Sarah Palin turned the Knik Arm Bridge into a political football a decade ago foolishly, stupidly grandstanding about a Bridge to Nowhere after Ted Stevens got funding for it into the 2008 budget. As governor, she refused to build it and the money went elsewhere.
Bill Walker, channeling his inner Palin, gleefully canceled the project as a “megaproject” in July 2016 saying he needed the money to spend elsewhere. My cynical side says he cancelled it because it conflicts with his own personal white elephant, the fabled Alaska LNG Pipeline or perhaps because it did not connect Valdez. My political side simply observes this as a reflection of the anti-development democrats infesting his administration. It is what they do. https://www.adn.com/politics/2016/06/30/governor-shuts-down-work-on-knik-arm-crossing-susitna-dam/
But when you take foolish actions, and Walker’s was just as foolish as Palin’s there are consequences. Perhaps not immediate, or even as expected, but there are always, always consequences.
Those consequences took place last week, when a tractor – trailer rig trucking a modular building tried to take it under a bridge in Eagle River. It was too tall and sheared off its top, damaging one of the support beams under the bridge. This instantly closed this portion of the Glenn Highway to inbound traffic during the height of rush hour. The traffic jam was epic, with vehicles taking 1.5 – 3 hours to make it through Eagle River. http://www.ktuu.com/content/news/Traffic-slows-to-a-crawl-on-the-way-into-Anchorage-as-Glenn-shutdown-continues-477640143.html
If you figure that on average 30 – 35,000 commuters make the daily drive from the MatSu to Anchorage and back, you can at least run some numbers on how much this traffic jam costs. For 30,000 commuters making $20 / hour, having to wait 90 minutes to get thru Eagle River, total cost in lost time at work is $900,000. For 35,000 commuters making $25 / hour having to wait 3 hours, that cost rises to $2.6 million. Add to it fuel burned idling, somewhere in the vicinity of $50,000 and you have the cost of Bill Walker’s Traffic Jam somewhere between $1 – $2.7 million.
You can also play this same game with the daily traffic delays on the Glenn, which happen all the time. Figure the low end at $100,000 for a 10-minute delay at the low end and $146,000 at the high end. Time is money.
At the low end, it will take you 10,000 days, or 27 years to pay for a billion-dollar bridge. At the high end, 6,849 days, or 19 years to pay for it, all simply in time lost sitting in traffic on the Glenn waiting for traffic to clear.
Having another option to get into and out of Anchorage sure would be a good idea if for no other reason than the cost of personal time lost in traffic delays.
Perhaps it is time for the Governor of All Alaska to consider the welfare of others than democrats infesting his office and administration. Time to build the Knik Arm Bridge. Do it. Sooner would be better than later.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He is a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
