12/31/2023

Written By Guest User

Happy New Year!

2023 Year in Review Highlights

Housing & Land Use

  • ADU reform from early this year: Expanded flexibility for building Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) across the Municipality: no owner-occupancy requirement, no special design restrictions, no special placement restrictions, and more flexibility on size. See the original MOA project page, read the AO, or the updated building department policy guide. 

  • HOME and the Zoning Bomb: Earlier this year, Assembly Members Cross and Zaletel proposed a new ordinance called “Housing Opportunities in the Municipality for Everyone” (HOME) to simplify the Title 21 zoning code down to just two residential zones. This met with some pushback from the policymakers of the past, and ultimately a new set of sponsors returned with a different proposal to reduce the number of zones to align with what’s already in the 2040 Land Use Plan. On September 26, 2023, the HOME Initiative was referred to the Planning & Zoning Commission and Planning Department to identify and draft the needed revisions to Title 21, the Anchorage Comprehensive Plan, and the 2040 Land Use Plan in order to implement the changes proposed by the initiative. The proposed changes are expected to come back to the Assembly in spring of 2024.

  • Downtown Zoning Code Reform: Downtown Anchorage has its own chapter of zoning code, which saw a major overhaul earlier this year. Fewer restrictions on housing, bodegas are no longer illegal, surface parking lots no longer an allowed use, and no minimum lot sizes (beyond what’s in the subdivision code) anywhere in Downtown.

  • Housing summit: A day-long event looking at causes and solutions. Very nicely produced video of the event, and the Assembly’s Housing Action Plan. 

  • Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn Speech: An Anchorage discussion of municipal sustainability, overbuilt infrastructure, and building a strong town.

  • 4plex reform: Making it easier to build three- and fourplex housing in areas where it was already ostensibly allowed, but subject to much higher restrictions. An S version of the ordinance is available here. Listen to some of the testimony for and against here.

Transportation

  • People Mover rolled out a new bus tracking app.

  • Reconnecting Fairview: NeighborWorks Alaska and the Fairview Community Council won a major grant in February to work on correcting the disinvestment and economic stagnation caused by the Gambell-Ingra couplet cutting through the neighborhood. The award puts pressure on AK DOT&PF to adjust their approach to the Seward-Glenn Connection PEL Study to consider community needs and wishes, not just traffic flow.

  • Protected Bike Lane Pilot on Pine Street. An encouraging sign that the Muni is trying new things to make Anchorage more livable for everyone (news coverage in ADN). It looks like there may be more coming for 2024. Some data from the project:

    • Average driving speed decreased by 4-8 mph

    • The corridor saw a 10% reduction in car counts

    • The corridor saw 10% reduction of speeding by drivers going south, and a 40% reduction by drivers going north

    • Before the pilot, 1 or 2 out of every 100 drivers were going 50 mph; with the bike lane only 1 out of 6,300 drivers sped this fast

  • The Anchorage Stop: In August, the Assembly updated traffic laws with a new  ordinance that:

    • Defines the term "vulnerable road user" (VRU) for anyone traveling on the road outside of a car

    • Decriminalizes jaywalking

    • Introduces the "Anchorage Stop," which allows vulnerable road users on the roadway to treat stop signs like yield signs and red lights like stop signs 

Based on the Idaho Stop, the changes improve safety and visibility while also reducing the opportunity for discriminatory enforcement.

  • The 2050 Metropolitan Transportation Plan was developed with public input through the year and is now being finalized. A major change was increasing the portion of funds allocated to non-motorized transportation from 15% to 25%, which helps the non-motorized network catch up to decades of other types of investments.

  • Wins in Reallocating TIP funding: AMATS Policy Committee meeting from November included reallocating funding from projects in areas many people didn’t want them to the areas many people do want them. For example:

    • TIP NHS 1 (Seward Highway O'Malley Road to Dimond Boulevard Reconstruction Phase II): Amend project description to reevaluate the project purpose and need and the various components of the project (interchange, highway widening, undercrossings, etc) and will involve extensive public input. The change was unanimously supported by the Policy Committee, including DOT Central Region Director (Sean Holland), representing a long-sought solution to a project that has been carried by momentum rather than demonstrated need.

    • The funding freed up from the above project allowed the following additions to other projects:

      • Add CPS047 Artillery Rd interchange in Eagle River due to public and Muni support ($32.8m)

      • Add NMO202 Glenn Pathway connection at Artillery Rd ($1m)

      • Increase funding for CPS 092 (Ingra St rehabilitation) and 118 (Gambell St rehabilitation) by $15.2m each for a total of $37.5m each, to bring them closer to reality of what will likely be needed

    • Other changes that don’t affect dollar amounts of the projects:

      • Change project description for TIP CS 11 – Eagle River Road Rehabilitation (milepost 0.0 to 5.2, Old Glenn Highway to Oriedner Road) to explicitly include a separated multi use pathway

      • Change project description for CPS151 – Old Glenn Highway (Eagle River Loop Road to North Eagle River Access Road) to take out lane removal and add improved traffic calming and improved active transportation facilities

  • AKDOT smackdown by AMATS and FAST: In their late-summer comments to AKDOT, both the Anchorage MPO (AMATS) and Fairbanks MPO (FAST) minced no words in shining the light on AKDOT’s attempts to create a statewide transportation plan (STIP) without meeting federal requirements:

AMATS (at their August 10, 2023 meeting): 

  • “There was no coordination with AMATS prior to the draft document being released for the 45-day public comment period.”

  • “Right now there appears to have been no process done and it is hard to see why some projects are being funded over others.”

  • “There are projects in the deep dive documents of the STIP that the total project cost estimate does not match the amounts shown in the tables."

FAST (pg 12 of their August 2 2023 meeting packet): 

  • “With that said, however, FAST Planning would like to express our reservation that the STIP appears to have been developed internally without meaningful input from stakeholders throughout the State.”

(More than bureaucratic haggling, this appears to be a fairly substantial pushback against a state DOT that has probably never faced a lot of accountability before) 


2023 Year in Review Lowlights

 

Looking forward to what’s coming in 2024



Guest User
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