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Paseo del Norte reopened to traffic this morning after workers spent much of the weekend repairing a broken water main beneath the pavement.

Now the agency in charge of the water main is considering whether to shut down the 24-year-old pipe and build a new main alongside the busy east-west corridor.

Installing 2,500 feet of new pipe from Jefferson Street Northeast to the North Diversion Channel was expected to cost about $750,000, said David Morris, spokesman for the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority.

The water authority plans to investigate the feasibility of installing a new water main to replace the pipe that cracked Saturday.

The break caused a sinkhole under Paseo del Norte between Jefferson and Second Street Northwest and closed the busy thoroughfare over the Rio Grande for two days. Crews completed repairs late Monday and reopened the road to traffic this morning.

The 12-inch-diameter, concrete-covered metal pipe was installed directly under Paseo del Norte in 1984, Morris said.

Over time the pipe, which was considered middle-age by Albuquerque standards, had corroded and cracked. There are 150 miles of the same type of pipe under the city, about 6 percent of the water authority's water mains, Morris said.

"We're hopeful that it (corrosion) is isolated to this one spot," Morris said. "Obviously, we don't want a repeat of this incident, but unfortunately it would be impossible to tell without excavating the whole road."

As a result of this weekend's leak, the authority is considering a feasibility study on retiring the line and building another "that is not right underneath the road," Morris said.

While the authority looks in to the possibility that more of the pipeline under Paseo is corroded and susceptible to similar problems, engineers working on the reconstruction aren't too concerned, Morris said.

"I'm not getting the impression that engineers are fearful of an imminent collapse in this area," he said. "But given this problem, it's probably a good idea to look at alternatives."

The pipe was not part of the San Juan-Chama Water Project to bring drinking water to the city.