Leave Bogard alone

As a longtime resident of this Mat-Su Borough, I am ecstatic to see the Borough Planning Commission make a wonderfully wise recommendation about the Bogard Road extension.

Hurrah!

I am grateful to the members for thinking this through. Thanks for making a recommendation based on concern for impacts on our whole community, like farmland, auto traffic versus transit systems, community and neighborhood cohesion, gas prices, and project costs versus benefits to all.

It’s true that it makes no sense to spend big money on an extension that further costs us farmland, neighborhoods and beauty. Construction costs could be routed to better transit systems and saving more farmland and air quality from the bulldozer.

We are all watching the price for a gallon of gas skyrocket. Just today the newspaper reports about commuters switching from individual autos to shuttles, buses and the like. In the next couple years, we are going to see traffic decrease drastically because of high fuel costs. Better to spend the Bogard extension monies on good transit systems and be ready for an affordable future for residents.

Higher gasoline prices mean food shipped to Alaska gets increasingly expensive, and we must seriously re-gear to grow more of our own local foods. We need every bit of farmland for growing, not locked under pavement.

In short, we need to stop ourselves from repeating an obsolete mantra of “more roads, more roads.” This is not a viable solution.

I urge the Borough assembly to please start supporting and advocating a new and exciting direction, one that propels us to the future sanely and in a sustainable way. Please throw out the Bogard extension alternatives — all of them.

Ellen Vande Visse

Palmer

Editor’s note: This letter refers to the Mat-Su Borough Planning Commission’s recommendation to choose none of the Bogard Road extension route proposals and was received on Tuesday, the same day the Mat-Su Borough Assembly voted to extend Bogard Road on the “red” route.