Palmer’s productive detour

PALMER — It’s been a long time coming, but city residents and state and local officials seem to have finally decided what they want to do about moving traffic in and out of the city.

The project began as a couplet — a pair of one-way streets — running east to west. One street would bring traffic into the city, the other would lead traffic out.

A blizzard of negative comments from upset residents put the kibosh on that. And since July of 2009 a Citizens Advisory Committee has been looking at other ways to calm traffic in and out of the city.

What they’ve come up with is an array of fixes to a handful of downtown streets:

• The Palmer-Wasilla Highway would become a five-lane road from the Glenn Highway to just past Hemmer Road

• Dogwood would be extended out to reach Felton Street

• Felton Street would be extended to reach the Palmer-Wasilla Highway

• Industrial Way would be extended to meet Springer Loop

• Springer Loop would be aligned with Helen Drive at the Glenn Highway and a traffic signal would go up there

• There would be a traffic signal on Arctic Avenue either at Valley Way or Denali Street

None of these changes includes a one-way couplet, according to Alaska Department of Transportation Project Manager Jim Amundsen.

“All of the streets in questions are two-way streets,” he said. “It does not include any one-way streets.”

Lately, he said, he and the Citizens Advisory Committee have been taking the proposal around to various local government boards. It’s met with approval at the Palmer City Council, the borough’s Transportation Advisory Board, and, most recently, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly, which endorsed the plan at its meeting Tuesday.

“DOT’s design team is currently working with the (Citizens Advisory Committee) starting with the design work to move forward with the alternative that was recommended,” Amundsen said. “The Citizen’s Advisory Committee isn’t going to just disappear.”

He said the committee will continue working with DOT as the project moves along and that it will be some time before the state starts advertising the project to draw in interested bidders.

“Expectation is it will probably be 2013 to 2014 before we get the design done, acquire the right-of-way and have a plan set out to advertise,” Amundsen said.

He said whether it goes in 2013 or 2014 will depend largely on what happens as the state begins the process of acquiring right-of-way. If the state just has to buy small strips of land on which to build the roads, it can get started sooner.

“If we’re out there buying houses and relocating businesses or something larger like that, it takes much longer,” Amundsen said

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