On the Struggle Bus

3999. “If they don’t want to work for the City of Santa Fe at $18 an hour, they can go get a job today as a trucker at $27 an hour.”

The city’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year calls for a 3% raise for employees earning less than $100,000 per year, but Demella argues that doesn’t keep up with inflation.

And while the city has handed out incentives such as recruitment stipends to police officers, it hasn’t extended similar deals to entice more bus drivers even as other cities in New Mexico offer perks to attract new employees to their transit systems. Some are even considering how to provide housing for drivers to work in some of the state’s more expensive resort communities where bus service is key to service workers who sometimes face long commutes.

To Demella, this says city leaders just don’t care about bus service or the people who depend on it.

“This is not just limited to our transit division. This is impacting services across the city of Santa Fe. If they don’t impact people that Alan Webber considers his constituency, they get left to the wayside,” Demella says.

Several city bus routes stream through the transit center on Sheridan Street, along with buses from other transit services, yet not a single timetable or map anywhere at the station tells riders when buses are arriving or where those buses are going.

The downtown transit center sits in the heart of the city’s tourist district, wedged between popular museums and just a block from the Plaza, but first-time riders interested in hopping on a bus are on their own in figuring it out. Those turning to Google or Apple Maps may end up waiting a long time— the information on those apps is out of date and doesn’t reflect cuts in bus service over the last few years. The city provides up-todate information on the app RouteShout, but it can be slow and less intuitive. Moreover, the city doesn’t advertise this app at its bus stops. (Webber says the city is working on improving the Santa Fe Trails website. )

The lack of information provided by the bus system was one of the most common complaints among riders surveyed as part of the city’s multimodal transition plan (other top complaints included infrequent bus service and the poor condition of bus stops).

The only nod to informing riders at the transit hub comes from the North Central Regional Transit District, which runs several intercity bus routes with stops around Santa Fe—including at Sheridan Street.

The district has installed a tablet-sized computer display at its bus stop there, tell- ing riders in real time about the schedules of buses arriving at the hub.

It’s all part of an effort to make the district’s bus routes a more attractive alternative to driving while also better serving longtime riders.

“If your riders can’t get where they want to go when they want to get there, they’re not going to ride your service,” says Anthony Mortillaro, executive director of the NCRTD.

The district, like Santa Fe, has cut back its routes over the last few years and Mortillaro says hiring remains a struggle.

But the district has also seen some routes come bouncing back from the lows of the pandemic, too. For example, it has increased the frequency on the route from Santa Fe to Eldorado.

And the district runs a bus service from South Capitol Station through downtown up to Ski Santa Fe. During this last snowy winter, that route saw ridership surpass pre-pandemic levels at times, a reminder that even amid the car culture of Northern New Mexico, plenty of people are still looking for alternatives to driving—at least for some trips.

Passengers riding the full route save themselves an 18-mile drive each way and cut down on congestion along a road that can be tricky driving in the winter.

The district has some big plans, too.

On a recent visit and tour of its new maintenance facility in Española, Mortillaro outlines plans to electrify the system’s bus fleet. That will start next year with buses serving outlying communities, like Taos, where the district has been working on deals with local electric coops to get a decent price on energy.

Santa Fe’s multimodal transition plan dismisses the idea of electrifying the city’s bus fleet, ruling that it’s too expensive at this point. And Santa Fe’s buses already operate entirely on compressed natural gas—which, while still a fossil fuel, leads to fewer emissions from the fleet’s tailpipes. Still, city officials say the buses are meant to last about 14 years and about a half-dozen buses in the fleet are just past that age.

The Biden administration has prioritized pumping money into transit systems that want to electrify their fleets.

Mortillaro says now is the time to move.

“If you’re not out there applying to these programs, you’re going to miss out,” he says.

Meanwhile, the district’s long-term plan calls for running buses as frequently as every 15 minutes between Santa Fe and Española.

Walking around the district’s shiny new maintenance facility and glancing at the buses refashioned with sleek new livery provides an alternative view of how transit’s recovery from the pandemic might have played out for Santa Fe.

The district started operating in 2007, with gross receipts tax revenue from across Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Rio Arriba and Taos counties that fund rural and intercity transit services and help the state pay for the New Mexico Rail Runner Express trains.

In the ensuing 15 years, the district has gone on to take over the bus services in Taos and Española as well as stretch routes out to Farmington, Mora and Las Vegas. And the district provides some of the funding for Santa Fe’s city bus service.

About five years ago, the city and the district studied the possibility of the NCRTD taking over Santa Fe’s bus service altogether. Negotiations fell apart amid a host of unresolved questions about whether each side would really be better off. And some city councilors say Santa Fe is still best served by having its own bus system, with the responsiveness and flexibility that can come with that.

But if you’ve ever tried to figure out what time a bus might arrive at your bus stop, you may not be so sure.

Mortillaro adds that the district has a good working relationship with Santa Fe Trails. But he argues the district benefits from being able to focus on one thing—transit—rather than running a host of other services, the way a city does.

“I think it still is worth revisiting,” he says.

New Mexico Museum of Art expands to the Santa Fe Railyard District with an additional space for contemporary art, creating new avenues to make art available to everyone.

High Anxiety

There’s so much to say about the Center for Contemporary reopening, but nowhere near enough space. So, beyond extolling the ability to run your fingers over those velvet walls again—or the chance to hear cinema head honcho Paul Barnes address the returning audience—let’s stick to what’s screening: Vertigo features Alfred Hitchcock’s most compelling use of color and his Freudian undertones at their most overt. But looking past the onscreen doubling that drives the plot, Vertigo has become even more haunting as parallels to the director’s own obsessions with his icy blonde stars bubble to the surface. Don’t take that as a reason to avoid the film—instead, see it as an additional layer in its disturbing exploration of identity. (Siena Sofia Bergt)

CCA Closer Look Series: Vertigo

6 pm Thursday, May 11. $15

Center for Contemporary Arts

1050 Old Pecos Trail, (505) 216-0672

ART OPENING SAT/13

Ringmaster

Truthfully, we no longer totally buy the idea that outsider art is made by folks unsullied by establishment conventions. In the age of the internet, such firm distinctions feel a little iffy. But we can get behind art that’s simply driven by childlike delight, and that’s exactly what the circus-centric paintings and found object pieces in Tim Weldon’s new exhibit A Trip to the Fun House provide. Digging into the crumb-covered joy of childhood memorabilia, Weldon’s work captures both the excitement and nebulous grunginess of the carnival. And with contemporary-focused gallery Calliope’s co-owner Michael Lancaster’s personal connection as great-grandson of big top pioneer Charles Ringling, a satisfying spectacle seems guaranteed for all. (SSB)

Tim Weldon: A Trip to the Fun House: 4-6:30 pm Saturday, May 13. Free. Calliope 2876 Hwy. 14, Madrid, (505) 660-9169

MOTHERS’S DAY SUN/14

Sunday Mumday

We know Mother’s Day is a nonsense holiday concocted to sell cards, but bear with us. This is Santa Fe. You can ditch the schmaltzy purple platitudes and still celebrate the matriarchs and femme mentors in your life. Why not treat ‘em to one of four specialty menus—at Rio Chama Steakhouse, Terra Restaurant, Bishop’s Lodge and Palace Prime—cooked up for the occasion? Follow that up with arts-based bonding over a downtown tour from the History Museum or a Flamenco concert at Teatro Paraguas, then make a tangible keepsake at the suncatcher workshop from TLC Stained Glass. Too stuffy? Just head straight for the royalty at Jean Cocteau’s drag brunch. Go where thou wilt. (SSB)

Mother’s Day in Santa Fe: All day Sunday, May 14 Various times, locations and costs.

Visit sfreporter.com/cal for more info

Trailblazers

First-ever Studio Arts MFA class at the Institute of American Indian Arts graduates with Beyond Mastery dual exhibit

Though the idea sparked into the world sometime well before the pandemic, it wasn’t until 2021 that the Institute of American Indian Arts was able to kick off its first-ever Studio Arts MFA program. Now, as its inaugural cohort prepares to graduate, a pair of exhibitions at Turner Carroll offshoot CONTAINER and The Coe Center aim to show the world what they’ve got.

Part of the slow trudge to success for the Master of Fine Arts was the reality of the world during COVID; part of it was, according to Director of MFA in Studio Arts Mario Caro (Colombian Mestizo), assembling the type of professional artist mentors for the program who could strike envy into the hearts of any other arts students out there— artists such as Dakota Mace (Diné), Raven Chacon (Diné), Heidi K. Brandow (Diné and Kanaka Maoli), Ashley Holland (Cherokee Nation) and Charlene Teters (Spokane) among others.

“It was meant to be like a low residency,” Caro tells SFR. “The main part is that folks can remain in their communities, wherever they may be. A lot of our students are Native and moving away from home can be a disruptive thing, but this way they can still remain and they can still have mentors while they have other commitments.”

The first student cohort makes an impression. Take Joseph Seymour Jr. (Squaxin Island/Acoma Pueblo), whose focus on language regeneration through artistic pursuits highlights both a need and a movement. Or take Angelica Garcia, whose digital prints and video looping pay homage to family, roots and the women who came before. There are seven more artists where they came from, and the works proved so big that not one space could contain them all.

A graduating class’s show would normally be exhibited at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Caro explains, but “they plan out years ahead and that didn’t work out, and it was CONTAINER’s Tonya Turner Carroll who is the hero to immediately offer her space. Our artists... also developed large scale installations, and there was no way CONTAINER could contain all of them, so The Coe Center said we could use the project warehouse space— now we’re converting this raw warehouse into an exhibition space, and it’s working out very well.”

For those keeping score, that’s nine artists across two locations and a whole mess of phenomenal mentors. That makes Beyond Mastery sound beyond excellent. All that’s left is for the rest of us to check it out.

(Alex De Vore)

BEYOND MASTERY

4 pm Friday, May 12. Free. The Coe Center 1590 Pacheco St., (505) 983-6372

6 pm Friday, May 12. Free. CONTAINER 1226 Flagman Way, (505) 995-0012