Anchorage planners kept the Seward Highway rebuild after staff asked to pull it

Anchorage's transportation planning committee kept the Safer Seward Highway rebuild in its draft long-range plan last month after its own staff asked to take it out, draft minutes show.

The project would turn about 20 miles of the highway along Turnagain Arm into a divided four-lane road, at a cost of roughly $1.6 billion.

Staff at Anchorage Metropolitan Area Transportation Solutions, or AMATS, wanted the committee to send the draft 2052 transportation plan out for public comment without it. Their concerns were mostly about the state's numbers.

A state transportation department letter put the project's total cost at $1.598 billion, but tables in the same letter added up to $1.638 billion, Executive Director Aaron Jongenelen told the committee Oct. 15. He said he had emailed his questions to the department the day before.

Committee Chair Katherine Keith, the department's deputy commissioner, called that a quick turnaround. She said she didn't get a copy of the email and wanted written answers for the record. Most of the differences, she said, come from comparing a long-range plan with the state's four-year funding list, which cover different time spans in different detail.

The committee, which includes state transportation officials, a representative of the mayor and Assembly members, kept the project in the plan without objection.

Keith said one stage of the project, from Windy Corner to Rainbow, costs about $236 million. That's more than the state would normally program in one year, she said, and it isn't yet in the state's four-year funding list.

The committee voted 3-2 in July to put the project back in the plan, July minutes show. Assembly members Daniel Volland and Erin Baldwin Day voted no.

Volland said the project's cost had grown from about $694 million in the 2024 plan to $1.4 billion in its draft environmental assessment. He warned it would significantly reduce other Anchorage funding for two decades. A state transportation official said the department intends to pay for it entirely with federal money.

The state says the project would reduce crash rates and severity. The stretch became Alaska's first highway safety corridor in 2006 and had nine fatal crashes and 21 serious-injury crashes from 2018 to 2022, according to the state. Critics, including AMATS's own citizen advisory committee, say the design is too big. AMATS staff comments said it would convert 162.7 acres of Chugach State Park and put up to 105 acres of fill in Turnagain Arm.

To pay for the highway and a rebuild of Fifth and Sixth avenues, the draft plan assumes about $1.9 billion in federal highway money beyond what the Anchorage area has historically received.

Public comment on the draft plan closes Dec. 3. The Assembly begins its review Nov. 17, and the committee, which has the final say, is scheduled to vote on the October minutes Nov. 19. AMATS staff told the committee in June that the plan must be updated by Dec. 29 or new federal projects in the area could be frozen.