Klondike Highway Plan Leaves Skagway's Border Miles at Zero

The four miles of the Klondike Highway closest to the Canadian border carry no money in Alaska's draft transportation plan, even as the state prepares to brief Skagway residents next week on the first funded stage of a $158 million rebuild.

The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities published the draft 2027-2030 Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan on Sept. 14. It is open for public comment through Oct. 29. The plan divides the rehabilitation of the Klondike Highway, Skagway's only land route out, into five stages with a lifecycle forecast, its life-of-project total, of $158.2 million.

One of those stages reads zero across every column. Stage 2 runs from Milepost 9.3 to 13.1, from the CWHM Bridge to the Canadian border. The draft shows nothing obligated, nothing programmed in fiscal years 2027 through 2030, nothing in 2031 or later, and a lifecycle forecast of zero. The draft records the figure and gives no reason for it. The parent project above the stages carries $3.4 million already obligated and $7.2 million of preconstruction for the corridor in the same four years. The draft does not say what it covers.

The department has scheduled a public open house on the project for Tuesday, Sept. 22, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Arctic Brotherhood Hall in Skagway. It is the second such meeting, after one at the same hall on April 23, 2025.

That meeting covers Stage 1, which is funded. Stage 1 runs from Milepost 0 to 2.6, with resurfacing from 2.6 to 3.1, and includes repair and upgrade of the Skagway River Bridge and the Skagway River weir. The bridge was built in 1974 and is rated Fair, a six on a nine-point scale. Stage 1 carries $34.05 million in fiscal 2027 through 2030.

The funded stages sit on either side of the unfunded miles. Stage 3, from the US Border Station at Milepost 5.25 to the CWHM Bridge at Milepost 9.3, carries $44.5 million in the same four-year window. Stage 4, from Milepost 3.1 to 5.25, carries $28.75 million, all of it in fiscal 2031 or later. A final stage finishing Milepost 2.6 to 3.1 carries $34 million, also beyond 2030.

The same draft plan names the unfunded stretch elsewhere. A statewide project called Avalanche Mitigation Stage 1 would build remote avalanche control systems and other engineered measures, in the department's words, "to phase out the use of artillery for avalanche control." Its five named priority areas include "Klondike Hwy MP 9-14.5." That project carries $28.8 million in fiscal 2027 through 2030, with design in 2027 and construction in 2029. The corridor it names overlaps almost exactly with the rehabilitation stage that has no money.

Rockfall and avalanche work was once part of the rehabilitation itself. The project summary poster the department displayed at the April 2025 open house lists five categories of proposed work, including rockfall and avalanche mitigation. The public notice issued this week lists pavement rehabilitation, roadway-base repair, drainage, roadside hardware, utilities, signing, striping, bridge repair and river weir repairs. It lists no rockfall or avalanche work. A map poster from the same 2025 meeting names a separate project, Klondike Highway Rockfall Mitigation, under a different staff contact. That project has no page in the department's Southcoast Region project list, which does carry pages for the rehabilitation, for Skagway's State Street pavement, for the Haines Highway and for the Haines Airport.

The 2025 poster listed construction on the first stage in 2027. The department's current schedule page gives 2028. The same page states that projects two through five fall outside the current funding plan, a description written before the draft plan programmed two of them.

Its traffic control materials commit to keeping at least one lane open where feasible using flaggers, and to coordinating closures to protect buses, emergency vehicles and access for major sporting events. Full closures, the department says, may be necessary for rockfall and avalanche mitigation work or significant excavation. The notice also warns that the department may need to acquire property rights, often a temporary easement, and that its right of way section will contact affected owners directly.

Every account in this article comes from the department's own records. No Skagway resident, business owner, Assembly member, municipal officer or representative of the Skagway Traditional Council appears in the published file. The department released the posters it displayed at the 2025 open house and blank copies of the sign-in sheet and comment form, so who attended and what they said is not in the public record.

The open house and the draft plan are two processes with two deadlines. Comments on the draft plan are due Oct. 29, and nothing in either document connects them.