Arterial blockages

PALMER — New improvements to Bogard Road could be years away, officials with the state and Borough told the Frontiersman this week.

The artery, which currently stretches from Palmer into Wasilla, is largely a single lane in each direction and has been the location of a variety of major improvements over the last several years, including an expansion and, most recently, a new roundabout at the Seldon Road intersection.

That roundabout, which was completed mid-summer, was funded by the state, which holds responsibility for major sections of the thoroughfare.

Now, local officials and residents are eagerly looking forward to future state-run improvement projects, which are likely to start at the road’s biggest current problem area: the intersection of Bogard and North Engstrom Roads.

“The number one complaint I get from all of my constituents is: what are you going to do about Engstrom Road and Bogard,” said Barbara Doty, the District 6 representative for the Borough Assembly.

Although Bogard does not actually pass through her district, a large number of her constituents use it is a primary road from their homes.

“We have seven schools along Bogard and Seldon, and one minor collector that was not designed to take the volume of traffic,” she said.

Doty said the Borough and state need to come up with ways for residents to travel out of their subdivisions without creating traffic back-ups or an increase in accidents. Solutions could include extending som current roads to Engstrom, such as Bear Street and Tex-Al Road, she said.

From the Engstrom intersection, the logical and lowest cost solution, Doty said, is to install a new roundabout. That’s because another nearby street, North Green Forest Drive, which connects Palmer-Wasilla Highway and Bogard, is not directly across from Engstrom. Realigning the streets instead of putting in a roundabout would be much more costly, she said.

But because that area of the road is controlled by the state and not the Borough, any improvements would be provided by the Department of Transportation — leaving Borough officials and residents waiting — for a while, potentially.

A spot on the state’s calendar for such a project could be a long way off, officials with the state’s Department of Transportation (DOT) said. Alaska receives $400 million annually in federal funding for highway improvements, a portion of which can be used for improvements on non-highway system routes, such as Bogard.

But as funding has shrunk, the competition for a spot on that improvements list has increased, said Shannon McCarthy, a spokesperson for DOT. Officials with that agency will have a community transportation program evaluation board meeting with the Borough sometime before March, she said. When that happens, they will be able to release details on any future projects.

Until then, Doty said she is working with community entities, such as the North Lakes Community Council, to lay whatever groundwork might be necessary to have the project ready to go.

Included in that list, she said, could be the need to make room for the roundabout by relocating the Central Mat-Su Fire Department’s Station 52, located next to the Engstrom and Bogard intersections. The North Lakes Community Council agreed at a meeting this month to send the fire department a letter asking them to “please expedite the move,” she said. But where they would go — and where the cash to pay for relocation would come from — is also a subject of debate unlikely to be settled soon.

Meanwhile, officials on the Bogard Road Service Area (RSA) board, which held its regular meeting Wednesday, continued to discuss the prospect of improvements. Pushing them through is out of their hands, officials said, but they play to keep the prospects of such a project and any road other related road expansions on their radar.

“There’s a possibility, I suspect, that some things may get in the mix that we don’t have the opportunity to be in the discussion on, initially,” said Gary Hessmer, one of the RSA’s supervisors. “There’s no easy answer.”

The RSA’s next public meeting is in March, likely after the yet to be scheduled state community transportation board meeting.