Anchorage Daily News
Published: December 21, 2005
The committee that oversees transportation projects in Anchorage on Tuesday ditched plans to extend the Coastal Trail south and postponed until at least 2010 Mayor Mark Begich's plan for easing congestion at the Lake Otis Parkway-Tudor Road intersection.
The five-member transportation policy committee did, however, include the freeway connection linking the Seward and Glenn highways as a priority in its new 20-year transportation plan, combining three separate elements into one $581 million project.
Begich was a lonely and frustrated voice for his priority trails and intersection projects during a meeting in City Hall on Tuesday afternoon. He warned that the city or the state may have to reimburse up to $3 million in federal funds already spent in planning for the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail extension if it is simply dropped now.
"The end result" of deleting the project, Begich argued, is a waste of that federal money and a $450,000 private contribution from the Rasmuson Foundation.
The other members of the AMATS policy committee, however, said the extension is too expensive, would suck federal funds away from other trails projects for years, and would require taking private property from homeowners on the route.
The AMATS acronym stands for Anchorage Metropolitan Area Transportation Solutions. The members of the policy committee are Begich, Assembly members Chris Birch and Debbie Ossiander and two state officials: Tom Chapple, air quality director for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and Gordon Keith, central region director for the state Department of Transportation.
Deleting the trail and dropping the priority for the Lake Otis-Tudor widening project were among dozens of amendments to the long-range plan recommended by an eight-member Assembly supermajority earlier this fall.
Birch, who represents South Anchorage, said building the trail south from Kincaid Park to Potter Marsh would adversely affect "many of my constituents." He and Ossiander, of Chugiak, said the trails money would be better spent on projects linking existing neighborhood trails.
"The Assembly voted to delete this because of concerns about the impact on taking property and the cost," Ossiander said, adding that the extension could take half of all available federal trails money for years. Keith said the extension could eat up all the trail money for 15 years.
Begich said he has worked hard to alleviate trail impacts on landowners and has reduced the number of affected properties from about 190 to fewer than 80. He said a mixture of other, nonfederal funding sources might be available
A section of the extension that loops along Dimond Boulevard is included and funded as part of a road project, for example, he said.
The extension has been looked at by city officials, off and on, since 1996. Begich said the latest round of planning and route selection is three to four months from completion, adding that, "if you throw out all that work ... what a waste of public resource. ... What a waste of taxpayers' money."
Begich also noted that the existing Coastal Trail from downtown to the Kincaid chalet faced stiff opposition from neighboring property owners when it was first considered in the 1980s. Since the northern section of the trail was built, however, it has grown immensely popular with landowners and the public, and property values along the trail have increased, he said.
"Today, it's one of our greatest assets," the mayor said.
Begich's proposal to add turn lanes at the Lake Otis-Tudor intersection fared little better. The committee voted 3-2 to accept the Assembly recommendation to delay it until Bragaw Street is connected to Abbott Loop Road and Dowling Road is extended east to hook up with that new Bragaw-Abbott traffic corridor.
Supporters of the Bragaw-to-Abbott and Dowling projects, including Keith, said they will do more to alleviate traffic conditions at Lake Otis and Tudor than Begich's plan to add turning lanes. Support for the delay was even stronger than the vote indicated; Keith later acknowledged he mistakenly cast his vote with Begich.
Chapple, the state air quality director, said traffic stalling at Lake Otis and Tudor exacerbates pollution and corresponding health problems for people with respiratory and cardiac conditions.
"It's hard for me to understand how turn lanes ... won't help air quality," he said.
He proposed, and the committee agreed, to revisit the intersection priority when the Bragaw extension is completed, which Keith said could be in 2007.
Anchorage voters approved $7 million in road bonds for work at the intersection, and Congressman Don Young also inserted money into the federal transportation bill that could be used for the project. Begich said the heavily traveled bottleneck also creates serious safety problems for pedestrians as well as drivers, and he later added that the city will continue to acquire right-of-way to widen the intersection.
"We're going to finish our design, we'll present it to the Assembly, and we will try to convince the Assembly to move forward," he said. Even if the project has been bumped down the AMATS priority list, Assembly members could ask to have it bumped back up again, he said.
Work on the first phase of the freeway-to-freeway link of the Seward and Glenn highways could begin next year, with a new interchange at Bragaw and the Glenn.
The overall plan calls for more than $1 billion worth of Anchorage road construction between now and 2025.
Daily News reporter Don Hunter can be reached at dhunter@adn.com. Reporter Rosemary Shinohara contributed to this story.