Palmer focuses on Glenn Highway

PALMER -- The city of Palmer has big plans in store for the Glenn Highway, longtime workhorse and arterial causeway for travel through and within the city.

Though the Glenn provides a convenient means of traveling north and south both within and through Palmer, the road also presents a barrier to east-west traffic through the city. There are currently two intersections that allow access to Palmer from the Glenn, and these intersections experience significant congestion and delay, according to the Capital Project Funding Request issued by the city.

"The big problem in Palmer is that the Glenn is very good at moving traffic north and south, but it really acts as a kind of a dam for east and west traffic," said Palmer City Manager Tom Healy.

In response to these problems, Palmer has drawn up plans to extend Dogwood Avenue, which currently terminates between the new Palmer Fred Meyer and the Palmer post office, west across the Glenn Highway.

If extended, Dogwood would travel behind the Palmer Carrs, providing back access to the building. Though the Dogwood developments would also help facilitate traffic to and from the new Palmer Fred Meyer, Healy said intentions to extend the street predate even the purchase of the land on which the store sits. Healy said he is currently working with the city to obtain the property that Dogwood will travel over, and Fred Meyer previously agreed to let the city perform the extension on its land.

The project is anticipated to cost just under $1 million. According to Healy, the money would be paid by the Department of Transportation, although Palmer has chipped in by performing the planning and surveying as well as obtaining the right-of-way.

Construction of the Dogwood extension is slated to begin either later this year or next year, depending on what crops up during the planning process, Healy said.

In addition to road construction, the project involves a traffic light to be situated at the intersection of the extended Dogwood Avenue and the Glenn.

The planning is being conducted with an eye to the state's eventual plan to expand the Glenn Highway from two to four lanes in an area extending south from Arctic Avenue. Healy hopes the city can organize this expansion of the Glenn by turning it into a boulevard-style street with a planted median, rather than a simple four-lane highway running through the center of town.

The population of Palmer has been recently growing at the rate of more than 7 percent per year, according to Palmer's funding request for its Glenn Highway projects. In May 2003, engineers measuring traffic on the city's West Evergreen Avenue recorded a weekly average of more than 12,000 vehicles per day. Increasing demand is also being placed on Evergreen and Arctic avenues, the two main east-west thoroughfares spanning the city.

Palmer's immediate plans for the Glenn deal with the extension of Dogwood Avenue. If funds are available, the city wants to extend Felton Street, which currently runs above the hill west of Palmer near the Tsunami Warning Center, to intersect with the Dogwood extension.

Healy said the city is nominating the extension of Felton for DOT's Statewide Transportation Improvement Program money. STIP funding, which is competitive and doled out annually by the state and federal government, would allow Palmer to solidify its plans for Felton. Since the funding is competitive, and since the decision process for this year hasn't begun yet, there's no real way of predicting the likelihood of the Felton Street project being completed, Healy said. However, Healy said he remains hopeful.

The Dogwood Avenue project will proceed in upcoming years regardless of whether the city receives STIP funding, Healy said, but plans for the Felton Avenue extension will have to wait until the DOT makes a decision on the city's STIP application. Palmer has requested $4 million for the Dogwood Avenue connection with Felton. Healy believes this project could come under consideration in the next few years if this money is granted.

All of the ongoing efforts to improve the area are focused toward making the Glenn a more city-friendly road.

"We want to make the Glenn work with the city, not against it," Healy said.

Contact Daniel Spoth at daniel.spoth@frontiersman.com.