Anchorage Daily News

An advisory group of state, city and professional planners and engineers says the proposed Knik Arm bridge project should be pushed back about a decade, but that planning for ways to finance and build it should continue.

The bridge project has a full schedule this week. The Anchorage Assembly has a public hearing Wednesday on whether it should be deleted from the area's long-range transportation plan altogether, and a policy committee of state and city officials is set to take up the question Thursday.

The latest twist is a compromise forged by the AMATS Technical Committee, which voted unanimously last week to recommend delaying it -- construction wouldn't begin until after 2018, instead of the presently targeted 2011 -- and to add a rail link as well as bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

The Assembly's vote, if there is one, would be advisory. The final decision belongs to the AMATS Policy Committee, a group composed of two state officials, two Assembly members and, until July 1, Acting Mayor Matt Claman. The new mayor, bridge supporter Dan Sullivan, will take the seat then.

Officials with the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, the agency created by the Legislature in 2003 to advocate for and oversee the project, say the process of killing the bridge -- started by an Assembly vote last year -- has been rushed through without enough public review. And the public has had no chance to comment on or even see this latest recommendation to push the project from a short-term list of priorities to the longer-range list, said authority spokeswoman Mary Ann Pease.

"Let's take the time, and delay (any) action from AMATS until the public is aware of what is going on," she said.

One policy committee member, Gordon Keith, said the compromise suggested by the technical experts at least would keep the project alive. Keith is a strong project supporter; he said he'd prefer that the idea of killing it had never come up. But since that's on the table, the new strategy "is making the best out of a bad situation," he said.

"If it came out of the transportation plan, that's the end of the project" and of the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, said Keith, Southcentral region director for the state Department of Transportation. If it is only moved back, "KABATA can live to fight another day."

Meanwhile, the authority would continue design and environmental work, and look for ways to finance the crossing, most recently estimated at about $680 million as a span supporting only car and truck traffic. The task is complicated by a federal decision to add Cook Inlet's beluga whale population to the endangered species list. Keith, as well as Mayor-elect Sullivan, said they like the idea of adding the train track to the project but Keith said that would also make it more expensive.

"This probably makes some sense," Sullivan said, adding that the railroad's interest helped make the compromise possible.

"It allows time for possible redesign of the bridge. In fact, there's thought now of making it a railroad bridge only for the first phase," he said.

The compromise also restates conditions originally set by the Assembly in 2007. Among those: securing money to build access roads on both sides before bridge construction could begin, and ensuring the bridge builders also design and install a connection to Gambell and Ingra streets instead of funneling bridge traffic through downtown on the A Street-C Street couplet.

The prospect of deleting the project came about after city elections in 2008, which produced a new balance of power on both the Assembly and the policy committee.

Assemblywoman Sheila Selkregg, who also serves on the policy committee, said Monday she still thinks the bridge is a bad idea that will siphon years of federal highway construction money from more important road projects.

"I think it's a well intended compromise in light of the political scene around the bridge," Selkregg said. "That said, I still think the bridge is fundamentally not in the best interest of the community ... It's unlikely I will support it."

Delaying the project means the bridge authority will continue spending money and paying consultants to plan for it, Selkregg said, adding that she thinks the Legislature should look into land ownership on the Mat-Su end of the project and who stands to benefit from its construction.

The two other city members on the policy committee -- Claman and Assemblyman Patrick Flynn -- were warmer to the compromise.

"I want to look at it some more," Claman said, "but ... I view the compromise favorably."

Flynn said he will probably vote for pushing the project back rather than killing it outright.

"I've spent a lot of time talking about it with the transportation folks, with neighborhood folks," he said. "Is anybody entirely happy? I'd say no, but we have finally (reached a point) where people are actually getting an opportunity to give some input and believe they are really being heard."

Flynn works for the Alaska Railroad. He said he plans to ask the Assembly Wednesday to decide if that is a conflict preventing him from voting on the bridge decisions, given the revived discussion of building the span with a rail link.

Gov. Sarah Palin appoints the bridge authority's board of directors but Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said the governor, from Wasilla, hasn't yet said if she supports it or not.

"It's still going through the vetting process," Leighow said. "The costs, the risks, the timeline, liability, financing proposals. Once that process is complete, the governor can be briefed ... and a decision can be made."

The city's Planning and Zoning Commission earlier this month delivered a stinging vote for deleting the bridge from the transportation plan, listing more than 20 reasons commissioners think it's a bad project. They range from "a substantial risk" that it won't pay for itself, to findings that it wouldn't reduce congestion in Anchorage, would have "a negligible effect" on reducing commuting times to and from the Mat-Su, and would hold back population and job growth in Anchorage.

That vote happened before the latest idea of just pushing the project back came about.

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