Anchorage Daily News

The ground beneath the proposed Knik Arm crossing got a little shakier Thursday when a slim majority of an important state-city planning agency voted to put it on a track to nowhere.

Technically, the 3-2 vote of the AMATS Policy Committee starts a lengthy series of public hearings and review about whether the nearly $700 million bridge project should be removed from the city's long-range transportation plan. It has to be there in order to get federal funding and approval from the Federal Highway Administration.

Bridge opponents say the toll bridge from Anchorage to Point MacKenzie would cost too much and take money from more important highway projects.

Supporters, including executives and board members of the toll authority created to push for construction, say it has broad public support and would open up new land for development on the north side of Knik Arm.

Both sides were crying political fouls Thursday.

If a current schedule holds up, a final vote on removing the bridge from the long-range plan could come on June 25, less than a week before a newly elected mayor will take office, and could change the balance of power on the planning committee.

Mayoral candidate Dan Sullivan supports the bridge and says he wants to see it built. His runoff opponent, Eric Croft, opposes the project, at least as it now stands.

Even if the current AMATS committee follows through and votes to pull the plug on the bridge in late June, a victorious Sullivan could turn things around and start a new process to put it back in the plan, which doesn't have to be finalized until 2011.

Gordon Keith, southcentral region director for the state Department of Transportation and one of two state AMATS members who voted in support of the bridge Thursday, said it makes more sense to wait and see who wins the mayor's race before making the decision.

"What is the overriding reason we have to do this (now)?" Keith said. "The new mayor is going to be (sworn in) in the next two months."

Anchorage's acting mayor, Matt Claman, and Assembly members Sheila Selkregg and Patrick Flynn, provided the three-vote majority to start the job of killing the bridge.

"This is a very expensive project," Selkregg said later. "They've spent $44 million and we haven't turned a shovel yet."

Selkregg said the political pressure in the past has always been behind the project. She said a staff review of the new proposal -- still not complete -- may have been slowed by state opposition to removing the bridge from the plan.

"I think there's an intent to slow this down until there's a new administration," Selkregg said.

Others said a lot has changed since the bridge project was put in the transportation plan in the first place: The global economy has tanked, threatening the pockets of private financiers the toll authority is counting on to come up with construction money, and the National Marine Fisheries Service has listed Cook Inlet beluga whales as an endangered species, a step that could make it even more expensive and maybe impossible to build a bridge across the arm.

Michael Foster, the recently seated board chairman for the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, said a decision on whether to start the process of deleting the crossing should have been put off until a "technical committee" of city and state planners could recommend whether to go ahead or not. That group has met twice on the proposal but has yet to vote on it.

"I think it's a political move," Foster said. "They had nothing to lose by letting it sit for another month and wait and see what the new administration wants to do."

Though the next mayor won't be sworn in until July 1, the outcome of the race will be clear shortly after the May 5 runoff election.

Contact reporter Don Hunter at dhunter@adn.com or 257-4349.

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