Anchorage Daily News

In anticipation of a public hearing scheduled for tonight before the Anchorage Assembly, backers of the proposed Knik Arm bridge fired back at opponents Monday with a survey they say shows strong public support.

Bridge foes immediately questioned the poll results, accusing the pollster of asking leading questions that encouraged respondents to say they favor the project.

The Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, a state agency charged with figuring out how to pay for and build a bridge to the Mat-Su Borough, commissioned the survey conducted by Dittman Research last month.

The bridge authority released the results a day before the Assembly plans to hear more public testimony on the proposed bridge and possibly vote on whether to include it in the city's long-range transportation plan.

Bridge authority officials said they hope the poll results will counter criticism voiced by what they called a "vocal minority" that may have given Assembly members a false impression of strong local sentiment against the project.

"It looks like it's very one-sided, and the truth is, it is not," said Henry Springer, the bridge authority's executive director.

Last month, Dittman's firm phoned a sample group of 506 residents in Anchorage and Mat-Su and asked them a series of 33 questions. The survey found that 64 percent favored building a bridge. That's roughly the same level of support found in a similar poll taken two years ago, said pollster Dave Dittman.

It also found that 71 percent thought a Knik Arm bridge should be included in Southcentral Alaska's long-range transportation planning, Dittman said.

The idea of building a span across Knik Arm to link downtown Anchorage with the largely undeveloped area around Point MacKenzie has been around for decades. The project gained momentum in 2005 when Congress set aside more than $200 million, a fraction of the total cost, in a transportation spending bill.

That earmark was removed from the bill after the bridge and another linking Ketchikan with Gravina Island were derided nationally as "bridges to nowhere" and examples of wasteful government spending.

The bridge authority is trying to find private investors to pay for most of the project, estimated to cost about $600 million, though their plan will still require more than $100 million in federal funds.

Anti-bridge activists have been trying to keep the project out of Anchorage's long-range transportation plan, which unlocks federal funding for area transportation projects.

Several of them said they doubted the bridge authority's poll.

"It was structured and formed to elicit a very specific type of response," said Stephanie Kesler, co-chair of a Government Hill Community Council committee addressing the bridge issue. The bridge authority is proposing cutting a subsurface road through Government Hill to reach the bridge.

Kesler said she thought the poll questions were too vague and didn't address specifics of the project, particularly its potential to draw money away from other transportation needs.

Steve Cleary, The Alaska Public Interest Research Group's executive director, also took issue with some of the questions. "A lot of them seem to be leading questions that people couldn't really refute or wouldn't be knowledgeable about," he said.

About a third of the questions in Dittman's poll asked respondents if they agreed or disagreed with certain statements.

For example, 48 percent agreed and 45 percent disagreed with the statement: "Congestion in downtown Anchorage will be worse with a Knik Arm bridge." Similarly, 44 percent agreed and 50 percent disagreed when the pollster said: "The Knik Arm crossing will take money away from more important transportation needs."

The question of whether they were in favor of or opposed to the bridge was No. 30 in the poll. That might have skewed the poll, said Marc Hellenthal, another Anchorage pollster who wasn't involved in Dittman's survey.

"If you're looking for a good read on anything you ask it right up front, before you've imparted any information," Hellenthal said. "Then if you want to, you can ask it again at the end."

Dittman said the questions were laid out very deliberately in order to ensure that the respondents had enough information about the issue and were aware of various points of view. The, "agree or disagree" questions were equally balanced with pro and con statements.

"You've got the reasons to support it and the reasons to oppose it, then you put them all together, stir them up and ask, 'Now that we've talked about these do you support it or oppose it?' " he said.

Daily News reporter Richard Richtmyer can be reached at rrichtmyer@adn.com or 257-4344.

A sample of the poll questions:

• Do you feel planning for a Knik Arm bridge should or should not be included in Southcentral Alaska's long-range transportation planning?

• Anchorage is rapidly running out of usable land and a Knik Arm crossing will provide more residential land and lower housing costs. (agree or disagree)

• A Knik Arm crossing will hurt Anchorage businesses, property values may fall and employers will relocate their businesses to newly opened land on the Mat-Su side of the inlet. (agree or disagree)

• The budget for a Knik Arm bridge specifies that most of its construction and all of its maintenance would be paid by users of the bridge, not tax money. If the Glenn Highway is to be expanded, do you feel most of its construction and all of its maintenance should be paid for by its users, or by tax money?