State fights Seward Highway passing pain with slower right lanes

If you drive the Seward Highway near Turnagain Pass later this month, you'll see some beautiful scenery — and also be part of an experiment to make traveling it safer.

The "slow lane" along a five-mile stretch of the highway will actually be slower starting Monday and lasting until the end of July, according to the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. Speed limits in the right lane of passing areas between Mile 60 and Mile 65 of the highway, from the Hope junction to the top of Turnagain Pass, will be reduced to 55 mph, while the left lane will remain at the normal speed limit of 65 mph.

"With a lower posted speed limit in the right (slow) lane, passing speeds can be reduced while allowing more vehicles to pass within designated passing lanes," DOT officials wrote in a statement announcing the change. "Additionally, aggressive behaviors can be reduced when drivers feel like they have time to pass."

DOT spokeswoman Shannon McCarthy said Friday that the pilot program has been three years in the making, after coordinated research by Alaska's and Idaho's transportation departments. The University of Alaska Anchorage has also helped with the project.

In addition to making passing areas safer, engineers hope also to reduce congestion along the highway by letting more people pass slow vehicles during its busiest month as the Kenai River dipnetting season begins.

"What we find is that when people are trying to pass, they accelerate significantly — like 10, 15 miles per hour," McCarthy said. "We're trying to have people give the permission to pass, to slow down and let people pass."

McCarthy said drivers should avoid passing on the right — which is legal in Alaska "only under conditions permitting the movement in safety" — in lanes where the speed-limit test is taking place.

"We don't want people to pass on the right, because that's not what people expect," McCarthy said.

Scott Thomas, DOT's regional traffic and safety engineer for central Alaska, said the new signs were one of nine ideas tested, including adding advisory signs alongside the highway, lane markers near its edge and chevron patterns on the road itself.

When the various ideas were tested by dozens of drivers in a car simulator as they drove along the Seward, lowering right-lane speed limits turned out to be the most effective.

"We ran a representative pool of drivers of different ages and different driving skill levels," Thomas said. "We got people to go about 10 miles per hour different from each other so they would actually have a chance (to pass)."

The program involves posting side-by-side signs indicating speed limits for the right and left lanes along the passing areas, as well as watching how people use them under those revised limits.

"This is definitely a pilot project — even though we modeled it and it worked in simulation, this is our first test in the field," McCarthy said. "We have a lot of counting equipment which will let us (monitor) volumes and speeds, and we'll have engineers watching."

Thomas said DOT has been consulting with Alaska State Troopers on the proposed right-lane speed limits since 2014, and they met again shortly before the trial program's rollout. Federal highway research funds are covering the trial's entire cost of less than $100,000 to install new speed-limit signs and monitor them for the month.

"We have discussed with them what we're trying to do," Thomas said. "Both agencies, we see this as a pilot program — a test for busy summer traffic."

Thomas said the speed limits also reinforce existing state law, which makes it illegal for drivers along a highway to delay more than five vehicles. He encouraged drivers of slow vehicles to not only use the slower right lanes but also indicate their intention to do so.

"Let people know — use your turn signal when you head right so people don't get so antsy," Thomas said. "Hopefully, that will lead to a safer road with less risk of crashes due to passing."

Budget cuts in the face of declining oil revenue mean the state can't afford to make the Seward a four-lane highway for its full length. Thomas said DOT is considering additional passing lanes along the highway, including four near Turnagain Hill and others in the Summit Lake area, but they're being incorporated into road work over the course of coming years.

It's far cheaper for the department to add road signs, Thomas said, which have already helped decrease serious-injury crashes in Alaska's four highway safety corridors, including one along the Seward between Potter Marsh and Girdwood. A state audit of the corridors, updated in May, found that serious-injury Seward Highway crashes were down through 2015, though fatalities were up.

Ultimately, Thomas said, the success of the passing-zone speed limits — and all state efforts to improve safety along the Seward Highway — depends on what's going on behind the wheel of every vehicle on the highway.

"If the drivers make a choice, they can make this road safer than anything we can do with signs or construction," Thomas said. "The motorist is the biggest safety factor on the road, really."

UAA will distribute paper surveys on the passing areas' speed-limit changes at the Turnagain Pass rest area, as well as the Tesoro gas station at the Seward's intersection with the Alyeska Highway into Girdwood.