The Sedona International Film Festival ended last week and traffic on our roads was pretty well managed and rela­tively light for this time of year. There weren’t too many backups related to the festival and only delays heading into Uptown due to the lane realignment of State Route 89A from L’Auberge Lane through the Forest Road intersection.

Readers who avoid Uptown in general or due to the road work will be happy to know that the road portion of the project was finished on Tuesday, March 5. As of Wednesday, March 6, the barriers on the road have been removed and the realignment is largely finished. There is still some land­scaping work to do, but that is secondary to work flow. The asphalt is still rough and choppy, but the lanes are striped; hopefully the city will come back after spring break to lay a fresh coat.

That said, with the conclusion of the film festival, we get a week of normality before the first spring break tourists return and the associated traffic clogs State Route 179 from Poco Diablo and the Chapel area to the “Y” roundabout and down Cooks Hill from the Rolling Hills subdivision as far back as Airport Road. For the next several weekends — about six — we can expect traffic to back up well into West Sedona.

Most Arizona schools go on spring break next week, including the Sedona-Oak Creek School District, so we should see Arizona tourists from the Phoenix area making their annual pilgrimages north to Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon, the Verde Valley, Flagstaff and the Coconino Plateau.

As we warn residents every single spring, plan your travel times accordingly. Add an extra 20 to 40 minutes to your travel times depending on where you’re coming from and where you’re planning to go.

Keep in mind that the tourists’ digital devices place them on the state highways and major arterials, so if you know how to use the back roads through residential neighbor­hoods, take advantage of them, but drive carefully through your residential neighbors. Remember, Sedona residents like you live on these streets and they don’t want local drivers speeding or ignoring stop signs any more than you do on your street.

I know it can be tempting to scream, yell and throw things at other drivers, especially those tourists who don’t understand there is no need to stop before entering an empty roundabout — or to always turn right into a roundabout — and that the one can get far better photographs of our red rocks by pulling off the road, getting out of the car and taking slow aim instead of shooting from a moving vehicle. But tourists are, by and large, not paying attention to the things that we do because they are on vacation and have all the time in the world.

They’re not dealing with deadlines or getting to work on time, taking kids to events during spring break or arriving early for a doctor’s appointment. We have all been tourists before, but we sincerely hope that as residents of a tourist town, we are more courteous when in other communities then those who visit here are to us.

The Sedona Chamber of Commerce used to lead the effort to educate visitors — through destination marketing funds from the city of Sedona’s bed tax funding — about how to use trails, navigate traffic, be a responsible tourist, know where and when to drive, what time of day to avoid the busiest trails and trailheads, how to use the trailhead shuttle and so on, but since the divorce between the city and the chamber last year, those funds and those efforts are in the city’s wheelhouse now.

The chamber will do what its membership directs to attract the kinds of tourists who want to understand the rules and mores of our community before they arrive so they can be good visitors, but controlling general tourists on our roads is the city’s responsibility with no apparent outside assis­tance from a dedicated, massive marketing agency like the chamber. Phoenician tourists and others in Arizona up for the day generally don’t meticulously plan their visit based on the marketing materials, don’t check government websites for travel tips and don’t call ahead for advice. We’ll see this year how that plays out.

If traffic is really terrible this spring break, remember that it’s an election year and council candidates who want to get elected will be the ones most receptive to your calls and emails. Hopefully the winners will be ones with new ideas — e.g., suggestions for connectors or new roads — to alleviate our perennial problems.

Also note that the U.S. Forest Service has temporarily closed access to Cathedral Rock from Wednesday to Saturday through Saturday, April 13, which we reported on March 1, meaning that hikers who would usually go to one of Sedona’s most popular destinations will be on other trails, so plan your hiking accordingly.

Keep that in mind and remember to patronize your favorite retailers and restaurants now and throughout the year so they can stay in business until next spring break.

Be prepared for some really awful traffic over the next few months and some very idiotic drivers. Keep your cool and we’ll get through this like we have in this past. We’ll see you on the other side.

Christopher Fox Graham

Managing Editor