Federal grant of $545,820 funds Geist Road and Chena Pump Road corridor study

A busy stretch of road on the west side of Fairbanks is getting a close look. The state has $600,000 — most of it federal money, with a smaller state share — to study Geist Road and Chena Pump Road from University Avenue to Chena Small Tracts Road, and figure out how to make it safer and easier to get on and off.

It's a high-volume, high-speed road, and the trouble spots have been known for a while. The corridor is lined with commercial driveways, and those driveways cross the shared-use path along the south side — the only continuous route cyclists have there. Local planners flagged that conflict between cars and cyclists years ago, back in a 2012 plan, and the new study will dig into it in earnest: how densely packed the driveways are, how the intersections are laid out, and where drivers, cyclists and pedestrians end up in each other's way.

The money buys analysis, not asphalt. The study, run by the region's transportation planning group and funded through July 2027, is meant to identify specific projects worth building later. Actual construction along the corridor has been happening separately — a resurfacing project on Chena Ridge and Chena Pump, and a new roundabout at Chena Small Tracts meant to cut down the wait for drivers pulling out from side roads.