Albuquerque commuters will soon see a greener Westside Boulevard as the city begins an eight-week project to add landscaped medians along about one mile of the major West Side thoroughfare.
The Department of Municipal Development will install trees, shrubs and decorative stamped concrete elements along Westside Boulevard, building on the $10 million road widening project completed in March 2023 that expanded the route from two to four lanes.
“Westside Blvd. is one of the gateway roads into Albuquerque and it will now be one of the prettiest drives in the city,” said Mayor Tim Keller in a press release Tuesday. “We worked with the neighbors to design a road that met their needs, which includes more lights and bike lanes, showing that the West Side is always a priority.”
The 2023 improvements, which cost $10 million and took nearly two years to complete, increased the road’s capacity by more than 50 percent between Golf Course Road and NM-528, according to city records. The project added bike lanes, sidewalks and lighting to the critical connector between Albuquerque and Rio Rancho.
Neighborhoods around the area selected the plant and tree palette for the new medians at a recent public meeting. The landscaping project represents the latest in a series of West Side infrastructure improvements, following the city’s completion of median beautification projects on other major roads.
The city previously invested $1 million in West Central Avenue median upgrades and recently completed repaving work on Montaño from Guadalupe Trail to the Montaño bridge in June.
“We’ve been working across the West Side to improve roads and to make commutes shorter and smoother for Westside commuters,” said Jennifer Turner, director of the Department of Municipal Development. “We recently repaved Alameda and Montano, and we’re going to start work soon to improve the Paseo and Unser intersection.”
Turner was referring to what the city has called its “largest road project ever undertaken” – a multi-phase widening of both Paseo del Norte and Unser Boulevard designed to provide traffic relief for the growing West Side.
The Westside Boulevard median project will cause lane closures during the eight-week construction period. Drivers can check the city’s traffic barricade map for current closure information.
The landscaping continues Albuquerque’s broader beautification efforts, which have included adding decorative medians on roads, including Coors Boulevard and Alameda Boulevard. The city completed median landscaping on Alameda from I-25 to San Mateo Boulevard in January 2025.