Some next-to-the-highway residents want drivers to slow way down. They've voted to ask the state Department of Transportation to lower the speed limit from Indian to Bird to 45 mph, from 55.
"You've got sheep. You've got eagles. You've got whales. People are just not paying attention to the road," says Pat Athey of Indian, president of the Turnagain Arm Community Council.
Besides the wildlife, nearly 300 people and a dozen or so businesses populate Bird and Indian, Athey says.
"What we're really concerned with," says Athey, "is if they want to make it a superhighway. All the local businesses are going to lose out."
The community council voted 16-0 in its December meeting to ask the state the lower the speed limit from Milepost 100 at Bird to Milepost 104.5 at Indian.
State traffic engineer Scott Thomas and highway safety improvement coordinator Ron Martindale say they will take the community's request seriously, and will study traffic in the area next summer, assuming they have the money -- testing how fast people are going, tallying up accidents and studying how many turnoffs there are, as well as checking out the living, commerce and recreation going on next to the highway.
But they say a lower speed limit won't necessarily make the road safer, because just putting a sign up might not be enough to make drivers slow down.
"Speed limits need to be effective and shouldn't require constant enforcement to get compliance," said Martindale.
ARE THERE OTHER ANSWERS?
Traffic safety experts operate on the belief that most drivers are prudent and will pick appropriate speeds, he said.
Past studies of how fast vehicles are going in the Bird-Indian strip showed that average speeds were in the upper 50s, Martindale said, while upper speeds were 60 to 62 mph. "If we look at a lower speed limit, we have to convince all the drivers who made that decision (to go faster) to go slower."
There might be other answers, too, Martindale and Thomas say, such as adding left-turn pockets into busy driveways.
But Martindale and Thomas say they understand people are frustrated, and they acknowledge that there's a basic problem with the Seward Highway: Traffic volumes are getting higher in summer than a two-lane road should carry.
Dangers on the highway prompted the state in 2006 to declare the stretch of highway from Potter Marsh to Girdwood a safety corridor, which means double fines for speeding and other traffic offenses and a concerted effort by the state to reduce the number of severe accidents. Later, the safety corridor was extended to the south of Girdwood.
But 2009 has been a bad year for deaths on the stretch of the Seward Highway from Anchorage to Turnagain Pass.
Eight people had been killed there this year through early August, when the Girdwood Fire Chief called a meeting to discuss how to make the road safer. More than 150 people from Alaska State Troopers to DOT officials to legislators and citizens came.
Three more people died in November and early December.
The piece of highway between Bird and Indian is not the worst section of the corridor, said Martindale. More severe crashes happen on either side of that stretch, he said.
But DOT wants to make the entire corridor safer, has been repaving ruts and will add rumble strips in the center line to keep people from drifting out of their lanes, he said. Troopers are also adding two troopers to the Seward Highway patrol, Thomas said.
HOMES, BUSINESSES, PARKS, TRAILS
Bird-to-Indian residents still have a lot of worries about the highway, though.
Pat Terwilliger, whose husband is minister of the Valley Bible Chalet, said many people don't realize they are zooming through a residential area. There's no turn lane to get into the church and their home, she said. "Even to turn into our driveway we take our lives into our hands. People are not obeying the 55 miles per hour speed limit through Indian."
Roger Cowles, whose family owns the Indian Valley historic gold mine at Mile 104, says he and his family have seen multiple rear-end collisions in front of their place.
"What they told us is reducing the speed limit wouldn't reduce accidents," he said. He thinks that defies common sense. "If you're going 25 mph, there's time to react."
Mary Lou Redmond, who owns Diamond Jim's Liquor and Gifts, says the state should lower the speed limit not just because of the businesses and houses along the road, but because of all the turnouts for parks and trails. "I think they have five turnouts to little parks within one mile right across the street," she said, including the bike trail to Girdwood and the parking lot for climbing Bird Creek Ridge.
Another concern some people have is that the state DOT wants businesses to move their signs back out of the road right-of-way.
Bill Peterson, owner of the Birdhouse Garage, says that will only make people go faster.
"The only section that's safe because of the business signs and the lighting, they want to take that away," Peterson said. "We're still a town. We've got a ZIP code."
Find Rosemary Shinohara online at adn.com/contact/rshinohara or call her at 257-4340.
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.