Residents have until March 13 to make comments on a plan to replace mainline ferry service between Haines and Juneau with a small ferry to Katzehin and a 51-mile road connecting to the Juneau road system at Echo Cove, 40 miles north of downtown Juneau.
Comments should be mailed to Reuben Yost, DOT, 6860 Glacier Highway, P.O. Box 112506, Juneau, AK 99811-2506.
Completion of the final Environmental Impact Statement laying out the state’s plan automatically triggered what may be the public’s last chance for comment prior to a final decision by federal and state officials. It also prompted two meetings in Haines in the past week.
Malcolm Menzies, Southeast regional director of the state Department of Transportation, made arguments for the road option to a skeptical crowd of about 30 at Tuesday’s Chamber of Commerce meeting. About 100 residents turned out last week to hear swimmer Steve Vick’s account of swimming between the two cities last summer to protest the road plan.
Menzies characterized the road plan as a done deal, the most economic form of transportation in Lynn Canal and a “total win” for Haines, Skagway and Juneau. He reported that Gov. Frank Murkowski won’t wait for the estimated $258 million cost of his preferred alternative but instead will use $50 million in federal highway money already appropriated to start building a 30-mile section to the old Comet mine as early as May.
After that, Murkowski will blaze a reconnaissance “pioneer road” to Katzehin to scope out engineering for the second section that would cross 63 avalanche zones, he said, estimating completion of the project by 2010.
But Menzies acknowledged that Murkowski will have to go to the legislature for money to complete the first section, estimated to cost $72 million and take two years. State Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Haines, who supported last year’s road plan that would extend to Skagway, now doesn’t think a road to Katzehin is practical, according to Friday’s Juneau Empire.
Thomas and other legislators were upset when Murkowski dumped local projects out of the state’s transportation priority list to add his pet mega-projects, including the Juneau road, and mammoth bridges across Knik Arm in Anchorage and to Gravina Island in Ketchikan.
“People are totally offended they lost their projects, and I don’t blame them,” Thomas told the Empire.
Menzies downplayed the apparent loss of legislative support, characterizing it as “minor fussing.” He criticized a section of the EIS that shows the 30-year net cost of the road plan costing $88 million compared to $61 million for continued ferry service – a figure seized on by road opponents – as faulty for not including the cost of replacing ferries.
“The ferry system is dying, but they’re not saying that,” he said.
That comment triggered a rebuke from local tour operator Dan Egolf charging deliberate poor management of the ferry system by the Murkowski administration as evidenced by an increasingly confusing ferry schedule. “You say the ferry system is dying. I say this administration is killing the ferry system.”
Menzies said the road plan would have a positive effect on the local tourism industry, but resident Jim Shook, who raised the question, said afterward he wasn’t convinced by the figures from the EIS. “You can’t trust any of those numbers. They’re all smoke and mirrors because (the state) is desperate to build this road.”
Road opponents at the presentation hammered on a half dozen points, including that the road (designed to be driven at 45 mph) won’t be appreciably faster than taking the fast ferry, that its estimated 34 days of closure each winter will reduce current access, that it will be more dangerous than ferry travel, and that its funding robs Alaska of money needed for more pressing road needs and for ferry improvements.
Menzies estimated the cost of driving the road and taking the shuttle ferry, one way, at $35, including gas. A 50-car ferry would run between Haines and Katzheim eight times a day during summer and six times a day in winter, he said.
The EIS predicts that a private bus service will provide transportation for pedestrians at between $35-$50 one-way.
Road opponents, however, point to figures showing that 45 percent of ferry passengers don’t travel with a vehicle and that bus service is only an assumption by the state, and may not happen at all in winter months. “It doesn’t save a lot of people and money,” said Lynn Canal Conservation’s Nancy Berland.
Menzies said Murkowski hasn’t given up plans for road connections to Haines and Skagway, saying a tunnel may be an option for reaching Skagway and a bridge or suspended underwater “tube” could be used for a road link between Katzehin and the Chilkat Peninsula.
Menzies acknowledged that the state’s figures for “increased demand” for a road were based on population figures of Lynn Canal communities and phone surveys to Juneau households commissioned by DOT, not on increased car traffic on ferries, which he said has stayed flat since the late 1980s.
Asked what would happen to the road plan if Murkowski doesn’t run or isn’t elected governor this fall, Menzies replied, “Who knows?”
A copy of the final EIS is available at the public library.
Menzies said Murkowski will seek funding for planned upgrades to Lutak Road and to the Haines Highway between 3 Mile and 23 Mile – projects pulled from the state’s road priority list – from state general funds this year.