11/24/2024
Land Use
NEW: “Anchorage Assembly passes Mayor LaFrance’s city budget with few changes.” In the ADN.
NEW: “Percentage of nonresident workers in Alaska hits highest point in years”. In the ADN: “More details about the 2023 nonresident workforce, including final numbers, will be published in January in the labor department’s report to the Legislature, Robinson said.”
NEW: “Port of Alaska secures $50 million federal grant for new cargo terminal.” In the ADN:
“‘It supports more than $14 billion in commercial activity and serves 90% of our state’s population,” LaFrance said. ‘For Alaskans, it is our lifeline to the outside world.’...The port’s failure would have “severe” economic consequences, Municipal Manager Becky Windt Pearson said. It would cost about $39 million a week to make up the port’s capacity through air and truck cargo, she said.”
Related: “OPINION: Port of Alaska modernization reaches new milestones” also in the ADN:
“I hope that our community will agree that paying a few more dollars on goods is a much cheaper price to pay than having the port fail. If we lose access to the port during a natural disaster, we will have to truck and fly in all of our goods, and that will lead to massive price hikes that are far beyond these modest tariff increases. The small increases we pay on goods today will bring us price stability and predictability for years to come.”
NEW: Assembly work session on the Girdwood Comprehensive plan. Worksession page. Video recording. Interesting comments from Assembly Member Constant on different levels of investment for children in Mountain View versus Girdwood around 18:03.
NEW: Powder Reserve West Development. Two cases at the 12/2/2024 PZC meeting: S12802 will subdivide 2 tracts into 13 tracts, and case 2024-0107 would change the 2006 Chugiak Eagle River Comprehensive Plan land use designation from “intermodal transit” to “development reserve”. Maybe the dreams of commuter rail of the 2000s are finally settling down to reality. From the staff report:
“Intermodal Transit identifies transit centers and potential future commuter railway stations, as well as existing and planned focus areas for transit service…Intermodal Transit focus areas fit into and support town centers and mixed-use environments by providing alternative transportation choices for residents, employees, and visitors.”
Note that commuter rail generally needs a residential density starting at 15 dwelling units per acre, which would be difficult for suburban Anchorage to achieve anytime soon. Per the description in the Eagle River Plan, the “development reserve” designation seems to be designed to allow “Large-lot, single-family residential development…allowed by right” but then force “A public master planning process with proposed rezonings to active development districts…[to] occur prior to other development.”
ONGOING: Special Limitations zoning discussion at the 11/18/2024 Planning and Zoning Commission Meeting. Around minute 37:10 the Commission Chair remarks: “We’re not removing SLs here tonight. Or rezoning any properties. We’re only removing the tool. Which...in my words, I would characterize it as a torture tool for planners and developers.” The presentation from the meeting has a number of examples and responses to the few public comments.
NEW: Jobs in MOA planning: Current Planning Manager and AMATS planner.
Transportation
NEW: AMATS Policy Committee: removing the Seward Highway widening project from the Metropolitan Transportation Plan. November 22, 2024. Around 36:16, the chair and AKDOT central region director tries for a justification of the project as a “safety” need, to which a public commenter speaks a few minutes later:
“[It was] mentioned earlier that this is a project of urgency because there are deaths along that Highway, and that is true–but my understanding from the previous committee meeting was that there's an average of two fatalities per year along this Corridor of Highway, meanwhile we've had 14 pedestrians lose their lives on Anchorage roads including ones owned and controlled by DOT this year. So we really do have very serious safety concerns that need to be addressed. And frankly this Highway widening project is not the biggest one, so when we hear that we can continue on this project and we'll just rustle up more money to cover the overage I find myself wondering how we can do that for the highway widening project…but we can't manage to do that same thing to make on-street changes where people are actively dying up to this very month in our city.
And particularly on roads that are not in the colloquial sense of highway, but are part of the national highway system and would therefore theoretically still be eligible for the same pots of funding…so our comment here really is just to try to reframe this conversation and think about whether this is the best allocation of money of uh people's time and energy to effectively prevent more people from dying on our roads because we have data we know where these problems are happening and it's not it's not this section of the Seward Highway.”
Another commenter highlights the AKDOT technique of deferring the provision of information:
“I have similar concerns. A member of the Girdwood Board of Supervisors was on the stakeholder committee, and my understanding from talking to them is there was a lot of detailed information which was deferred and we expect to hear in the future and I have not heard that yet so there's a lot of details of the design which will influence I think how our community and how this project will affect Anchorage as a whole and it does seem that a lot of the sort of major commitments are being made before a lot of the details are available. So I think my general position would be: I see benefit in some delay before hard commitments are made, before we really know what we’re dealing with.”
Another public commenter starts speaking at 52:46, but when she begins pointing out that the AMATS Technical Advisory Committee had questions about whether the design of this project aligned with the original scope, the AKDOT central region director says her three minutes are up at 54:33.
A final commenter:
“It's been said many times in this meeting that you know we studied it, and yet we still find ourselves lacking an answer whether it be actually what is increasing safety, or what is feasible within some real fiscal constraints. And it just feels like we're rushing headlong toward a four-lane divided highway that may not cure the problem and may not be fiscally responsible. So as the board moves forward, or [as] the Committee moves forward or not, I just ask that you take into account what's realistic and what is in the greatest good for the most folks because as pointed out we have fatalities going on a lot of roads throughout Anchorage and that are within this jurisdiction, so I just ask you to take that into account.”
At 56:55, Assembly Member Volland moves to remove the project from the MTP because of the recommendations in the AMATS staff report, and the motion passes around 1:00:00.
NEW: “Making Alaska roadways safer | Talk of Alaska” In Alaska Public Media:
“Pedestrian safety should be a major consideration when transportation corridors are being built. But for decades, roads and highways were designed to create speedy and efficient movement of vehicles, not people on foot or on a bicycle. As understanding grows of the health, safety and community benefits from creating walk and bike routes, city planners and traffic engineers are getting better at designing for the safety of all users. Anchorage has had a lethal stretch of pedestrian deaths in recent months. We discuss what’s being done to lower these tragedies on this Talk of Alaska.”
NEW: Downtown Transit Center Reopening. From the People Mover webpage: “The Downtown Transit Center, located at the 6th Avenue Parking Mall, will reopen its doors effective Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024. Customer Service operations will resume, and riders will once again have access to an indoor waiting area and public restrooms.”
NEW:Glenn Highway Project: Airport Heights to Parks Highway. From the webpage:
“The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF), in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), is proposing to rehabilitate the Glenn Highway from Airport Heights Drive to the Parks Highway Interchange. The purpose of the project is to extend the life of the pavement and provide safety and capacity improvements on entrance ramps that are found to be functionally deficient.”
Translating from DOT speak, “capacity improvements” usually means “expanding and widening”.
NEW: Seward to Glenn Connection open house at the Anchorage Senior Activity Center on 19th avenue.Tuesday, December 10, 2024 from 4:30-6:30 p.m. ”DOT&PF is seeking feedback on refined alternative designs for the Seward to Glenn Connection Planning and Environmental Linkages (PEL) Study.” AKDOT’s traffic engineers and modelers have likely already decided what they want to build on this project, but there are still three ways to provide comment listed on their website.
NEW: 2024 Virtual Snow Summit on November 21, 2024. Hosted by AKDOT, posted on Facebook.
NEW: Functional classification project materials posted on the project webpage. AKDOT has some interesting responses to issues of speed in their question and answer summary:
“In urbanized areas, for example, we expect principal arterials to have a speed limit of 45-55 MPH and we expect minor arterials to have a speed limit of 35-55 MPH. But, for a particular road segment, if we find it is functioning more like a principal arterial based on the other quantitative and qualitative criteria despite have [sic] a speed limit of 40 MPH, we would most likely classify it as a principal arterial.”
This answer pretends that driver speed is an unknowable, uncontrollable phenomenon; in reality it’s mostly just a choice engineers make depending on the target speed for which they intentionally design the road. Also interesting note about non-motorized travel:
“Non-motorized travel does not affect functional classification and is not part of the criteria used to determine how a road functions in the larger network.”
DOTs manage what they choose to measure.
NEW: Minnesota Corridor Plan materials updated on the webpage. One weakness mentioned in the SWOT analysis: “Not exactly clear how AKDOT values/priorities might differ from community values. Need AKDOT to be upfront about that.”
NEW: “No injuries in back-to-back vehicle crashes involving trucking contractor for Alaska mine.” A glimpse of the system AKDOT is working towards in other parts of the state from Alaska’s News Source:
“According to the Alaska State Troopers, on Monday, a Black Gold Transport truck — one of dozens that work around the clock transporting ore over 200 miles between Kinross mines — was turning when another semi collided with its rear trailer. The two trucks were on the Richardson Highway near mile 290…The operation began last year and sees 60 roundtrip excursions per day on the highways between Fairbanks and Tok. Some people in Interior communities strongly opposed the operation to move ore.”
ONGOING: “State cites pedestrian safety as reason for clearing multiple Anchorage homeless encampments near roads”In the ADN:
“The state Department of Transportation has cleared out several homeless encampments near busy, state controlled roadways in Anchorage over the last two weeks. In a statement, the state cited “significant public safety risks,” including a recent spike in fatal pedestrian-vehicle crashes, and the city’s opening of shelters as reasons for removing the camps.”
Note that according to the map in this article and description in this article, most of the pedestrian fatalities last fall were not near the areas AKDOT just cleared. But at least one of the areas is where AKDOT has planned another highway expansion.
ONGOING: “Alaska Transportation Department to spend $1 million on Knik Arm tunnel study” in the ADN: “ For skeptics like Tobin, state transportation officials should instead prioritize public funding on projects that she said are achievable and well-supported by the community. ”Like improving pedestrian safety in Anchorage or completing the long overdue Cooper Landing project,” she said.”