Meeting Thursday to consider bypass

WASILLA — Many in the Valley have seen the bumper stickers: “Lord, help me get through Wasilla.”

Whatever else that sticker is referencing, it’s partially a comment on how many stoplights dot the Parks Highway as it passes through town.

In a lot of ways, Wasilla is a long, slow slog for drivers heading from Anchorage to points farther north. Hockey moms taking kids to practice and truck drivers delivering goods to Fairbanks have to occupy the same stretch of asphalt.

But the Mat-Su Borough, city of Wasilla and the state Department of Transportation are working together to form a plan to change that.

“It’s been called the Wasilla bypass in past years,” said DOT’s Mat-Su Area Planner Allen Kemplen, who is heading up the project. “We call it an alternative corridor, a controlled access corridor.”

The idea is to create a route for those vehicles that don’t really have a need to stop in Wasilla. The new route will emphasize speed and efficiency over stoplights and at-grade intersections. The project is in its very nascent stages. Right now, planners are just looking for good ideas. They’re planning a meeting Thursday at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center from 6 to 8 p.m. to do just that.

There won’t be a whole lot of details to share at the meeting, at least not regarding what the road will look like, how it will be funded or the exact route it will take. So far the state has only identified a large area in which it wants to look for routes. The area under consideration cuts a broad swath through the borough south of the current Parks Highway.

When speaking about the need for a new corridor there, Kemplen points out that the Valley has three main east-west corridors — the Parks Highway, the Palmer-Wasilla Highway and Bogard Road.

The Parks Highway is the southernmost of the three, which means that for residents in the Knik-Fairview area the most logical route is the Parks Highway.

Kemplen cites population figures showing that Knik-Fairview is the fastest growing area of the Mat-Su Borough. That means that as more people move there, big trucks hauling double loads will more and more frequently need to share the road with locals just trying to get from one part of the Valley to another.

So the project needs to be completed soon, Kemplen said.

Another factor contributing to planners’ urgency is that with an increased population in the area come more neighbors for a potential new highway, and thus more potential opposition to such a project.

But even if everything goes according to plan the project won’t start turning dirt for a couple of years. Project managers, though, hope to have a route chosen by the end of this year.

“The longer we delay the harder the job gets,” Kemplen said.

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