Anchorage trails plan adds inland fallback route for stalled Kincaid-to-Potter Marsh trail

Anchorage planners have added an inland concept for the long-sought Kincaid Park to Potter Marsh coastal trail, where private bluff-top ownership and unresolved routing inside the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge complicate a coastline alignment.

The South Coastal Trail extension appears in the 2026 Recreational Trails Plan, which goes before the Anchorage Metropolitan Area Transportation Solutions Technical Advisory Committee at 1 p.m. Thursday for a recommendation to the AMATS Policy Committee. Staff recommends approval. Comments go to [email protected] 48 hours ahead. The plan says the goal is unchanged from 1997: a continuous Tony Knowles Coastal Trail with minimal traffic crossings, integrating South Anchorage into the greenbelt system.

The plan proposes two conceptual alignments. Project 10 is the inland concept, listed as a medium priority, long term project, which the document says acknowledges environmental and political barriers. The second would convert a wide section of Alaska Railroad right-of-way along the coastline, with underpass potential near the confluence of the railroad, the Seward Highway and Rabbit Creek Road by the rifle range.

After public comment, planners rerouted the line outside a conservation easement on the Campbell Creek Estuary Natural Area and rewrote the description to steer routes toward park land, greenbelts and low-traffic corridors, limiting impacts on private property and the refuge.

A 2006 Environmental Impact Statement from the Municipality, the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities and the Federal Highway Administration examined route alternatives. The plan says it needs reevaluation. Anchorage residents were divided over an earlier 13 to 16 mile extension, and in November 2005 the Assembly directed staff to stop further study, according to an American Planning Association account. A 1980 coastal management document found roughly seven miles of the corridor in private ownership.

State wildlife planners endorsed no refuge route. In the 2003 document Living with Wildlife in Anchorage, the planning team wrote that it "did not find consensus on whether the trail should travel through the Refuge, where a multiple-use trail might have negative habitat impacts and encourage wildlife-human conflicts."

The project remains unfunded. Municipal code bars eminent domain for trails, so any alignment across private land requires purchase, trade or a negotiated easement.