Dec. 23, 2004

Vouching on Pajarito Road

Ironically, within just a couple of hours of the appearance in the Reader's Forum of my Dec. 15 letter requesting that un-badged bicyclists retain the privilege to ride on Pajarito Road over the holiday closure, a memo from Scott Gibbs was sent to LANL-ALL. One of the elements of the memo, LANL-ALL783, states that Pajarito Road will be permanently off-limits to un-badged bicyclists, walkers and joggers (hereafter shortened to 'cyclists').

My reading of the memo leads me to conclude that vouching, with or without photo ID, will not be allowed for cyclists; although, strangely, it will be allowed for car passengers -- photo ID required for those 18 years and older. Moreover, vouching for car passengers does not appear to be limited to immediate family members. (If vouching is allowed at all, such a restriction would seem to be eminently reasonable to me, though perhaps in some cases rather difficult to verify.)

I note without further elaboration that motorcycles with passengers do not appear to be addressed in the memo.

The logic at play here evades me: I may vouch for my teenage son, tween- and teenage daughters, and my wife while we are in a car, but may not vouch for even one of them if we are riding our bikes. (Keep in mind: same people, same DOE Q clearance prominently displayed on my arm, and slower vehicles with much less trunk space).

Hence, I respectfully submit the following, hopefully helpful suggestion to improve the consistency of the vouching policy: Either allow vouching for access to Pajarito Road, or do not. If the choice is made to allow vouching, please do not discriminate against non-motorized transportation. If the choice is made to restrict vouching, then simply eliminate it altogether; no LANL/DOE photo badge, no passage, period. (After all, as Shurette Riley correctly notes in her Dec. 16 letter to the Reader's Forum, "Pajarito Road is not the only route to Los Alamos; other alternatives exist.")

I suppose a credible "third way" would be to restrict vouching privileges to immediate family members only. In this case it would be necessary to define 'immediate'; and probably most expedient to introduce Laboratory-recognized ID cards akin to the military base IDs that I carried as a boy and young man, while my father was active-duty and later CMSgt-retired in the United States Air Force.

My suspicion is that there are a few other cyclists/joggers/walkers out there in Lab-land who also are questioning the consistency of the nascent vouching policy for access to Pajarito Road, with particular attention to the relative risks associated with bad guys in trucks versus bad guys on bikes. (My further suspicion is that if the decision is made to eliminate vouching altogether, there will be more than a few people out there in Lab-land who will hate me for raising the issue. Alas.)

By the way, I fully agree that cyclists should have to stop at the security gates, just like anyone else; and, if so requested, remove their helmets and dark sunshades -- or cheap sunglasses! -- to verify identification against their DOE/Laboratory badges (or photo ID if vouching is allowed and the cyclist is over 18); and demonstrate as appropriate that any swellings around their midsection are in fact adipose and not nitrocellulose. (Forgive me, Editor, for I have rhymed.)

--Tommy Sewell