AMATS advisory committee asks Policy Committee to reverse Safer Seward Highway vote

The citizen committee that advises Anchorage's metropolitan planning organization wants that body to undo its decision to write a highway project estimated at more than $1.5 billion into the region's long-range transportation plan.

In a July 28 letter, the Anchorage Metropolitan Area Transportation Solutions Community Advisory Committee asked the AMATS Policy Committee to reconsider including the Safer Seward Highway project in the 2052 Update to the Metropolitan Transportation Plan. The committee also asked the Policy Committee to produce a checklist of required changes for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities to address before any future vote to add the project. The reviewed documents do not give the date, the vote tally or the stated rationale for the Policy Committee action the advisory committee wants reversed.

The committee's chair, Matt Cruickshank, signed the letter. "DOT&PF has addressed none of those concerns nor modified its design for the SSH," he wrote. The letter says the Policy Committee's action "endorses an unnecessarily large physical footprint with a median as wide as 250 feet and cliff excavation as high as 400 vertical feet." That footprint, the letter says, would degrade the setting of Turnagain Arm and Chugach State Park.

DOT&PF proposes a four-lane divided highway with a separated pathway between Mileposts 98.5 and 118, from Bird Flats to Rabbit Creek. The state has designated that stretch a safety corridor. The department describes the project purpose as reducing crash rates and severity and improving mobility and reliability. DOT&PF has told AMATS the project is planned as a program funded through the Federal Highway Administration's National Highway System and does not require an AMATS allocation.

A Months-Long Dispute Over Design and Cost

The advisory committee has been on record against the current design since February 10, when it recommended the draft environmental assessment not be approved. That letter cited traffic data it called misleading, safety predictions it called unrealistic, and a cost that "dwarfs the 4-year AMATS TIP." AMATS staff filed separate comments two days later, noting the corridor does not appear until 55th on the state's high crash location list. At a November Policy Committee meeting, staff had been directed to remove the project from the 2050 plan over cost increases.

The July letter says the estimate exceeds $1.5 billion even before detailed design of intersections and the Potter Marsh section, and that the project would diminish funding for AMATS priorities elsewhere in Anchorage. The committee said it supports Seward Highway safety work that is "data-driven, cost-effective, low impact, and fiscally sensible." It listed guardrails, speed read-out cameras and centerline barriers.