The Haines Borough Assembly passed a motion Tuesday to direct the manger to ask the companies working on the highway construction projects this summer to do their best to limit the delay to a maximum of 15 minutes.
The request, brought forward by the Tourism Advisory Board, is intended to reduce negative tour experiences that could hurt Haines’ tourism industry.
Alaska Department of Transportation mandates contractors keep delays to ten minutes, or 20 minutes in the instance of paving, Southeast Construction project engineer Bryce Iverson said. Contractors are fined for delays.
This summer, there will be two phases of highway improvements; from Allen Road to Milepost 3.5 and from Haines Highway to Mud Bay Road. “There is potential for a total of four delays that would reduce total tour times by one hour,” TAB chair Barbara Mulford wrote in a letter to the assembly.
Although the projects have two separate contractors, Southeast Construction is subcontracted to handle traffic control on both projects and can communicate between them.
Assembly member Brenda Josephson proposed eliminating the 15-minute time commitment in the motion, stating that to approach contractors with a time constraint would be “not in good faith,” but there was no second.
“I don’t think we can place a condition on it. I think we can request that—because tourism is such a big economic driver in our community—they could do their best to limit the delays,“ Will Prisciandaro said.
“What is most disturbing to me is that neither the tourism operators nor the contractors have been able to produce actual data that tells me when the delays occurred, what was the length of the delays,” borough manager Debra Schnabel said. She will also request delay data from traffic control in the highway projects.
In a second request brought forward by the Tourism Advisory Board, the assembly directed the manager to ask Alaska State Parks to delay construction on the Chilkoot Corridor road as late as possible to minimize interruption to summer tourism.
Roadwork began on Monday, April 8.