Change closer for rail route

May 1, 2005

KATE GOLDEN/Frontiersman reporter

WASILLA - If the governor's transportation package passes, Wasilla will be a little closer to getting the railroad tracks out of town.

Of the $21 million in the package intended for relieving Valley congestion, $2 million is allotted to the Alaska Department of Transportation for environmental-impact assessment of a rail realignment.

Thursday, the Alaska House of Representatives approved House Bill 187. It creates a capital-income fund from the Amerada Hess account, a $424 million portion of the Alaska Permanent Fund that does not go to dividends.

It won't be enough for the "extensive" federally required EIA, according to Bruce Carr, director of strategic planning for the Alaska Railroad Corp. But it's a start.

Where should the tracks go? The agencies involved - Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities as lead, the railroad, the city of Wasilla, the Mat-Su Borough and Mat-Su Community Transit - are still assessing their options.

The railroad hired HDR Alaska Inc. to analyze potential corridors. These are not specific track routes but, rather, 500-foot-wide swaths of land that may be used.

HDR engineers incorporated data on wetlands, topography, soil, land use, population density, land values and special sites into maps, using global information systems technology. After they scored areas of the maps and ruled out too-tortuous routes, two alternatives emerged.

Both stretch the track outside downtown Wasilla to the south, from Alaska Railroad Mile 156, southeast of the Seward-Meridian train crossing, to near the South Church Road/Mack Road train crossing.

John McPherson, project director at HDR, estimated the cost of the 4.6-mile northerly route to be between $80 million and $90 million. Farther to the south, an 8.1-mile route would cost around $145 million.

Carr cautioned that these preliminary price tags are very rough, given that the exact route through each corridor hasn't been chosen.

If 500 feet seems wide for a railroad corridor, it's because the railroad corporation is allowing for the possibility that there will be a highway next to the track.

The idea is not to abandon the Parks Highway, but to augment it with a completely new road: a beltway around the greater Wasilla area, which could, in some places, run alongside the railroad.

The $2 million going to DOT for environmental-impact assessment is not only for the track realignment, but to consider joint road-rail co-location.

While Carr said the railroad is open to the idea - in fact, that's why HDR examined such wide corridors - no other state or federal funding has been identified yet for such a project.

The Alaska Railroad hired HDR to study rail-only options. If DOT decides to pursue a joint road-rail project, it will have to assess those options as well before an environmental-impact assessment can begin.

"Until we get additional money, we're kind of stuck where we are," Carr told the Wasilla City Council.

The Alaska Railroad posts updates of the project at http://www.alaskarailroad.com/PROJECTS/index.html.

Contact Kate Golden at

352-2284 or kate.golden@

frontiersman.com.