New borough road safety plan up for public review

The Matanuska Susitna Borough Assembly worked through a largely routine business agenda at its Tuesday, April 1 meeting. Borough public works director Tom Adams presented a draft Comprehensive Action Plan for roadway safety improvements intended to reduce crashes, injuries and deaths.

A public hearing on the plan is set for April 15. Mat-Su residents will be able to review what safety improvements are recommended and to make suggestions. If adopted, the borough would become eligible for $25 million in federal funds to help implement and plan and its recommended improvements.

“We have to have an adopted plan in place to get the $25 million,” Adams told the assembly.

The money comes through the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Adams emphasized that the plan is voluntary.

“This is no mandate, and it does not change the boundaries of the Mat-Su core area. And it does not favor one mode of transportation over another,” he said.

“Some people are concerned that this is ‘anti-ATV’ (All-Terrain Vehicles) or ‘pro-pedestrian,’ but that’s not the case. It also has no connection to carbon emissions or climate change,” Adams told the assembly.

The borough’s team on the project did an extensive analysis of the number of car crashes and locations and the circumstances under which they happened. The data is now in a report being made available. Sixteen meetings were held with various borough agencies involved in transportation along with road service area boards.

The data shows 40% of crashes occurred along high speed, high volume roads, many of them in the Wasilla area along the Parks Highway; 24% involved drugs or alcohol; 70% occurred at intersections, and 71% in winter conditions. Drivers 18 years of age were involved in most crashes but 25-year-old drivers were involved in most serious crashes.

The study included accidents involving ATVs, pedestrians and bicycles. Sixty six percent of the ATV accidents involved crashes with automobiles and 33% involved operators of the ATV that were 20 years of age or younger.

There were no surprises in the causes of crashes. They included drivers running off the road; failing to yield; failure to stay in lanes; running red lights or stop signs and “driver inattention,” a term usually used when cell phones are involved according to the study.

In other actions, the assembly approved an expansion of road service area boards to five members for the Caswell Lakes, Greater Willow, Meadow Lakes, Gold Trail, Greater Talkeetna and Trapper Creek, but provided for a three-member board for the Knik road service area.

There were a number of contract approvals:

• $101,955 for annual generator testing and maintenance to Pacific Power Group, LLC

• $408,719 to BSI Equipment, LLC for purchase of a front-loading compact truck

• $174,935 to Lounsbury and Associates for Midway Street construction management services

• $150,000 for EMS/MC to provide medical billing services for a five-year period with annual increases of 10 percent based on billin revenue

• $269,557 for a change order with CRW Engineering Group LLC for right-of-way mapping services for the Tex-A1 Drive extension, upgrade and pathway project

• $150,000 to be added to a contract with Fugro USA for pavement assessment and analysis, and for an extension of the contract to June 30, 2027