More than 100 land deals stand between Alaska and a safer KGB Road

Before the state can start fixing one of Mat-Su's known safety problems, it has to buy land from more than 100 separate property owners.

That's the holdup on Knik-Goose Bay Road, where safety corridor improvements are a stated top priority for the transportation department and still aren't expected to go out for bid until March 2027 — meaning construction wouldn't begin until that summer at the earliest. "We've got over 100 property acquisitions needed to deliver this," said Luke Boland, the department's preconstruction engineer in Anchorage, who added that the work touches just about every utility in the corridor.

It's one of a string of Alaska road and airport projects sliding into 2027 and beyond, each stuck behind a different kind of obstacle. A seaplane ramp at Ketchikan Airport is waiting on an Army Corps of Engineers permit. A generator replacement at the Gustavus ferry terminal is waiting on nothing but a signature — a federal funding authorization that hasn't been signed. If it lands this month, the project advertises; if not, August.

In a state where the building season runs a few months, a modest delay costs a full year. A Northern Region project on the Tope Cut-Off slipped six to ten months after environmental review turned up more complexity than expected — enough to knock it out of the 2027 construction season entirely and into 2028.