With actual precipitation falling this morning from the sky in a part of the water cycle we in New Mexico had almost forgotten, it gives us a chance to, once again, point out how lousy the NM Roads website is:

Me and my weather/traffic nerd friends aren’t claiming that this pathetic excuse for a weather/traffic website is the #1 problem in the world today. It’s not even #100,000 in a world full of problems. Heck, it’s not even in the top 10 problems of the New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT).

Still, we gotta fix this thing.

Better Burque searched through some NMDOT budgets, but couldn’t find how much is spent maintaining the website. Looking at the site, one would guess the budget is somewhere in the tens of dollars annually. Maybe $30.

Compare NMRoads to:

• “CoTrip” in Colorado
• “AZ511” in Arizona
• “LB511” in Idaho
• The MDT site in Montana, or my personal favorite..
• WYDOT in Wyoming

See what I mean? The funniest thing about the NMRoads website is that it times your “account” out after about two minutes due to it being “suspended due to inactivity.” Of course, there’s no reason to have any “activity” on such a lame site, so you get timed out all the time, so to speak.

Yes, I know we’re a “poor state that doesn’t deserve to have ‘nice things.'” I’ve lived here 24 years now. I get the drill. And yes, there are tons of problems incoming governor X (X = Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham) will have to deal with, including more important transportation problems.

Still, we gotta fix this thing. Not before fixing early childhood education. Not before beginning to alter our dependence from oil & gas revenue to renewables and anything but oil & gas, but sometime fairly soon after 1/1/19.

Because until then every time any precipitation falls upon New Mexico, we will go to NMRoads, gaze upon its $30 look and paucity of information, and get timed out.

We can do better.