Property line surveys along Corrales Road in the business district are being completed now, and will be compared to property title reports to produce maps showing who owns what, according to N.M. Department of Transportation District 3 Engineer Tony Abbo.

 Abbo said December 8 he had spoken to the surveyor working along Corrales Road the day before. “He said he now has all of the title reports for the first segment we’re doing, and we will start the mapping process now that he has the ownership determined and the names of people he may need to contact.”

He said he expected the surveyed ownership maps to be ready in early January. Abbo said this fall the survey and title searches will be used to finally determine who owns the road shoulders, an uncertainty that has largely prevented highway officials’ cooperation with Corrales efforts to install pathways in the business district and “safe routes to schools.”

If the state highway department’s current survey work along Corrales Road doesn’t reveal that it owns more than a few feet either side of the pavement, the department may claim a wider right-of-way by prescriptive easement, he said.

Last month, Abbo, confirmed in a telephone interview what Village Councillor Sayre Gerhart reported at a Village Council meeting October 12: that Corrales Road should be completely rebuilt as part of a long-term plan, and that the department intends to claim property on either side of Corrales Road by historic use, even if it can’t prove it owns right-of-way along the shoulders.

“All we know now is that we own the road and maybe two or three feet outside the edge stripes,” Abbo said October 20. “That’s what the surveying that’s going on now will tell us. It will tell me where we can claim right-of-way by prescriptive easement.

“That would basically be the area between the fences on the east side of the road and the fence on the west side. That middle section would be ours.”

Abbo said the survey work would determine where the Department of Transportation already owns wider road shoulders and where the extra width would be claimed through Corrales business district.

Gerhart hailed Abbo’s plan as a major breakthrough for Corrales, especially its long-thwarted plans for a pathway along Corrales Road in the business district. (See Corrales Comment Vol.XXVIII, No. 15, September 19, 2009 “Pathways Project Funded; Agreement Signed for ‘Access ‘A“)

At the October 12 council meeting, Gerhart reported what she had learned from Abbo at the public meeting on the 2035 Metropolitan Transportation Plan. “He recommends that the Village of Corrales go ahead and have Corrales Road included in the 2035 plan for what they call a ‘total reconstruction.’

“That’s a huge change,” Gerhart explained. “Right now, all DOT ever does is re-pave the road. But clearly a total reconstruction would allow Corrales Road to be brought up to code.”

Gerhart reported Abbo also said at the public meeting that the department is already at work surveying property lines along Corrales Road. “He said DOT is actually doing a title survey of their ownership along the road. This amounts to a huge shift. For the first time, the Department of Transportation is moving beyond saying they only own between the stripes on the road.”

The end result, Gerhart said, is that the survey work would “remove the log jam of not knowing who owns the road shoulders that has prevented developing pathways along Corrales Road.

“It changes the whole DOT relationship with Corrales Road,” the councillor suggested.

Although the pathways project has had strong support among some council members and local organizations at various times, it has faltered repeatedly over right-of-way issues.

The State Transportation Department has in the past conceded it owns no shoulder width along Corrales Road that might be used for public pathways. It has been generally assumed that private property runs right up to the edge of the pavement, especially in the commercial area.

So pathways proponents have faced the prospect that Village officials would have to condemn private property along the sides of the road to gain space for the walkways, or to negotiate permission or easement from each property owner to use the land for a public purpose.

In 2004, a Village committee  sent out letters seeking cooperation from about 50 owners of property along Corrales Road that would be affected by the then-proposed pathway in the village’s central business district. (See Corrales Comment Vol.XXIII, No.4, April 10, 2004 “Property Owners Will Be Asked for Pathway Easement.”)

At a work-study session with the Village Council March 30, 2004, members of the now-reviving Scenic and Historic Byway Committee reported that surveying would be finished by the end of that week to determine whether adequate public right-of-way already exists along the shoulders of Corrales Road to accommodate in a pedestrian-cycling pathway.

At that stage, it looked like more than half of the proposed pathway would have to be on private property.

The path proposed back then was to have run mostly along the west side of Corrales Road from the now-closed Chevron station north to Rancho de Corrales restaurant.

Since funds to purchase easements for the pathway did not —and still do not— exist, committee members explained that property owners would be asked to donate easement for a strip of land so that their frontage along Corrales Road could have a walkway.

The pathways idea got its first public exposure in late 1997 as a component of a corridor management plan for Corrales Road as a “scenic and historic byway.” (See Corrales Comment Vol. XVI, No. 21, December 13, 1997 “Corrales Road Management Plan to Protect Scenic, Historic Look.”)

At a byways committee meeting the previous month a consensus developed that pathways should be implemented in the business district, particularly from Coronado to Dixon Road.

The pitch for pathways was made by Cyndie Tidwell, then Corrales Planning and Zoning administrator who again fills that position. “In responses that have come in over the last several years, including the highway department’s study for improvements to Highway 448,” Tidwell said in 1997, “people have indicated that it is important to them to be able to use alternate means of transportation to get around the village… they want to be able to walk or bike where they need to go.”