The New Mexico Department of Transportation won’t keep up the so-called Singing Road on Route 66 east of Albuquerque because the agency has more-pressing matters, reported KOAT-TV in Albuquerque.
The singing road is a set of rumble strips on the edge of Route 66 just west of the Sandia Mountain village of Tijeras. When the strips are driven over at 45 mph, a motorist can hear the familiar chorus to “America the Beautiful.” It was created in fall 2014 as an experiment by National Geographic.
The melodic rumble strips still sound good, but Department of Transportation spokeswoman Melissa Dosher said they need maintenance within three years or so. So it’s likely it would need some sort of repair by the fall of 2017.
“We always said we’d provide the road but we wouldn’t spend any taxpayer money on this project because it was an experiment by National Geographic,” Dosher said. “We have roads in disrepair all over the state, and I think that would be money better spent fixing those roads.” […]
Many who enjoy the road agreed the song must eventually end unless someone else steps in to pay for repairs.
“It’s nice and all, but, like, maybe that money could be used somewhere else,” said James Tenorio.
National Geographic did not comment for KOAT’s story.
NMDOT restriped the area of the Singing Road in January after they wore off because of its popularity. The story about the singing road near the Duke City went viral shortly after it was reported, so thousands of motorists undoubtedly have tried it over the past year.
So the state agency will spend a little money on it, but repairing the rumble strips themselves apparently was deemed too pricey.
Since it is not going to be maintained then promotion of it through the state’s tourism websites should stopped. We are visitors to New Mexico from Pennsylvania. We drove 4 hours from Las Cruces to Tijeras for the sole reason of experiencing the Musical Highway on Route 66. When we got there we found that the rumble strips were unmarked and barely visible. There was no way to tell if your tires were on the strip or not and we ended up weaving back and forth trying to keep the tires on the strip. We had to turn around and do it 3 times before we were able to experience the full effect. Ironically, for a project that was intended to promote traffic safety it now causes driver distraction.