Posted By Les Conklin on Sep 13, 2014

Replacement of Railing Blocking Illegal Access to Desert Near Jomax Road

By Les Conklin

You’ve probably noticed that most of the utility lines and poles have been buried along the Scottsdale’s Scenic Drive, but have you noticed the fresh coat of paint on the utility cabinets and street signal hardware? In addition, the city has recently installed some limited steel rail fencing to replace the old railroad tie and pipe rail fences at selected corners. The city is also working with Century Link to drop the last single phone cable that remains overhead.  This will also allow the removal of the poles now holding that cable.

The city is moving forward on Bond 2000 enhancements, but did experience a delay with agreements to trail alignments. Those needed to be firmed up so that the city would be sure to not be removing vegetation after planting.  Staff are still working on legal descriptions, but believe they have enough information to keep the project going.

Tim Conner, our primary contact with the city on this project, reports that he received some information the project’s manager, saying that the city “should receive a submittal that will include the landscape locations along with the utility screen locations the third week of the month.  After a quick review, we hope to begin installing the re-vegetation and screens starting in mid-October.”

Friends of the Scenic Drive Helps Maintain and Enhance Scottsdale’s Scenic Drive.

City staff determined that some areas didn’t make sense for utility screens due to their size (extremely large).  Some of the utilities (APS for example) required such large clear zones between screens and their cabinets, that it just made more sense to only paint the cabinets. The city will work to also incorporate landscape around those cabinets to help reduce visibility.  The landscape architect was also experimenting with using front screens with landscape at the ends as an alternate to installing three sided cabinet screens.

Tim also reports, “Regarding trail construction. We have been unable to get easements from some of the property owners. This will limit the amount of trail we can build now. We should be able to complete trail from Jomax to Dynamite as well as some other smaller sections that should connect most of the existing trail to the north. Our Transportation Planning department will be working in the future to complete all segments on the east side of Scottsdale over the next few years. They should have funding to carry the completion out.  We are continuing to enhance all of the intersections with landscape, as well as a few other features (seat walls, rail fence) at a couple of the intersections.”

Finally, the city has its internal engineering team working on two intersections due to their complexity. The two intersections are at Ashler Hills and Dixileta. Final completion of those intersections may lag slightly behind the others being planned by the city’s consultants.

Repainted Roadside Small Utility Cabinet Cover. There are many along Scenic Drive.

New Rail Fence on Jomax Road, Near Scenic Drive Exhibit Area, Blocks Illegal Access to Open Desert

Freshly Painted Utility Boxes Near Along Scenic Drive Near Dynamite Boulevard

Safety railings like this one at Scottsdale Road and Dynamite have been re-painted all along the Scenic Drive.