Santa Fe Sheriff Greg Solano talks about speed humps:
One time in Eldorado I received numerous complaints over speeding in the area. The next day we had deputies giving tickets in the area and I drove up to see how it was going. I stopped to backup one of my deputies and after we approched the car I heard the ladies name and realized she had called me complaining the day before. She was furious as she recieved her citation.
The Sheriff goes on to explain why he dislikes the humps. Two excerpts:
The Sheriff’s office, Fire Department officials and others opposed the humps over the last year citing the problems they cause emergency response in the areas which have them. Officially I oppose humps for those reasons, personally I oppose humps for other reasons.
What makes speed humps effective ? The fact that they reduce the amount of traffic on a street in which they have been installed. People whether they commonly speed or not will avoid roads which have them. This causes side or nearby roads to have increased traffic usually causing the addition of traffic calming devices on these roads as well. It causes congestion on nearby roads by increasing the traffic on side roads and decreasing traffic on the roads with the humps.
And guess what? According to the Sheriff, speed humps decrease home values!
Santa Fe is a very nice town in which to spend a day-off. Especially in mid-February when the temperature is in the upper 50’s, the sky is cloudless and the air is so darn clean. Although the environment is spectacular, the town has become a bit of a parody of itself, which seems to be inevitable these days. As soon as a town establishes a distinct identity it doesn’t take long for commercial interests to move in and start capitalizing. As a result every second store in Santa Fe sells, Indian-ware, silver and turquoise and every other store sells South West “art” or furnishings. It looks like most of these stores are locally owned and run, which is a good thing, but it’s all a bit much. But as I said, it’s a great place for a quick visit; lots of good food, good coffee, good beer, good weather, beautiful scenery and a very welcoming citizenry.
Less than four years ago, Congress paid $101 million to buy an 89,000-acre ranch in northern New Mexico of such grandeur and scientific richness it’s been called the Yellowstone of the Southwest. The nation’s backpacking cognoscenti laced up their hiking boots in anticipation. Here, finally, was the chance to tramp across a landscape so iconic of the American West that it appeared for years in Marlboro Man ads and on Stetson hatboxes. 
(When a few “sneak peek” hikes were announced in September 2000, 50,000 people telephoned in one day to snare the 1,500 spots.) But the managers also needed time to digest the mandate Congress had handed them. The preserve is “an experiment in land management” that is run neither by the Forest Service nor the National Park Service but by a trust that is governed by presidential appointees. Valles Caldera is to remain a working ranch while also protecting the environment and accommodating hikers, hunters and other users. As if that wasn’t challenging enough, Congress asked the preserve to try to become financially self-sufficient by 2015, whether by charging fees for cattle grazing and recreation or perhaps even permitting some logging. It is a complex, at times contradictory charge and one that makes Valles Caldera a good symbol of the many issues the nation’s public lands grapple with today….
Some of the West’s great vistas thrust themselves on you with a beauty that is almost oppressive. Valles Caldera is not one of these places. Beyond the windshield, steamship clouds dragged their shadows across Valle Grande, a treeless, harvest-colored valley that ran to a horizon of ponderosa and green peaks. A bull elk lounged in the valley with his harem, his chandelier of a rack rising above the grama grass. This is not the awe-demanding West of Albert Bierstadt but the welcoming West of an Aaron Copland score – a big-hearted landscape, heroic, promising, completely American. Seeing it, you realize that you know Valles Caldera from billboards and ads and untold westerns. You feel at home. 