Alaska News

Dueling studies fuel debate over need, cost of Juneau road project

JUNEAU -- The more than decade-long battle over a road out of Juneau has been fought in court, in the Legislature and city assemblies and at the ballot box. Now it is being fought with dueling studies.

The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities wants to build what it calls the Juneau Access Improvement Project, but which locals simply call "the road."

The road would extend the existing highway out of Juneau up Lynn Canal to the Katzehin River, where a new ferry terminal would be built. That would shorten the ferry ride to Haines and Skagway at the head of the fjord.

Dueling studies are justifying and questioning demand for travel in Lynn Canal, as well as the project's economic value.

Building the road itself will be a monumental task that involves filling wetlands where the route crosses valley bottoms, blasting a path though sheer rocky cliffs, and skirting dozens of eagle nests and sea lion haulouts, among other challenges. All of that is expected to cost $574 million for Alternative 2B, which DOT prefers.

Transportation officials say Alaska needs the road to meet travel demand in the Lynn Canal corridor.

Both "need" and "demand" are important words in the arcane world of environmental impact statements, which much be completed before federal funds can be spent on projects such as the road.

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The road project's first EIS was released in 2006, but was found inadequate by a federal court. A draft supplemental EIS was released earlier this year. It looks at more travel improvement options but again proposes building a road, which it calls Alternative 2B.

DOT officials say the road is needed even though ferries traveling in the canal are often running less than half full. They are expected to carry 90 vehicles per day in 2020, but if the road is built the lower cost and faster and more convenient travel options would result in 635 vehicles per day.

Though the total cost to operate the new road and ferry combination would be more costly to the state than the ferry-only option, the increased traffic created by building the road would make the average cost-per-user to the state lower, the EIS says.

That traffic forecast was created for DOT by Seattle-based traffic consultants Fehr & Peers.

Southeast Alaska Conservation Council had its own analysis done, and its consultant called the state's forecast "highly inflated," and said it found errors in the models used, assumptions made and undocumented bias adjustments.

"Estimated usage under Alternative 2B also is so high that there would be inadequate ferry capacity to provide the no reservation/no wait ferry service level assumed in the SDEIS," according to the SEACC report, done by Smart Mobility, a traffic consultant.

DOT spokesman Jeremy Woodrow defended the state's traffic forecast.

"We went with Fehr & Peers for a reason, and that's because they're nationally regarded as experts in traffic analysis," he said.

But Fehr & Peers and others acknowledge the difficulty of forecasts, Woodrow said.

"They will say that traffic analysis is not an exact science, but you do the best you can with the information you have available," he said.

To determine demand for travel, the EIS looked at the communities of Haines, Skagway and Juneau, and said that if there was a road between them there would be much more travel between them, which it calls "unconstrained demand."

It also compared Juneau to Seward, and said that both were similar "tidewater" communities where roads end, but that traffic out of Seward was much higher. That's evidence of unmet demand, the EIS said.

"The main reason that Seward and many of those communities in Southcentral were looked at was because these are Alaskans who are connected to a road system," Woodrow said

"Because they are connected they are traveling without constraint. People in Juneau don't have that option, therefore they don't do it," he said.

The value of the road alternative is also being questioned, and a study developed by Juneau consultants McDowell Group and MD Barker LLC looked at each of the EIS options, including various road and ferry options.

That study looked at user benefits and total life-cycle costs of the project and found that none appear economically justified when total costs compared to public benefits were looked at over 50 years.

"The alternatives all cost more than they produce in benefits, that's probably a good definition of uneconomic," said Milt Barker of MD Barker, who worked with McDowell Group on the report.

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Woodrow defended the EIS, saying that while cost to the state was one of the factors that are to be considered, there are others as well.

"It all goes back to the purpose and need, it's not all about the financial aspect of the project, it comes down to which alternative best meets the items in the purpose and need statement," he said.

The goal, he said, is "lowering state and user costs, as well as creating more flexibility for the traveling public."

Most of the road construction cost will be paid by the federal government, though the state is required to pick up about 10 percent in matching costs.

McDowell and Barker looked at all the alternatives, what they'd cost now and in the future, including operating costs, vessel replacement and other long-term costs.

They concluded that all of the alternatives had total lifecycle costs of more than $1 billion, except for the "no build" alternative. And each had a negative net present value, with the preferred road coming out second-worst at negative $309 million.

Barker said that was unusual.

"I guess I was surprised that none of the alternatives came out to be of positive net benefit," he said.

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The McDowell and Barker study questioning the value of the DOT's road proposal was commissioned by DOT as part of its supplemental EIS. Its report on user benefits and costs is an appendix to the EIS and is available on the DOT's Juneau Access Improvement Project website.

DOT is taking public comment on the project until Nov. 25, and expects to release a final supplemental EIS next year after reviewing all the comments.

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