Students wait for the bus on the shoulder of Rabbit Creek Road

Children along Rabbit Creek Road get to their school buses by walking the shoulder. The road is posted at 45 mph and most traffic moves at 52 to 54. Grades reach 12 percent. There is no sidewalk, no separated path and no Safe Routes to School program anywhere on the corridor, and because there is nowhere to gather, buses stop repeatedly along the road rather than at set locations.

The Anchorage School District has already reached a conclusion about the road that connects to it. In a 2013 report, the district had designated Golden View Drive a "hazardous walking route" south of Goldenview Middle School for lack of anywhere to walk or bike, and every student at that school is bused as a result.

Both designs the state transportation department is now studying for a Rabbit Creek rehabilitation would build a detached multi-use pathway, set back from traffic rather than painted onto the road, running the full length of the project. Where the designs differ is turn lanes: a continuous two-way left-turn lane along the whole corridor, which needs more private land, or turn lanes only at the intersections that need them.

The rest of the job is drainage and safety. Ditches and culverts along the road do not connect into a system, and they clog, which floods low spots and eats at the shoulders in heavy rain and snowmelt. The concept report identifies crash clusters at four cross streets, three of them with restricted sight distance. None of the road's 19 cross-street intersections has a signal.

The need is not a new finding. Anchorage's non-motorized plan flagged the missing pathway in 2021, and planning staff wrote in 2024 that the reconstruction "will include a separate and protected bike path," noting an unprotected bike lane would not meet the community's needs.

The project covers just over two miles from the Seward Highway to Golden View Drive. Two public meetings are planned, the second before the state begins appraising and buying right-of-way. Neither has a date.