Some guesses at the dollar impacts of LANL workers living in Santa Fe, now being paid by Santa Fe residents

August 26, 2026

Summary:

• An assumed one-minute average delay experienced by 1/3 of Santa Fe adults each day due to increased traffic from LANL workers and families residing in Santa Fe and their in-town travel and commuting would incur aggregate annual costs in the $6 million (M) range, or the $8 M range if traffic fatalities are included. This does not include increases in aggregate minor accidents and associated repair and medical costs, and insurance. It also does not account for any increased air pollution and any mental heath impacts due to traffic stress. Comparing these figures to those estimated by TRIP in January of this year for Santa Fe suggest our wild-ass guesses (WAGs) are not entirely unreasonable (see note below) 

• An assumed 3% increase in average housing rental cost attributable to LANL workers who rent would incur an annual cost increase of about $850 on renters, or about $13 M per year across the City. Note that LANL Director Thom Mason said ~2 years ago that 40% of all the new housing units built in the City of Santa Fe over the previous 5 years were occupied by LANL workers. 

• An assumed 3% increase in average housing purchase cost due to LANL workers who buy houses, plus an assumed 5% increase in maintenance and repair costs due to LANL-caused labor market distortion, would incur an annual cost increase of $835 for homeowners, or $22 M per year across the City. 

• The total housing cost increase across the City under these assumptions would be $35 M per year. 

• Adding the crudely estimated costs of traffic congestion to the crudely estimated increase in housing costs, the aggregate cost impact to City residents is very roughly $41 M per year, or $547 per resident per year. 

• This aggregate figure is sensitive to the guesstimated impact of LANL workers (staff + contractors + students) on housing markets, the housing impact comprises the greater portion of the out-of-pocket costs. 

In more detail:

Note re the TRIP estimates in comparison to ours 

TRIP estimates (p. 5) that the average Santa Fe driver loses 40 hours per year to congestion. We are using 1 minute/day (6 hours per year) for 1/3 of Santa Fe's adult population, which if all adults are drivers comes to an average of 2 hours/year averaged across all City drivers. In other words, our wild-ass estimate of aggregate LANL-caused traffic delays for Santa Fe drivers is 5% of what TRIP estimates for all traffic delays in Santa Fe. This seems reasonable. 

Our estimate of the average cost of LANL-caused delays per adult City resident (1/3 of $231 = $77 annually) is 11% of TRIP's average congestion cost per City driver. We used an average wage/salary in Santa Fe of $30/hour for the time spent in delays.  Our $8 added maintenance cost per hour of traffic delay came from...somewhere (I lost the source, for now. I think it is reasonable and the effect is small in any case.) 

Applying the same 5% ratio to TRIP's estimate for the cost of traffic fatalities (22 fatalities) in Santa Fe per year per adult ($581/year) to get the portion of fatalities attributable to LANL (~1 per year), we get $29/year per City adult or $2,178,750 overall. We did not include this in the table.