to speed up construction was discussed at length by the council.
Heck, Councilman Paul Cunningham even suggested having two shifts a day to cut down on how long it takes to build a new road.
The city’s transportation director announced the creation of an “advanced delivery team” of engineers, planners and other transportation professionals that will look at key projects to identify challenges early in the process.
Issues with utility relocation, private property impacts and coordination with the railroad hampered some of the original RTA projects.
Here is a cheat sheet for planned road construction in the next year.
Sam Credio, the director of the city's transportation department, outlined a major project kicking off this year along Drexel Road.
As part of the first series of RTA NEXT projects, the Drexel Bridge Project will build a two-lane bridge over the Santa Cruz River extending Drexel Road from Midvale Park Road to Calle Santa Cruz.
Included in the new construction will be sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and improved street lighting, he said.
A second related project on Drexel Road between Mission and Midvale Park Roads is also expected to break ground in the next year.
Councilwoman Miranda Schubert pushed for answers on how the new construction would make streets safer, noting pedestrian fatalities in Tucson are up by 183% over this time last year.
“With this new process, with a new executive director, I'm really interested in looking for ways to bake safety and our complete streets policy into these projects,” Schubert said. “Every day the Ward 6 office is contacted by people who are asking what we're doing to make our streets safer.”
Staff are expected to address her questions at a council meeting next month.
City officials are discussing intersection hardening, narrowing streets, and a multi-prong approach to address a spike in street racing.
Midvale Park will see a new two-lane bridge near Pima Community College’s Desert Vista Campus.
Credio also touched on “Project 51” where the city of Tucson expects to spend $2.15 million annually on safety and security for the regional transit system — i.e. Sun Tran — with funding from the RTA.
“Just to give you a little bit of what you can expect in that plan, we will have elements including a Transit Ambassador program, additional special duty police officers, physical improvements at bus stops, as well as technology upgrades to name a few,” Credio said.
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, who has served on the RTA Board since becoming mayor in 2019, said there has been a change inside the RTA since the appointment of former Tucson City Manager Mike Ortega to run the organization.
“I really am so happy that it's a bit of a new day at the PAG RTA with the executive director really kind of re-envisioning how to work not just with the city of Tucson, but with all of the jurisdictions,” Romero said.
Tucson City Manager Tim Thomure — once Ortega’s deputy — said Ortega’s tenure has cleared a logjam in terms of road projects.
“We had a number of projects that were on the cusp of going to the next stage that were stalled for months or even years, and within the first two months, the new executive director cleared all those hurdles out of the way,” Thomure said.
Romero conceded that unnecessary delays in certain projects have led to a minefield of unconnected, half-finished road construction projects throughout the city.
“Some of the things that I hear, besides we need to fix our roads, is when is this construction going to be over?” Romero told her colleagues. “And usually I tell them the dust and the movement and the construction is a sign of progress, but we also have to be realistic in terms of what construction does to people's commutes.”
Cunningham asked why the city couldn’t ask contractors to work late (although we suspect the city would have to change its noise ordinance to accommodate the extended shifts).
“If you guys want to do things lightning fast and want to do a 6 to 2 shift and a 2 to 10 shift and run 10 shifts a week, you should do that. And I don't think that's asking too much of different contractors and different folks to expedite the progress on some of these projects,” he said.
Westsiders, including Mayor Regina Romero, are anxious for the city to get started on Silverbell Road improvements.
Romero said she takes a special interest in planned projects along SIlverbell Road, noting she lives on the city’s west side, along with Thomure and Ortega.
“I know that I’ve been publicly begging Sam Credio to fix Silver Bell Road. Tim Thomure has done the same thing, by the way. And Michael Ortega. We're all Westsiders,” said said.
During the meeting, Romero said she wanted to continue some of the pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements along Silverbell just like the city had done with other projects, layering city funds with RTA dollars.
Another update on the RTA projects is expected on June 23 after the next RTA governing board meeting.
Over the last year, Joe has been building up his chops covering protests, which have flourished since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
He’s covered protests at Reid Park, downtown Tucson, in front of the Tesla dealership and in front of an ICE temporary detention center.
That last one is where Karla Toledo is being held. Activists gathered in front of the detention center on Monday, and Joe noticed a lot of Tucson Police Department officers. So he asked why roughly 10 cops were needed to protect a secured building topped with razor wire (and armed agents inside) and why peaceful protests like the ones in front of the Telsa dealership barely had a presence.
“TPD responded to protest activity at DHS’ Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) building yesterday afternoon with orders to preserve people’s right to protest, protect property, and to deescalate as needed,” a city spokesperson told us.
More officers were needed in part due to the arrival of Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, as well as a representative of the Mexican consulate who came to visit Toledo, the spokesperson said.
In June of last year, a handful of protesters violently clashed with private security guards at the site, leading to several arrests.
We’re told that city officials are reviewing their response to the protest on Monday and will “make any procedural changes necessary to ensure safety and individual rights during ICE related activities.”
Toledo has been been moved to the Eloy Detention Center and ICE announced earlier this week plans to deport her.
She expected to be released today, her attorney Mo Goldman told us. Her release is tied to securing a $1,500 bond on Thursday.
Did she throw a hoagie at them?: Immigration was top of mind this week in Tucson as ICE agents claimed Karla Toledo assaulted them when they detained her at her Tucson home, a claim that her lawyer called “pure fiction,” the Tucson Sentinel’s Mia Kortright reports. Toledo is a DACA recipient whose arrest has become a local flashpoint as the Trump administration rolls on with its mass deportation program. A video shows ICE agents rushing through Toledo’s front door, followed by a woman’s voice pleading “please, no!” and asking for the agents to “show me the warrant,” while an agent says “don’t touch me.” A word to the wise, judges across the country routinely throw out assault cases brought by ICE agents and other federal officers, which often are based on flimsy evidence, including a former Department of Justice employee who threw a sandwich at a federal agent in Washington, D.C. last August.
See something, say something: University of Arizona officials told faculty and staff to call UA police if non-university law enforcement officers show up on campus, the Arizona Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. UA officials didn’t explicitly mention ICE in the announcement, but the questions from the Faculty Senate were all about ICE. UA police officials said they didn’t expect professors to assess warrants or physically block a law enforcement officer from entering a building.
Would that apply to Tucson?: New Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told airline executives last week that he might reduce customs agents at airports in cities he believes have sanctuary city policies, per Nick Miroff at the Atlantic. Mullin pitched the idea, which would cripple tourism and business travel, as a way to force cities to cooperate with ICE during a Fox News interview in April and officials say he is moving ahead with the plan.
Your next money manager: In non-immigration news, the battle for the GOP nomination for Arizona State Treasurer is between Elijah Norton, the founder of a company that sells extended warranties on vehicles, and Katherine Haley, the owner of an investment advisory firm, per Capitol scribe Howie Fischer. The pair faced off on Tuesday as they debated who should handle the state’s $32 billion in investments.
Further underground: Tucson police say they’re seeing far fewer social media posts leading up to street racing incidents, which is making the citywide crackdown harder, Nick Rommel reports for Arizona Public Media. Until recently, police officers could scan social media accounts and figure out when and where street racing would occur. But after the death of a 3-year-old girl, street racing organizers appear to have turned to private communication networks.
If you think things are tense at Pima County Board of Supervisors meetings as the supervisors try to oust Sheriff Chris Nanos, check out the lunacy in Maricopa County.
Recorder Justin Heap, a champion of the MAGA crowd, has been butting heads with the (mostly Republican) supervisors over who oversees elections.
Yesterday, the supervisors voted to use ballot drop boxes — oh, horror of horrors — and Heap said election workers could face felony prosecutions for “ballot harvesting.”
That prompted Republican Supervisor Thomas Galvin to deliver an emotional speech that might be a little cathartic for people who are trying to deal with the madness of Trump 2.0.
“We are stuck in this hamster wheel of the 2020 election. That is the basis of it. Over and over and over again. And someone has to call out the Recorder and say ‘cut it out,’” Galvin said, before saying if anyone tries to arrest election workers “the four of us will be the first ones to step in front of them and say ‘take us.’”