Highway upgrade begins this summer

WASILLA — If you live off the Parks Highway north of Wasilla and don’t know them already, now is a good time to start scouting alternate routes home.

“Construction will be starting this summer on the segment of the Parks Highway between Lucus Road and Church Road,” Alaska Department of Transportation engineer Jim Amundsen said.

He said that majority of work should wrap up this summer, though some landscaping and seeding will probably bleed over into next summer.

“If you don’t start getting the grass seed in until September, it’s hard to get the coverage done,” he said.

In addition to rebuilding the road and continuing the four-lane segment out past Church Road, the department will improve drainage and upgrade pedestrian pathways. The department also will widen and improve the highway’s intersections with Deskas Street, Lucus and Church.

“In some places, it’s turn lanes, in some cases it’s better lighting,” he said.

Amundsen said the goal is to provide a “better, newer, faster, safer” highway. It’s the first phase of a three-phase project that will expand the Parks to four lanes all the way up to Big Lake Road. The other two phases are Church Road to Pittman Road and Pittman Road to Big Lake Road.

Amundsen said the department is still buying right of way to build those segments and therefore hasn’t moved them into the construction phase. The project’s website — parkshighway44-52.info — says the second phase is scheduled for 2015 to 2016, the third for 2017 to 2018.

This construction project is one of a handful of projects DOT has going this summer on the Parks Highway. The others are much farther north in the Glitter Gulch/Denali National Park area.

“Getting to Fairbanks is going to be challenging for most of the summer with two or three areas of active construction during the summer,” Amundsen said.

He said DOT specifies in its contracts with construction companies that delays can’t be longer than 20 minutes. But if there’s three of them, that’s an extra hour of travel.

He encourages drivers planning long road trips to visit the department’s navigator website or call 511.

Speaking of delays — the other big one in the Valley this year will probably be the repaving of the Palmer-Wasilla Highway from Parks Highway to Knik-Goose Bay Road. This is the newest section of that road that runs in front of Home Depot and the new Valley Native Primary Care Center.

“Everybody knows that once construction starts there’s going to be some disruption, and as busy as that road is I would be lying to say there won’t be pain and suffering involved, and we know that and we try to minimize it as much as possible,” he said. “The day you get caught behind the flagger is the one day you didn’t have the extra 10 minutes to be able to afford it.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270

or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.