The quality of life in Los Alamos seems to be declining. Too much traffic take forever to get to work whether driving or riding the bus, grocery shelves sometimes empty, prices too high for bad quality products, no housing available,constant blackouts, etc. The lab should be more straightforward with new employees and let them know the town is full.
14 comments:
This has been mentioned before but yes the quality of life at Los Alamos has really been in steep decline in recent times. Beyond the issues you have raised there are several others. (1) The drivers are much more aggressive now, there seems to be report after report of increases road rage. (2) The intellectual vibrancy of the town is declining. (3) things like medical care and getting appointments is getting harder and harder. (4) More stores are closing or the stores that remain open need to have reduced hours due to lack of workers.
There are several possibilities for this but I think think the big driver is that LANL is growing/converting to being a manufacturing lab. The lab is gong on about hiring 5000-6000 new people in recent times and needing to hire 1500 every year from now on. These are manufacturing jobs. This is a different kind of workforce than what LANL has before. This also means there are a wealth of high paying but not partially high skill job openings at LANL so people that would normally work at the supermarket can now get offers to work at LANL at 3-4 times more money leading less workers. Also LANL is the only game in town for Northern New Mexico. If you are high tech science type you have a wealth of offers across the US in tech. I know LANL is now losing top people to Google, Microsoft, startups, and other labs. This has always happened but is more happing more rapidly. Since as Tom Mason even said the priority is now PITs and manufacturing as such the town is going to change. I make no judgment on this as there are good arguments for PITS and good arguments for LANL doing it or being one of the labs that will do it. Right now LANL does not have a problem hiring the people they need to hire to do this. Perhaps they will have a hard time hiring top level STEM people but that is becoming a reduced part of the mission. In other words things are not going to change so if you have issue than you should think about leaving. Sorry to be rough but if you been paying attention to LANL/LLNL Blogs that past 10 years you would have known that this was going to happen.
First, why do random capitalization of "pits"?? That is a sign of lack of knowledge. Second, "Too much traffic take forever to get to work whether driving or riding the bus." You've got to be kidding. It takes, what from North Mesa? 10 minutes at most? Get a clue. Anywhere else in the country near such an important scientific facility would tale at least an hour. Stop griping and just move away if you can't stand what most would view as your good fortune.
Stop griping and just move away if you can't stand what most would view as your good fortune.
12/20/2022 6:57 PM
Yes I agree and that was one of my points.
Also it would appear you are the one with the lack of knowledge if you think it takes 10 minutes from Barranca or North Mesa to get to the lab during the rush hour. It is on the order of 30 mins or more some days and drive is now rather unpleasant with middle fingers, shacking fists 50 lane changes in per block and honking horns. However you capitalize or do not capitalize Pits, PIT or pits, the point that manufacturing and the large influx of the new work force needed for this is already and will continue to change the culture of the town. Again this was discussed for years on this and other blogs. The quality of life as we use to know Los Alamos has declined and most likely will continue to decline. On the other hand you are right that LANL still provides an outstanding job in terms of money if you intend to live in Northern New Mexico, however it is no longer competitive with other areas of the nation where high tech in demand workers works can get jobs and live.
You however are ultimately correct that if you do not like what the town is becoming and will continue to become leaving is the best choice. One could perhaps live in Santa Fe and arrange offsite work for some portion of time or the lab can set up Santa Fe campus but living in Los Alamos is not what it use to be.
I no longer live in Los Alamos, moved away about 4 years ago when my commute to the lab from North Community was about 4 minutes at 7:15 AM, but from your response, I assume you are an aggressive, angry driver.
"rom North Community was about 4 minutes at 7:15 AM"
Gotta call bs on this even at 1AM it it more like 10-15 mins. How fast are you driving? From middle of North Mesa that it already
like 5 miles and the speed limit is not 60.
But I guess I read it wrong and you mean North Community which is indeed right next to the lab.
Even North Community during rush hour by the high school it now takes a good 15 to 20 min, from North Mesa it would be about 15-20 min, Baranca 25-30 min, however on multiple days it has been much longer. It also depends on where you work at the lab. TA-55 you can get very long delays with wall to wall cars. This is top of the fact that during the summer there is simply no longer any parking, if you happen to have to come in at 9am. As for the aggressive driving I hate to say it but some of the new hires are much more aggressive, even in the parking lots I see some people going at high rates of speed. It is interesting that you mentioned 4 years ago which is about the time this started harping I should say more like 2 years ago and it directly ties in with large amount of hiring with about 4 to 5k more workers than 4 years ago, so you can be forgiven for not having a good grasp on the situation.
Look I get that you have people that have huge commutes through traffic all over the US like in LA, NYC, SF and so on, however 4-10 years ago Los Alamos did not have any issues like this and one advantage is that you really had no commute and calm drivers. Now you do have commute and aggressive drivers.
This is on top of the complete collapse of the supermarket, with huge lines, no workers, empty shelves and now no pharmacy. There is not enough doctors in town and appointments are going out 6 months or more and the turnover rate for any doctor, lawyer or professional is huge. Store after store is closing and the school system is getting weird, the latest super student of the district was put on administrative leave and is now gone, along with some school board members and it is all hush hush. Also we see to be having more blackouts than ever. Hell you cannot even find a place to park by the beer garden/pub anymore, by 4pm it is beyond packed with pickup trucks. Oddly enough the town had more restaurants, stores and services 30 years ago than now yet the place is much bigger.
If you are commuting at "rush hour by the high school," you are way late for work.
If you are commuting at "rush hour by the high school," you are way late for work.
12/22/2022 5:33 PM
????.....?????.....????
Rush hour at the high school is like 7.30 AM. LANL work starts at 8AM most places. So with these two facts I have to ask what are you talking about?? Seriously what does that even mean? 5 years ago you could leave at 7.45 AM be in at 8 AM. Now you have to leave at 7.15 to get in at 8 AM.
Can you please it least give some detail about what you think hight school rush hour is, what time is late for work and what time LANL starts for most people. The comments on this blog get pretty weird at times.
When I worked, I was at my desk at 7:30 am, as all my managers and employees expected, since meetings started at 8:00 am sharp.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
When I worked, I was at my desk at 7:30 am, as all my managers and employees expected, since meetings started at 8:00 am sharp.
12/23/2022 5:36 PM
It may depend on where you work but 8AM is when most people come in. Even if you try to come in 7.30AM the roads are now getting crazy by 7.0am. Again I get that this not like 2 hour commute in Seattle to, but it is just one more thing adding up to reduce the appeal of Los Alamos. This also happened fairly rapidly with the last 4 years or more clearly after the lab reopened after Covid. There is simply two many people for infrastructure, not enough workers for local business and the paradox that the town itself seems to be dying yet at the same time growing. I think for the last part they land or building owners are not going to leas out property for business since they think the lab is going to buy up the property for more space which is probably exactly what is going to happen. I would guess because of the pay you have plenty of people who will take the LANL jobs and just commute for ABQ, Santa Fe, and other places.
LANL will become like one of these mining towns in in the middle of nowhere, with few services, low quality of life, but high pay for a mostly non-high tech workforce.
LANL will become like one of these mining towns in in the middle of nowhere, with few services, low quality of life, but high pay for a mostly non-high tech workforce.
12/24/2022 8:42 AM
Yeah, that's been said since at least 1977, when I started at LANL. Every new generation thinks it has new ideas.
"Yeah, that's been said since at least 1977, when I started at LANL"
That not been said in 1977. Back in 1977 it was said that Los Alamos was a great science place and nice mountain town. Just out of curiosity why do you say this stuff, it is so counter to other peoples experience.
Los Alamos had a good reputation up to 2000, after Wen Ho Lee and fires things begin to change. Nanos was a big hit to the academic standing of the laboratory. After WHL and Nanos LANL saw a big exodus in terms of top talent and many had bad things to say about what the lab was becoming. With the contract change and Bechtel coming in there was further decay. In some ways things are better with TRIAD but the shift from a science lab to a manufacturing plant is going further change the town and the lab. Mason has been very clear that the lab priority is manufacturing. This means a lot more people but not new housing, it also means that the lab is going to buy up more space so all those lots where business could go are going to remain empty until the lab buys them. It means less people to do non-lab work jobs, it means bigger and bigger traffic jams in town and on the road going up and down. It means more stress on the power grid and so on.
I arrived in Los Alamos in 1977 and was appalled at how few products and services were available without going "off the hill" One place only to buy an appliance, very limited and expensive, no decent restaurants, only three bars (and all dive bars for alcoholics}, two gas stations owned by the same family, one crappy grocery store and one "supermarket" that wasn't, no car dealerships, one pharmacy owned by a crusty old cretin, etc.
It wasn't a happy experience for a new postdoc from the East Coast. It never got much better until I left in 2018.
12/28/2022 5:37 PM
The 1977 version sounds a bit better than 2022. We have some beer pubs but no bars that I know of, no car dealership, a very crappy grocery store, we are down to one pharmacy again. Maybe we have one decent restaurant ? Where does one buy appliances? I think that is also gone one the one furniture store closed. Even thought the population is growing the number of medical staff is now and waits for to see a doctor are gong 4 to 6 months.
And yes Los Alamos 2018 was much better than Los Alamos 2022, and it is remarkable how much worse it got in 4 years. My point is that you are still assuming LANL of 2017 or so is what it is now. That is simply not the case and it will only get worse.
Sorry to hear the quality of life dropping in town. I loved living in Los Alamos even if the lab drove me nuts.
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