Annual transportation fair set for Thursday

[[with Parks Highway art]]

WASILLA — It is billed as a one-stop shop for transportation projects planned in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, and this year’s 10th annual Mat-Su Transportation Fair will once again be the place to be for maps, updates and more.

This year’s event, set for Thursday from 3-7 p.m. at the Menard Sports Center in Wasilla, brings together the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, the cities of Palmer, Wasilla and Houston, the Alaska Railroad Corp. and the Mat-Su Borough.

Planners hope to provide updates on a range of projects from the current high-profile work on the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways, the anticipated upgrades to Knik Goose-Bay Road south of Wasilla or more localized efforts like the borough’s Bodenburg Creek bridge replacement project.

Some 80 projects will be featured, along with booths from transit groups and nonprofits, according to DOT spokesperson Shannon McCarthy, who added that the publically-funded projects represented a construction value in the range of $200-300 million, “with more $100 million for federal fiscal year 2018 alone.”

McCarthy said while federal funding is expected to remain stable, state funding is a different story.

“State funding is likely to be scarcer as Alaska’s economy adjusts to lower oil prices and the resulting lower levels of state revenues,” McCarthy said in a Tuesday press release.

Since the inaugural event in 2007, McCarthy said state and local transportation agencies have invested some $300 million in facility upgrades and completion of transportation network links, adding that the size of the project doesn’t always correspond with the amount of interest from the public.

“We get feedback from so many areas, and it is surprising that often the smaller projects get as much attention from folks as the larger ones do,” she said, adding that at the annual fair “it’s nice to have all these entities in one spot. Often compared with smaller public open houses for individual projects, the fair allows folks the time to stop at different tables and talk about different projects within an area.”

Some of the projects featured at the fair include:

• Big Lake Road intersection improvements

• Glenn Highway, Mile 66.5 to 92

• Glenn Highway reconstruction: Parks Highway to Old Glenn Highway

• Knik-Goose Bay Road reconstruction

• Mat-Su Borough Long-Range Transportation Plan

• Mat-Su Borough fish passage

• Palmer-Wasilla Highway eastern terminus

• Parks Highway Mile 44-52

• Alaska Railroad bridges and crossings

• Seldon Road extension phase II

• Seward Meridian phase II

• Trunk Road south extension

• Wasilla Main Street

For more information on the projects, visit http://matsutranspofair.blogspot.com

Contact reporter Steven Merritt at 352-2269 or steven.merritt@frontiersman.com