City of Sedona staff will update City Council on the status of the Sedona in Motion transportation program on Wednesday, April 25, and are building an online information dashboard for the projects that is currently being beta-tested.

“You’ll be able to look at different areas and locations and based upon how our SIM projects come online, you’ll see how the traffic times will change,” Director of Public Works Kurt Harris said, adding that outreach on the dashboard will launch sometime after the presentation to council.

The nearly $5 million SIM-01B Uptown Northbound Improvement project along SR 89A was intended to streamline northbound travel by forcing motorists to pick a lane sooner.

Harris said the project is “in substantial completion,” although further work is on hold until June, when additional landscaping and hardware and software updates for the traffic lights at the intersection of SR 89A and Forest Road will be done.

“We’re going to mill and fill, remove all the distressed pavement in the northbound lanes through Uptown,” Harris said. “We hope to have some leftover money to do spot repair in the southbound lanes and then restripe everything.”

Residents and businesses in Uptown can anticipate crews will be working at night during the month of June in order for the project to be completed before the end of the fiscal year and to provide the “correct temperatures” for the asphalt to be installed.

“That’s [also] in order to not impact their businesses [during] the day,” Harris said. “[And] because [that] is the lowest period of visitation in Uptown.”

The construction of the northbound SR 89A improvements included the removal of interpretive signage to accommodate the new shared use path along with a new welded tube fence. A committee of local businesses and the city has been formed to develop new signage along the path.

“What’s really fun about this is there’s the ability for more signage, and the potential for more variety,” Sedona Heritage Museum Executive Director Nate Meyers said. “We can have anywhere from 11 to 33 panels of various sizes.” There is no timeline for the completion of the signage project. “That handrail is going to be there for a while, we’re probably going to readdress that with another project,” Harris said.

Uptown Garage 

Following approval by city council on Nov. 15 for city staff to proceed with design for the proposed Uptown parking garage, the Public Works Department has been working on a price for the project. City staff’s current price holder estimate is $25,999,668.

Total estimated cost was over $18 million in November 2022 and $11.5 million in June 2020.

Harris said he anticipates the Uptown garage will go before the City Council in mid-May. The Planning and Zoning Commission approved the garage’s design during its March 19 meeting. The proposed garage and the Forest Road connection “are really joined at the hip,” Harris said, because space is limited for staging heavy equipment for the garage.

“[And] we don’t want to close down Forest Road [for] doing construction from the garage,” Harris said. “We’d like to time these two so the least amount of impact to the citizens and visitors.”

The completion of the Forest Road extension is still at least a year away and Harris said that asphalt is not anticipated to be laid down until the fall or early winter of 2025.