Local legislators reaching out to Valley residents

MAT-SU — A pair of Valley legislators are midway through a planned series of public meetings, with two more scheduled for the coming weeks.

Sen. Charlie Huggins, R-Wasilla, and Rep. Mark Neuman, R-Willow, met with constituents most recently on Saturday at Knik Elementary School to discuss transportation issues.

Next on the itinerary is a Feb. 26 meeting at Meadow Lakes Elementary School from 10 a.m. to noon. The last meeting in the series is set for March 19 at the Willow Community Center, again from 10 a.m. to noon.

Saturday’s meeting featured a gaggle of Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities officials, an update on the borough’s project building a prison at Point MacKenzie, and Capt. Hans Brinke, head of the troopers’ Bureau of Highway Patrol.

Transportation issues occupied the bulk of the meeting, Brinke said. They mostly focused on Highway Safety Corridors on Knik-Goose Bay Road and the Parks Highway between Wasilla and Big Lake.

“It was definitely a good thing to listen to the concerns of the community that lives out there,” Brinke said. “It’s everybody’s responsibility for traffic safety.”

Brinke takes a wide view on traffic safety, saying there are “four Es” where traffic safety is concerned. First is engineering — the responsibility that DOT has to build roads. Next is enforcement — Brinke’s job of cracking down on rule breakers. Third is educating the public and fourth is emergency response when things go wrong.

Of the four, Brinke said, it was that first E people seemed to want to discuss.

“To be quite honest, most of the conversation dealt more with road improvements, maintenance,” he said. “We did talk a bit about the enforcement. There was some discussions about maybe lowering the speed limit, but that’s one aspect that the department of transportation is going to be looking at, to see if they can do that.”

The safety corridor on Knik-Goose Bay, he said, is just over a year old. The one on the Parks Highway is older. The corridors are zones in which traffic fines are doubled. Troopers also step up patrols in the area. Neither is designed to be permanent.

“They’re up there until it’s been shown that there is a significant reduction,” Brinke said. “It is our plan to at some point de-designate the corridors that are out there.”

A big portion of the meeting was also spent discussing ways to be proactive, so the state is planning for future growth instead of reacting to population increases the Valley has already seen.

As for the rest of the meetings, Brinke said he’s not aware that any of them are focused on traffic safety, so neither are on his calendar.

“I’m not aware of any other (safety) corridor meetings,” he said. “If there are any more meetings scheduled I will more likely than not attend.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.