By: Senator Dave Donley, November 15, 1999

• How We Got Here
• Progress Being Made
• Still Work to be Done

Anchorage's growing traffic congestion has been at the forefront of public discussion this year. It seems that not a day goes by when there isn't an article or a letter to the editor in the paper lambasting the state of the current road system. Why has this community outpouring become so apparent lately? Because Anchorage's roads are a mess and something needs to be done to fix the problem quickly.

How We Got Here

The Major Investment Study

In 1991, the federal government adopted the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) that amended its allocation formula for the distribution of transportation funds to state governments. ISTEA's intent was to give more flexibility to state and local governments in dealing with their transportation needs.

However ISTEA contained a provision which required communities of over 200,000 in population to complete a Major Investment Study (MIS) for all new major transportation projects. Anchorage was the only city in Alaska that had to comply with this provision. The MIS requirement proved to be extremely burdensome and delayed the advancement of many badly needed new road projects in Anchorage.

When the Legislature questioned why major new transportation projects weren't being developed in Anchorage the state Department of Transportation (DOT) consistently claimed that no such projects could begin without the completion of a MIS. This information proved to be erroneous. In 1998, DOT and the Federal Highway Administration indicated that only two Anchorage corridor improvement projects, the Glenn and New Seward Highways, would require a MIS.

In the seven years that the MIS requirement was in existence no MIS was ever completed in the entire United States and no MIS was even begun in Anchorage. While all of this was occurring federal transportation funds were being diverted away from Anchorage to other parts of the state with smaller populations and no MIS requirement.

Later that year, in my capacity as Co-Chair of the Anchorage Caucus, a bi-partisan group including all Anchorage legislators, I urged our Congressional Delegation to amend the MIS provision. Congress then re-authorized ISTEA with the passage of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). Our Congressional Delegation successfully repealed the onerous MIS requirement and integrated it within existing planning procedures. The removal of the MIS will help pave the way for major new transportation projects in Anchorage.

Alaska's Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan

Another problem, probably as instrumental as the MIS in hampering Anchorage road projects, is how DOT has implemented a provision contained in both ISTEA and TEA-21. Both ISTEA and TEA-21 contain a provision that requires states to adopt a Statewide Transportation Plan before it can allocate federal transportation funds. The plan must identify and rank statewide transportation projects to be funded under the new federal system.

To comply with this requirement, the state DOT created the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP) to allocate Alaska's portion of federal highway funding. At that time, the Hickel administration decided to adopt a STIP based on an internal DOT ranking policy and decided that Anchorage, with roughly 42% of the state's population, should only receive about 20% of the available federal funding under the STIP. The allocation of about 20% has remained constant for the past 7 years.

DOT's STIP is biased against urban areas like Anchorage because it fails to adequately consider volume of use when ranking statewide transportation projects. Ironically, local Anchorage officials failed to advocate for a fairer share of federal road and trail funding and never challenged this insufficient, unfair, and biased allocation formula.

The result of this unfairly bias system is that today when comparing Alaska's two largest communities, Anchorage and Fairbanks, Anchorage has a disappointingly small amount of divided roads and highway exits and on-ramps. Anchorage's population of 260,000 is over four times that of Fairbanks yet when combining the total amount of divided roads and exits and on-ramps Fairbanks has over 40% of the combined miles of divided roads and over 35% of the total exits and on-ramps.

There was no basis in law for this insufficient allocation to Anchorage. Furthermore, DOT's STIP violates state law since it determines how state resources are allocated without the authority of state statute or regulation. In Kenai Peninsula Fisherman's Coop. Ass'n v. State, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that state resources may only be allocated under the authority of state statute or regulation. The Anchorage Caucus has and will continue to pressure DOT to place its ranking criteria into regulation and/or statute to obtain more equitable funding for Anchorage roads and trails.

Less Road Maintenance Funds Go to Anchorage

Anchorage gets shortchanged when it comes to state funded road maintenance as it has assumed more local responsibility for snow removal and road maintenance. Anchorage makes a greater local effort toward road maintenance than Fairbanks, Juneau or Ketchikan. Based on 1997 DOT information, Anchorage removes snow from 54% of lane miles within the community compared to 42% for Juneau and 21% for Ketchikan. Fairbanks removes snow from only 17% of its community's roadways. (Fairbanks' lower number is mitigated by road service maintenance areas where residents contract out those services.) Clearly Anchorage has accepted more road maintenance responsibility than other Alaskan communities. Comparing state snow removal crews shows Anchorage has 1 crew member per 8,492 residents, so each crew member maintains 37 lane miles. In Fairbanks, Ketchikan and Juneau, there is one road crew member to around 2,900 residents. The disparity between lane miles serviced and the number of personnel indicates Anchorage either has an incredibly higher standard of road maintenance efficiency than the rest of the state or it's being shortchanged with less service.

Overall, the average highway maintenance cost per Alaska resident is about $90 per year, however, Southeast Alaska residents receive over $275 per year of state highway funds to maintain roadways and the expensive state ferry system.

The AMATS Committee

The power to make transportation decisions in Anchorage lies with the Anchorage Metropolitan Area Transportation Study (AMATS) committee. Although federal law says such planning committees should be established by state law AMATS was created only by an agreement between the Governor and the Mayor. All relevant branches of local and state government are represented on the AMATS committee except the State Legislature.

This has provided much frustration for Anchorage legislators who believe AMATS committee has failed to provide adequate planning for Anchorage road projects and have not provided leadership for advocating Anchorage's needs in the state budget process. In order for the Anchorage legislators to take a more active role in Anchorage road decisions, the Senate Transportation committee introduced legislation in both 1998 and 1999 to put Anchorage legislators on the AMATS committee.

Gaining legislative representation on AMATS would be a positive step toward improving the funding system for Anchorage's roads and highways. Unfortunately both Governor Knowles and the Anchorage Assembly opposed legislative participation on the committee and have worked to defeat the legislation.

Poor Coordination Between Local Officials

Another factor that has contributed to Anchorage's traffic problem is the poor coordination between the Anchorage School District and the AMATS committee. When ASD selects sites for new schools, it seems little or no consideration is given to the condition of the roads surrounding the selected site. If the road needs to be reconstructed, that process may takes 4-10 years to be completed utilizing federal highway funding.

Often times the AMATS committee isn't even aware that a site for a new school has been selected by ASD. This was the situation a few years ago when the ASD built a new elementary school on East 68th Avenue. At the time, East 68th Avenue was ill equipped to handle the increased volume of traffic activity that the new school was going to generate. That left city and state transportation officials scrambling on how to upgrade the road to accommodate the new school. The same thing is happening today with Elmore Road that is the proposed site for a new high school. Elmore Road, like East 68th, needs to be reconstructed and city officials are now trying to figure out how to accomplish this since Elmore Road wasn't even on AMATS' most recent Transportation Improvement Plan.

Obviously a better consultation and coordination effort is needed in the school site selection process.

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Progress Being Made

Last year, the Anchorage Caucus began to aggressively pursue larger solutions to Anchorage's traffic problems. The Caucus focused its efforts first on mitigating the traffic problem intersection at Lake Otis & Tudor. The Caucus was instrumental in obtaining $1.2 million for the installation of turn lanes at the intersection that has helped relieve a portion of the congestion. However, this was only a temporary solution to a much larger problem. A long-term solution was needed to effectively relieve the gridlock at this intersection and that area of town.

The reason the Lake Otis/Tudor intersection has remained a problem is because the MOA failed to follow its own Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP). The LRTP adopted in 1991 calls for Bragaw to be extended south to connect Abbott Loop and Dowling to mitigate traffic problems at Lake Otis and Tudor. However at that time, local officials could not agree on whether or not Bragaw should also be put through the University of Alaska campus area to where it currently ends by East High School. This impasse appears to have spilled over into the issue of extending Bragaw south of Tudor. Thus a "catch 22" situation was created. The LRTP solution to the problem at Lake Otis and Tudor was to extend Bragaw south of Tudor but the city officials lacked a consensus to make it happen. At this point the city should have amended the LRTP to seek another solution, but it didn't and nothing was accomplished or even planned to solve the problem at Lake Otis and Tudor.

The Anchorage Caucus took a big first step towards addressing this problem when it led the effort to secure $400,000 for the Anchorage Metropolitan Area Transportation Study (AMATS) committee to study the connection of Abbott Loop Road north to Tudor and Dowling Road west to Abbott Loop Road. This study will look at what types of transportation alternatives are needed, including the Abbott Loop north project, to relieve the congestion at the Tudor/Lake Otis intersection. The study should release its findings in 2000.

Another major new transportation route also on the LRTP but ignored by AMATS for years is the extension of Dowling Road west connect to Raspberry at Minnesota Drive. I worked to obtain nearly $3 million in federal funding to begin planning for this needed road project. The AMATS committee has now included this project on its preliminary Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) and work should begin on the design next year. This funding will expedite the development of a badly needed new East/West corridor in Anchorage.

This year, the Caucus looked to capture special High Priority/Demonstration (HP/Demos) program funding contained within TEA 21. HP/Demos will fund nearly $27 million in the next two years for 17 specific transportation projects in Alaska that were nominated by Congress under TEA-21. Only one of these 17 projects is located in Anchorage. In 1999 the Anchorage Caucus formally requested our Alaska Congressional Delegation to nominate HP/Demos funds for major improvements of at least $100 million to the Glenn Highway and New Seward Highways in the Anchorage area.

The request specifically asks for major upgrades including completion of widening each highway from four to six lanes, the construction of cloverleaf style interchanges and various intersection improvements. Preliminary estimates by DOT indicate it will take at least $100 million to fund these already badly needed upgrades.

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