The city of Sedona held a virtual “listening and learning” session on topics related to the Sedona in Motion program on Dec. 7, during which city staff responded to public questions and concerns about circulation in Sedona.

Approximately 49 participants took part in the session. Initially, 38% expressed an interest in participating in a breakout group after the main session that would be focused on street issues, 25% were interested in biking and pedestrian issues and 38% were concerned with transit issues. About 23 participants, or 47%, ended up taking part in the transit group later in the session.

“The No. 1 message that we heard from the public [10 years ago] was, ‘fix traffic,’” said principal planner Cynthia Lovely in reviewing the history of the Sedona Community Plan, which is due to be updated in 2023.

“To address circulation challenges, we start with planning,” Sedona Public Works Director Andy Dickey said. “We have 24 plans completed since 1991. All those plans show us that yes, traffic is important.”

Too Challenging

According to Dickey, a number of the traffic improvements most often suggested or requested by Sedonans involve too many “challenges” to be practical.

“We hear that we need to pave Schnebly Hill Road,” Dickey said. “We found that the road being on Forest Service property requires a lot of extra challenges, environmental studies, and it would be a very costly effort … In 2018, we projected that the cost of that effort would be around $34 million.”

Only a short portion of the road is within city limits.

Dickey added that paving Schnebly Hill “would actually introduce additional traffic onto State Route 179.”

“Another thing that we hear is that we need a bypass of Uptown with a bridge over Oak Creek connecting to Schnebly Hill Road,” Dickey continued. “That includes a lot of the same challenges that I just talked about, and some of the environmental impacts would be much more significant, considering we would have to cross an impaired waterway.”

Dickey poured cold water on the idea of rebuilding Red Rock Crossing, which is outside city limits. “If you want them to do it within city limits, you’ve got significant environmental impacts that you would have to mitigate and go through the years of process that that would take,” he said. “You would have tens of millions of dollars for a bridge structure, land acquisition, consulting and studies. It comes down to, also, how feasible is it that someone would use that connection?”

Addressing the suggestion to transform all of Sedona into a gated community, Dickey commented, “It’s just not as easy as that. Those are state routes. They have to be open to the public.”

He explained the length of time required to implement city projects as being the cumulative result of needing to meet requirements for council approval, permitting, public outreach and procurement. In particular, Dickey called attention to the problems of inflation and contractors who are “overloaded with work and don’t really need to be competitive with their bidding.”

Integrated Vision

In place of these citizen suggestions, city staff offered an integrated vision — a term earlier defined by Lovely as “what you want the community to look like in the future” — of a “multimodal” Sedona transport network that city Engineering Supervisor Kurtis Harris compared to the hub-and-spoke road system of the Roman Empire.

Harris stressed the importance of attracting and developing responsible tourists in order to relieve Sedona’s traffic problems and make the SIM plan function as intended.

“If we can get people to get to the website, download apps, so when they come … they have a plan for where they’re going to park their car, and they’re going to leave their car, and they’re going to get out and use transit, because it’s far more effective and efficient for people to get around town on the transit system,” Harris told participants.

“We’re trying to get people to get out of their car and do another multi-modal access traffic to do exactly what the SIM plan’s about,” Harris continued. “If they can just get to their vehicle, leave it parked, that will reduce congestion.”

He proposed encouraging Phoenix visitors to rideshare and mentioned the possibility of keeping visitor parking out of town entirely.

“I’ve been in meetings where they’re talking about even having parking structures or whatever near I-17 at State Route 179, so they’re welcomed as they’re coming right off the freeway, or they’re using some type of mass transit at the freeway,” Harris said. “Then they can enter right there on 179 in the transit system.” Alternatively, the city would like to “eventually have that to where people can actually go to the Village of Oak Creek and park there and even get on transit to come into Sedona.”

As envisioned, the transit system will transport these visitors to the planned Ride Exchange off Brewer Road. “The Ride Exchange is going to provide the central multi-modal transportation exchange,” Harris explained. “Buses, transit, self-bikes, ebikes, other rideable features, scooters and also walkability. Uber, Lyft, microtransit.”

“There’ll be bathrooms, there’ll be a safe place, well-lit, restricted or planned vegetation, so it doesn’t bring in people who want to camp there or hide out,” Harris said. “There’ll be a small little park as well so people can hang out, have picnics or wait for others … it’ll be a park setting … [with] a small little amphitheater [for] small little music festivals.”

As the city of Sedona just acquired a 5,530-seat amphitheater on Dec. 8 with its purchase of the Sedona Cultural Park, the reason for constructing an amphitheater at a bus station was unclear.

The Ride Exchange will also include handicapped but not general parking, “because we’re really trying to reach out for the people who have physical challenges, visual challenges, so that they can enjoy Sedona as well,” Harris said.

“The big plan on Sedona’s transit is to not only link to other transit systems, but also to supplement and expand them,” Harris explained. He mentioned possible future connections to Cottonwood Area Transit, Yavapai-Apache Transit and the Flagstaff Mountain Line.

“You’d be able to take a bus from Flagstaff to [Fort Tuthill Community Park], get in a transit van and that would shuttle you down to the city of Sedona,” Harris suggested.

Harris also announced a modification to the city’s proposed $6 one-way fare structure for microtransit rides. “Trips originating and terminating at any of the city shuttle park-and-rides will be free to encourage [people] to use this microtransit service to connect to shuttles,” he said.

Accomplishments

Dickey spoke of the challenges involved in planning the State Route 179 underpass near Tlaquepaque.

“We’ve really jumped through a lot of hoops making stakeholders … getting them on board,” he said.

He confirmed that the underpass was “out to bid for construction,” and added that while the existing crosswalk will not initially be closed when the underpass is complete, the ADOT permit stipulates that it will have to be closed at some point to test travel times and determine whether it will be permanently closed.

“That crossing is in fact not the biggest contributor to congestion,” Dickey said. He stated that visitor traffic is the largest contributor to congestion in general, and that the Schnebly Hill roundabout is the greatest source of congestion on State Route 179.

Harris spoke on the trailhead shuttle. “Since the March 24 service launch, the system is transporting an average of 30 passengers per hour, which really rivals large urban transit systems,” he said.

Harris also renewed city staff’s commitment to the Uptown parking garage.

“We’re going to engage a consulting engineer that specializes in parking garages to review our studies and validate our plan to start that parking garage,” he said. “I guess the sticker price was a little bit too much for council, and for others … In the interim we’re planning to still develop a surface lot at that location.”

When asked if completed SIM projects have had the desired results, Dickey said, “Prior to completing the improvements in Uptown, we had a certain number of congestion events … [with] that trip from the trout farm to the Y being over 30 minutes, when a free-flow trip was only 7 minutes.

“We were able to reduce that from before the project to a point after the project was complete significantly — I believe it was something like 30 congested trips — that’s trips over 30 minutes, again — prior to the project, and it was down to about eight after the project was complete.”

Trailhead Closures

“The Cathedral [Rock] Trailhead and all that — those were restrictions put on from the Forest Service to the city of Sedona,” Harris said. “These options that you’re actually seeing were actually the city had no choice.”

While the Red Rock Ranger District did not begin to consider closure of the Cathedral Rock and Soldier Pass trailheads to parking until Oct. 20, 2021, and did not decide to close them until March 15, 2022, “in cooperation with the city of Sedona,” the city had proposed parking restrictions at Soldier Pass at least as early as April 4, 2019. The city received numerous complaints from nearby homeowners during 2021 urging trailhead closure.

“I would say it was a shared plan to consider closure of those trailheads,” Red Rock District Ranger Amy Tinderholt said.

Indeed, Harris had already indicated the city’s shared responsibility more accurately earlier in the session. “We will continue to work with the Forest Service and [Yavapai] County to implement additional parking restrictions on Dry Creek Road from the city limits to Boynton Pass Road by next spring,” he said.