Earlier this year, the county council unanimously adopted a distracted driving ordinance, which would fine drivers $200 for using their cellphone while driving.

In the four months since, 11 people have received warnings under the ordinance and one has received a citation, according to Los Alamos Police Department’s records division.

But police Cmdr. Chris Ross acknowledged it’s difficult to enforce distracted driving laws on major corridors due to the high speeds, so the focus on the main arteries is typically on speed enforcement.

He said the amount of bad driving has fluctuated over the past few months.

“It comes and goes,” Ross said. “When we really step up our enforcement efforts, we do see a decrease in the erratic driving and aggressive speeding.”

But that’s not always possible, as officers respond to other calls for service or tackle other duties, Ross said.

A growing lab and limited housing

Like two-thirds of LANL’s employees, lab director Thom Mason decided to live in Santa Fe rather than Los Alamos.

It was the result of a pinched housing market as he took the helm of the national laboratory: In 2024, the county estimated between 1,300 and 2,400 units of housing would have to be built in the next five years to address needs.

“At the time I moved here, it was pretty hard to find a house in Los Alamos,” Mason said. “Places would be listed in the morning and sold by noon.”

“And it’s still a pretty tight housing market in Los Alamos,” he added.

The lab has been growing, and many new employees are deciding, like Mason, to live somewhere else. In 2023, the lab hired 2,500 people — a historic staffing increase. The year after, traffic accidents in Los Alamos County shot up.

“Part of the challenge that’s sort of unique to us is that the lab has grown a lot, and the transportation infrastructure is sort of in catch-up mode,” Mason said.

In 2024, more than 4,100 of the lab’s approximately 18,000 workers lived in Santa Fe County, according to a recent economic impact study. In total, about 2 out of 3 employees commute.

But that doesn’t mean they feel safe on their drive to work. A 2024 employee safety perception survey found a major concern of employees was the commute.

Driving from Santa Fe to Los Alamos National Laboratory means crossing several jurisdictions, and the lab isn’t in the business of writing tickets, paving roads or building housing. But when it comes to driving on campus or using government vehicles, it’s a different story, Mason said. 

The vehicles, which typically remain on campus but are sometimes used by employees to visit vendors or attend off-site meetings, were already equipped with GPS monitoring to track use and mileage.

In March 2024, the lab started monitoring other metrics: speed and seat belt use.

That month, the vehicles tracked more than 100,000 violations, according to records obtained by The New Mexican, although lab officials said the number of seat belt violations — which made up the vast majority of the violations — is likely overstated due to the sensitivity of the system.

In March 2024, more than 7,800 people were caught speeding more than 10 mph over the posted limit. Twelve percent of the speeding violations that month, more than 900 total, were for drivers going more than 20 mph over.

But the number of violations has dropped steadily and dramatically since then.

In March 2025, the total number of violations was less than half what it was the year before, and there were hundreds, rather than thousands, of speeding violations. Just 30 people were caught going more than 20 mph over the posted speed limit that month.

In 2024, LANL employees made more than 600 reports about traffic and pedestrian safety, according to records obtained by The New Mexican. About 175 of those reports were passed onto the offender’s manager; two were referred to human resources.

Mason said some employees had been fired due to the severity of their offenses. A spokesperson for the lab confirmed that while total terminations could not provided, employees had been axed “in more than one instance” based on the driving data gathered by the government vehicles.

But that’s not the main goal, Mason said.

“We’re not on a mission to terminate or discipline a bunch of staff,” Mason said. “What we want is for people to slow down. … We’ve still got more work to do, but I think we’re making progress.”

Weekday commute

When Geoff Hayes drove up to the Jemez on a recent weekend, he noticed most drivers were following the speed limit.

The Santa Fe resident, who has been working at Los Alamos National Laboratory for the past two and a half years, said on a weekday the drive is a completely different experience.

“The speed, it’s just crazy,” Hayes said. “… People are cutting you off, people are swerving in and out of traffic, riding your butt, flipping you off if you’re in their way.”

Hayes, who moved from Washington state, said drivers often push 60 or 70 miles per hour on N.M. 502, far exceeding the posted limit on the winding mountain road.

Hayes said he wasn’t surprised by the data collected from the government vehicles, but between the speeding cameras and enforcement action taken against speeders, the problem isn’t as noticeable on campus.

“That’s on the lab property,” Hayes said. “From Santa Fe to the lab, it’s ridiculous. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

Hayes said he rarely sees police stopping people on the road and thinks it would help to have a more regular presence. He also recommended stripping employees of clearances if they’re found driving recklessly.

"If you have a Q clearance [equivalent to top secret] … you’re supposed to be held to a higher standard,” Hayes said. “You’re working around sensitive nuclear materials, but you’re driving 110 miles to work every day?”

He added, “Until there’s consequences, I don’t really think it’s going to change."

Lifelong Santa Fe resident Claire Martinez worked until recently for the post office in Los Alamos. When she worked the Saturday shift, the drive was a breeze, Martinez said. Same for early morning shifts, before the traffic hits.

But during the main commuting times, it’s a different story. Excessive speeds, drivers weaving in and out and tailgating are the norm.

“As soon as you get into the canyon, it’s NASCAR raceway,” Martinez said. “Everybody’s trying to get up there. I’ve seen people take that big curve at like 80 mph.”

Martinez, who was hoping to join the New Mexico State Police before injuring her tailbone, said she thinks speed cameras and more police on the road could help. She considered moving to Los Alamos to avoid the commute but couldn’t find a place within her budget.

But she had perspective on where Los Alamos drivers stacked up.

“Not as bad as Albuquerque,” Martinez said.

Besides monitoring the government vehicles and soliciting tips on traffic safety, the lab has been making some efforts to limit the number of people on the road every day.

Jay Faught started three years ago as the lab’s first-ever director of transportation and works to encourage staff to ditch the car keys and instead opt for the bus or bike.

Faught, a resident of Santa Fe, lives near the N.M. 599 Rail Runner station — a hub that offers bus connections to Los Alamos — and rides the bus to work. Commuter passes can be pricey, running at $60 per month from Española and $90 per month from Santa Fe.

The combined bus and rail pass from Albuquerque runs at $150 per month.

LANL also started offering two express buses, which pick up employees in San Felipe and Pojoaque. Over the past year, ridership for both buses increased 25%. Last month, the service had its highest ridership yet, Faught said.

The number of carpool groups, incentivized with prime parking permits, has tripled in the same time frame — 235 people total loaded up together for the daily commute — but the number still hasn’t cracked 100 groups.

Between the two programs, Faught said, almost 300 cars are taken off the road each day.

But it can be difficult spreading the message about the programs, Faught said, and there’s room to grow. His goal in the coming years is to take 1,800 cars off the road.

“It is challenging in Northern New Mexico,” Faught said. “People love their cars here. But I do think we’ve seen a great increase, especially over the last year.”

An independent report on the on-campus traffic situation, produced by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise assessments, agreed. The report found that while Triad, the contractor that runs the lab, had made driver and pedestrian safety a priority, and there had been some positive improvements, there were still weaknesses in other areas. People interviewed as part of the report identified “limitations” in the alternatives to driving and asked for more communication and incentives to give up their cars.

“However, LANL’s over 18,000-person campus, the geographical constraints, and the future demands of 24/7 operations will require continued Triad leadership focus and the allocation of adequate resources to various groups to sustain vehicle and pedestrian safety implementation, continuously strengthen the safety culture, and fully implement ... initiatives,” the report stated.

Community and commuter culture

Melissa Jacobs lives just a couple of miles away from Pojoaque Valley High School.

She works in Santa Fe but drives her teenage daughter to school on weekdays. The first bell is at 7:25 a.m., so Jacobs is crossing the road during one of the busiest commuting times.

Jacobs compares the drive to the video game Frogger. Parents frustrated with bumper-to-bumper traffic on the eastbound lane will flip U-turns to avoid the heavy traffic. Drivers often speed above the 55 mph limit, which Jacobs believes is too high near a school.

“We live in such a fast world, is my way of thinking,” Jacobs said. “Our computers are fast. Everything we do is so much faster than what we did 20 years ago, or even 30 years ago. There always seems to be this rush and this urgency in society."

It would be walking distance for her daughter. While Jacobs, who grew up walking or biking to school, would like her daughter to have that same freedom — and get yet another car off the road — she’s afraid to let her daughter cross N.M. 502.

Jacobs moved to Pojoaque from Santa Fe five years ago, and said she loves the warm and helpful nature of the community. But the culture shifts on the main road.

“If you’re pulled off the road with your hazards on, there’s at least four or five people that stop immediately and ask if you need help,” Jacobs said. “But once you get up on the main road, that whole philosophy of neighborliness and kindness and looking out for each other ... is gone.”

It’s not just speeding. Jacobs said drivers are often aggressive, tailgating and flashing their lights at slower drivers. Jacobs said she heard a student at the high school was followed into the school parking lot by a raging driver, who appeared to have a weapon.

The culture of N.M. 502 is one of a commuter road, Jacobs explained, with limited signs indicating drivers are passing by a school and a confusing mix of jurisdictions she feels lets bad driving go unchecked. She’d like to see a safety corridor established, with a lower speed limit, higher fines and more consistent police presence. In a perfect world, she said, she would like a traffic light or an over- or underpass to separate out the commuter traffic.

“People live here,” Jacobs said. “It’s not just a highway."

Published comments by Greg Mello:

A decent article, in its narrow scope. It was a long time coming, and it does not ask the tough questions that should be asked. That can now be the next step.

Like much in New Mexico, this article addresses the problem in a passive voice, relying in part on a person who (passively and in my view incompetently) created the problem to comment weakly about it. That would be Thom Mason, who accepted the massive pit production job knowing exactly what it would entail in terms of logistics and impacts. There is no accountability even suggested in this article for Triad, NNSA, or our congressional delegation, which overcame NNSA misgivings in 2017 to give LANL this job. In 2018, Mason and Kelly Beierschmidt could have, and should have, picked up the phone and told NNSA that hiring this many people to make pits, and working 24/7 in a cramped old facility to do it, was a bad and wasteful idea. And it is a bad idea, one which will come to tears overall, not just for the families of those injured and killed in traffic accidents.

This traffic congestion is a by-product of an explicit "economic development" strategy carried over the finish line by Martin Heinrich, Tom Udall, Ben Ray Lujan, and Michelle Lujan Grisham. So far, the editorial board of this newspaper has gone along with this strategy.

But now, on the foundation of this article, more dots can finally be connected. We have been researching and writing about this for years now (Bulletin 296: The troubled logistics of LANL pit production: how will LANL staff and contractors get to work?, Mar 26, 2022 and various subsequent briefings). It's been hard to write about because data is sparse or out of date. Most of the state's transportation bureaucracies have been unresponsive to requests, with the pleasant exception of Los Alamos County. Nobody in authority really wants to talk about the situation. Even the recent former head of NNSA, Jill Hruby, who was head-and-shoulders above her predecessor in experience and candor, couldn't acknowledge the full scope of the problem when we brought it up in a public conversation with her at the National Press Club last year.

The problem has been created by LANL and NNSA, but they shrug off responsibility as Mason does here. They don't own the roads. They just use them. The long and the short of it is that LANL has nothing but a succession of superficial and unrealistic plans and "visions" for improving safety on commuter roads.

In the lab's partial defense, there really is no good solution to this problem. Traffic congestion -- not just on commuter roads but also in Santa Fe -- is a significant "tax" placed on everyone else by the pork-barrel politics of New Mexico's congressional delegation that has not just quality-of-life implications but also economic ones. Think about it -- LANL commuters from Santa Fe, and LANL workers in Santa Fe itself, and their families if they have them, will also be driving in Santa Fe, as will the additional residents and workers needed to service them. Hundreds of commuters to LANL come from Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, and even Los Lunas. All this puts thousands of additional cars on not just main highways but also on Santa Fe streets.

As a senior congressional once auditor said to me, citing its irremediable access issues, divided mesas, and other geographical drawbacks, "LANL is the worst place in the country to make pits." We're finding that out.