Anchorage Daily News
Published: October 26, 2005
Last Modified: October 26, 2005 at 07:09 AM
The Anchorage Assembly late Tuesday approved a markedly changed long-range transportation plan after spending two days adding projects and shifting its focus from mass transit and trails to road construction.
Supporters of the original plan, crafted in large part by Mayor Mark Begich's administration, asserted that the Assembly members who changed it ignored three years of public discussion about the future of roads and trails.
But some of those members said what they did was just as important a part of that process as any meetings.
"We represent over 260,000 people," Assemblyman Dan Sullivan said. "We're a key element of the process."
Among the major changes in the altered plan: Work on the intersection of Lake Otis Parkway and Tudor Road is bumped down on the list of priorities. Instead of starting next year, the project could be put off five or more years.
The changes also express disapproval of extending the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail south from Kincaid Park to Potter Marsh. They contain plans for a connector between Northern Lights Boulevard and Providence Drive, into the university and hospital district from the north. It could be the long-talked-about Bragaw Street extension or improvements to Pine Street or UAA Drive, said Assemblyman Dan Coffey, who sponsored the amendment that included the change.
The transportation plan does not approve any projects or allocate any funds. However, it serves as a guideline for a committee of state and local officials that has the final say on federal transportation spending in Anchorage. That includes most of the major road and trail projects.
The Assembly received the plan about a month and a half ago and faced a Tuesday deadline for making changes. If the Assembly hadn't changed it, the original version would have been adopted by default.
During a hastily called meeting Monday night and again at their regular meeting Tuesday, Assembly members proposed and voted on scores of major and minor changes to the 185-page document, which sets the framework for road and trail construction in Anchorage until 2025.
The original plan emphasized mass transit and trail development over roads. The changes make road construction the top priority, put less emphasis on mass transit and recommend maintaining the city's existing trail system rather than expanding it.
"Nintey-five percent of the people get around in their cars," Coffey, co-chair of the 11-member panel, said in an interview Tuesday night. "That's reality, and government should at least address reality."
Three Assembly members, Allan Tesche, Pamela Jennings and Janice Shamberg, consistently opposed most of the changes, though Shamberg ultimately voted to adopt the revised plan.
Coffey, Sullivan, Ken Stout, Anna Fairclough, Debbie Ossiander, Paul Bauer, Dick Traini and Chris Birch were aligned in favor of most of the changes.
Begich said he didn't see many of the proposed changes until this week's meetings began, and many of them were handwritten, some while the meetings were taking place.
The mayor said he was dismayed that the members had made such drastic changes, ones that he said go against the public's wishes.
"It shows a lack of respect for the full public process that has occurred over three years," the mayor said in an interview. "It's eight Assembly members against the community."
Some members took issue with the mayor's characterization.
Birch pointed out that before he was elected to the Assembly, he was a member of the committee that organized public meetings on the plan. Ossiander noted that she regularly attended those meetings for a year before she was elected and not everyone was banging the tables asking for more buses and trails.
Coffey said the changes reflect the Assembly majority's belief that many of the original plan's policy statements and recommendations are not based in reality.
Coffey pointed out that the Assembly doesn't have the last word. "These are our recommendations. What we had was individual Assemblymen who read this 150 pages plus another six inches of paper and reached certain conclusions about a whole raft of things."
On the Coastal Trail issue, Sullivan said it shouldn't be continued because of the cost and because pieces of private property would have to be taken to build it. The Begich administration recently unveiled a reduced-price version of the extension -- $24 million, down from an earlier estimate of $37 million. The newest route would affect fewer private parcels than the old one.
The Assembly vote doesn't derail the Coastal Trail because it is part of the 1997 city trails plan, the whole of which is in the long-range transportation plan. But Sullivan said the Assembly can remove the trail for real when it updates the city parks plan in a few weeks.
Sullivan said he proposed postponing work at Lake Otis and Tudor because it doesn't make sense to tear up the intersection until an alternative route is in place. The Assembly voted to set the project aside until the 2007 completion of an extension of Bragaw Street south to Abbott Road and an extension of Dowling Road between Lake Otis and the new Bragaw extension.
The Dowling piece has not been designed yet. A spokeswoman for the mayor's office said that road isn't due to be finished until 2010 to 2012.
Begich has made it clear that fixing Lake Otis and Tudor is on the top of his list. The city had planned to start it next year, helped by $10 million in federal funds U.S. Rep Don Young put in a transportation bill.
The mayor said he doesn't know how the Assembly postponement of the project will affect bond funds that voters approved for it.
Reporter Richard Richtmyer can be reached at rrichtmyer@adn.com. Reporter Rosemary Shinohara can be reached at rshinohara@adn.com.