The state is drilling test holes for a Seward Highway fix, as a bigger $1.5 billion plan draws fire

The Alaska Department of Transportation is again asking contractors to drill about a dozen test holes along the Seward Highway near Girdwood, after an earlier round drew no bidder. The holes, between mileposts 58 and 60, would supply geotechnical data for a set of near-term safety improvements. Bids are due Aug. 28.

The Seward Highway work drawing real scrutiny this summer is a far larger and more contested project up the road, closer to Anchorage, where the department wants to rebuild nearly 20 miles of the highway from Bird Flats to Rabbit Creek.

Anchorage's own transportation advisory committee has asked the AMATS Policy Committee to reverse its vote adding that project, estimated at more than $1.5 billion, to the region's long-range plan. The department proposes a four-lane divided highway with a separated pathway along a stretch it has designated a safety corridor, and says the work would cut crash rates and severity and be paid for federally rather than out of Anchorage's own transportation budget.

Advisory committee chair Matt Cruickshank wrote that the plan "endorses an unnecessarily large physical footprint with a median as wide as 250 feet and cliff excavation as high as 400 vertical feet," a scale the committee says would degrade the setting of Turnagain Arm and Chugach State Park. The committee says it backs Seward Highway safety work that is "data-driven, cost-effective, low impact, and fiscally sensible," pointing to guardrails, speed cameras and centerline barriers instead.

The objections run beyond the committee. Bike Anchorage, which sat on the project's stakeholder group, told the Planning and Zoning Commission that "this is not a safety project. It is a highway widening project with a false veneer of safety." Ann Rappoport, for the Rabbit Creek Community Council, testified that the council backed more compact alternatives and warned the design "will instead encourage speeding and create highly dangerous turning across multiple traffic lanes."

There's a data fight under the design fight, too. The advisory committee has opposed the plan since February, calling its traffic data misleading, and AMATS staff separately noted the corridor doesn't appear until 55th on the state's high-crash-location list. The department offered in mid-July to hold a public meeting to explain the design; the committee called that insufficient, and the department has not publicly responded to its July 28 letter.

The drilling near Girdwood is a separate, much smaller piece of Seward Highway work and isn't tied to the $1.5 billion project.