Anchorage Daily News

To untangle traffic at the state's worst bottleneck -- where the Glenn and Seward highways link up in Anchorage -- road planners are looking at just about every alternative imaginable:

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How about a freeway slicing through Russian Jack Springs Park?

Or maybe one that cuts along the west end of Merrill Field and later splits the Rogers Park neighborhood?

Light rail instead?

The Russian Jack and Merrill Field proposals are among seven routes that the state and federal governments are considering to move cars and people faster between the two freeways. Light rail is an alternative solution.

The problem they're trying to solve: The Glenn and Seward freeways turn into mere roads dotted with stoplights where they come together. It's stop and go, herky-jerky traffic. This has created a corridor that is home to 5 percent of all the crashes in the entire state.

The planners are taking a broad look at alternatives so that critics can't come back a year or two from now, late in the process, and say, "you didn't even consider this route," said Jim Childers, project manager with the state Department of Transportation. That's the explanation for a serious look at several routes outside the obvious one, between Gambell and Ingra streets. Gambell and Ingra flow directly into the Seward Highway.

Besides different routes, the planners are checking out scenarios such as: What happens if they start up a super-fast bus system, with platforms, park-and-ride lots and dedicated lanes, or what if they just add more lanes to major roads like Tudor?

"We're examining everything," said Childers.

Adding urgency, the project managers set a deadline of today for public comments. After that, a computer program will measure the various routes and scenarios against the project's goals. The No. 1 goal is relieving traffic jams. Alternatives that clearly don't do the job will be tossed.

BIG PRICE, BIG CONTROVERSY

Even after the state figures out where to build and what to build, cost is a big concern.

The state has $20 million to conduct the environmental and route studies. Childers' informed guess is that building a connecting freeway would cost about $700 million. That's seven times more than Alaska receives from the feds annually for the state's entire national highway system. Figuring out how to finance it will be part of the study.

Meanwhile, controversy about the alternative routes has drawn hundreds of people to community council meetings from Muldoon to Rogers Park in recent weeks. Many are upset over the notion that a connecting freeway would plow through neighborhoods.

State Rep. Les Gara, who represents downtown, Fairview and part of Midtown, felt the need to send a newsletter telling constituents, "These folks aren't necessarily nuts. They're just messing with you. The National Environmental Policy Act probably requires them to pretend they are considering completely insane highway route alternatives through Anchorage that, from the mail I'm receiving, have scared the bejesus out of you."

Community councils are taking the proposals seriously.

Campbell Park Community Council, for example, voted about 190-1 to oppose two freeway routes that would bypass most of the city proper, running east of Muldoon in one case, or via Boniface Parkway in another, to meet up with the Seward Highway around International Airport Road -- right where Peter Hamlett lives.

Those alternatives "would actually destroy homes and neighborhoods, and also wetlands," said Hamlett, Campbell Park chairman, who also said he was shocked at the prospect.

Campbell Park normally gets about 15 people to meetings. The highway-to-highway discussion pulled in nearly 200, Hamlett said.

Outsized crowds showed up at Rogers Park and Airport Heights community councils to oppose different alternatives.

The Rogers Park community council voted 148-0 for a resolution asking that three freeway alternatives and a fourth that calls for widening arterial streets such as Tudor and Northern Lights be removed. Rogers Park opposes the Orca Street alternative, at the west end of Merrill Field; the Northern Lights freeway, which would traverse Russian Jack Springs Park; and the 15th Avenue connection.

Airport Heights came out against the 15th Avenue route, saying it would "invade the quiet zone of the Alaska Regional Hospital as well as adjacent neighborhoods" and ruin Sitka Park to boot.

The Northeast Community Council voted to oppose the Muldoon bypass route, which the project planners call "East City."

QUALIFIED SUPPORT

The Fairview Community Council -- in the neighborhood that would be ground zero for a freeway in the Gambell-Ingra corridor -- stands apart from the other community councils.

The Fairview council has supported the Gambell-Ingra connection since it came up four years ago.

It still supports the idea "conditionally," said Sharon Chamard, the Fairview council president. The condition is that the freeway would support the kind of development Fairview wants, she said.

As initially proposed, the freeway connection would be sunken. It would be covered over in places to allow neighborhood streets to cross it, and some other developments such as parks or commercial buildings to be built on top of it.

Fairview is already split in two by Gambell and Ingra, which are high-speed, one-way roads that can be scary to cross.

Even though the Fairview Community Council supports the freeway idea, members are increasingly concerned that it might add to pollution, or that the freeway wouldn't come out as beneficial to the neighborhood as it sounds, said Chamard.

Michael Howard, a member of the Fairview board who lives about a block from Gambell and Ingra, says he thinks the project has been too "narrowly construed" from the get-go.

"It's being limited to where are we going to put the freeway," Howard said, when he thinks goals should be doubling or tripling public transit use, encouraging walking and bicycle riding, and building vibrant neighborhoods.

Howard is president of the Anchorage Citizens Coalition, a nonprofit group concerned with preserving neighborhoods. The coalition takes a similar stance.

Childers said the planners will consider expanded public transit -- everything from commuter rail from the Valley to the fast bus system they call bus rapid transit -- as part of every solution. And one scenario will focus on creating the kind of densely populated employment and residential areas that make public transit work best.

The highway-to-highway choices will be narrowed to a handful within two or three months, said Childers. The surviving alternatives will get full environmental and route studies under the National Environmental Policy Act.

If that results in a decision to build a freeway, construction could begin between 2013 and 2015.

Find Rosemary Shinohara online at adn.com/contact/rshinohara or call her at 257-4340.