Planners urge dropping or rechecking Anchorage's Academy-Vanguard road project

Anchorage's long-range planners have told the Planning and Zoning Commission that a South Anchorage road project should be removed from the city's capital list, or at least checked for whether it still has a clear purpose. Its estimated cost has more than doubled since it was first proposed.

The Academy-Vanguard project would improve and align Academy and Vanguard drives between Brayton Drive and Abbott Road. It has been identified as a need since about 2009, Long-Range Planning Manager Daniel McKenna-Foster told the Planning and Zoning Commission at an Oct. 19 work session. It was first estimated at about $8.7 million. By 2026 it was budgeted at about $21.2 million, he said, though not all budgeted money is always spent.

Robert Doehl, the city's director of Community and Economic Development, pushed back. He told the commission the planners' memo was prepared outside the usual process, on a compressed timeline and without consulting the departments that prepared and prioritized the capital list. "We believe the report should be disregarded," he said.

In 2015, the city described the project as a collaboration with the state's Seward Highway/92nd Avenue grade separation project, meant to ease congestion around Dimond Boulevard, according to the planning memo. McKenna-Foster said it was preparing for what might one day be an undercrossing of the Seward Highway. The 2027 capital budget lists $750,000 in proposed bond money as the city's local match for federal money, including about $13 million programmed after 2030.

The project has already had two contract amendments that came to about $2 million, McKenna-Foster said, though nothing has been built. It also bought property for the project that now brings in less tax revenue, and demolishing a building on it costs $134,000.

A projection cited in his presentation expects 14,000 vehicles there in the future. But when planners have checked past traffic projections on big projects, he said, they usually ran higher than the traffic that showed up. "You build for a high volume. Whether you get that volume or not, you still have that much infrastructure that you have to pay for," he said.

The project also sought four exceptions to the city's own road design standards, he said.

Some projects have been on the list for years but may no longer connect to any present need, McKenna-Foster said. "There's no good way to off-ramp projects that maybe no longer are needed."

The memo is part of the planning office's review of Mayor Suzanne LaFrance's proposed $136 million capital budget, and it found no strong connection between the city's capital spending and its growth plans.

McKenna-Foster also looked back at a finished project. Duben Avenue, about half a mile between Patterson and Muldoon, was budgeted at $7.5 million in 2016 and came in near $8.2 million. It became a bigger road, with retaining walls, curb and guardrail the city now has to maintain. Traffic on it went down, he said, but drivers got faster: in 2013, about 12% went over 35 mph, and by 2025 it was about 27%.

He also pointed to a $6.7 million plan to rebuild 57th and 58th avenues in the Norann subdivision, home to about 57 dwellings, in an area the city's land use plan expects to stay about the same. That project started at about $4 million, he said.

The commission was scheduled to make its recommendation on the capital budget at its regular meeting that night. The Assembly is scheduled to vote on the budget Nov. 17, and projects it approves go to voters as bonds in April.