Travel Mapping
Highway Data Discussion => Updates to Highway Data => Solved Highway data updates => Topic started by: Duke87 on July 21, 2022, 12:50:23 am
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This route should be truncated to the parking area just south of NM179 on the grounds that the route south of there is permanently closed to the public, complete with locked gates and no trespassing signs at both ends so it's not even possible to legally hike or bike it. An argument could be made for keeping the short section that's still driveable at the south end as a separate route, though there are no signs for it down there.
Even though the route still exists on paper there is precedent for dropping sections that are permanently undriveable (e.g. CA 39 and 173)
If we insist on keeping it there should at least be points at the locked gates for the benefit of anyone who drove that far but could go no further.
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Why is (most of) the route permanently closed?
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Why is (most of) the route permanently closed?
The Elephant Butte Dam was closed to all traffic after 9/11 due to security theater concerns. However, it is apparently walkable on one day most years as part of some state park hike program.
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Are any signs even posted south of NM 179 (https://www.google.com/maps/@33.176156,-107.208632,3a,40.7y,88.64h,84.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sl-xpKdPBp1GF9ex7_hBbZQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)? Or should we end it there?
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^ NM 195's route designation, per NMDOT's Roadway Functional Class map (https://nmdot.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=f2fc877d107b4e338deb789f70a8779e), extends past NM 179, over the Elephant Butte Dam to end at NM 177.
2022 GMSV shows a junction sign at the north end of NM 179, that indicates NM 195 goes only north and not south of that junction. NMDOT route signage is so goofy (worst in the lower 48) that I don't really trust that junction sign. But the barricade Duke87 cites at the Dirt Dam Day Use area, which apparently been around at least since 2014 (per GMSV) and is only a few hundred feet south of the NM 179 junction, is more convincing end-of-route evidence, unless you count it as a hike-able route as US 89 notes (something I didn't do for CA 39 and CA 173, though at least the latter has advance End signage (http://www.alaskaroads.com/CA173-north-end(Lake-Arrowhead)_DSC2897.jpg)).
The disconnected NM 195 fragment south of Elephant Butte Dam, which also is blocked by a barricade per 2008 GMSV, appears from really ancient GMSV to be completely unsigned if you count it as a separate route, with a pair of signposts that might have once held a NM 195 marker.
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When I was there in 2018, I never would have guessed that traffic ever crossed it. View from the south end on October 14, 2018.
(https://www.teresco.org/pics/ccscrm-20181011-15/14/DSCF0205-800.jpg)
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Above changes now in the HB.