Parks Highway upgrades must serve the greater good

If we could turn back time about 40 years, as a state, borough and a region, we might rethink some of our decisions. But at least in one capacity we do have the opportunity to revisit a major decision from the early history of our borough and the city of Wasilla.

The Mat-Su Borough was 7 years old in 1971 — and the city of Wasilla was 3 years old — when the roadway connecting Anchorage to Fairbanks was upgraded and renamed the George Parks Highway.

Just 6,509 people lived in the borough, according to the 1970 U.S. Census. But residents and the local business community in Wasilla put up stiff resistance to Department of Transportation plans to build a bypass around that city for fear it would have adverse social and economic impacts.

Though the Parks Highway passes through Wasilla, then as now, the roadway does not belong to the city. It does not belong to the borough. Rather, the Parks Highway is a crucial piece of the state’s transportation infrastructure that connects Anchorage to Fairbanks and the North Slope oil fields at the other end of the Dalton Highway.

Without these two pieces of Alaska transportation infrastructure the economics of oil production in the state would be vastly less profitable. Without these roads, the only way in and out of the oil fields is by plane.

Locally, we use the Parks Highway to get from school to our homes, to work or to the grocery store. But it is a state roadway and belongs equally to all Alaskans.

Safety and congestion are the reasons why we, as a state, are investing in upgrading the Parks Highway from the northern edge of Wasilla to the turnoff to Houston High School.

We cannot know how the borough and Wasilla specifically would have developed differently if that bypass planned in the 1970s had gone forward. But we can say with certainty that the day-to-day consequences of that decision should inform our thinking as we review the state’s plans for upgrading the Parks today.

Mat-Su Borough’s chief of planning, Eileen Probasco, said the challenge is to look past individual interests to identify the greater public good.

“It definitely does impact their community, but it spans the whole state. And that’s what needs to be the focus,” she said of opposition to state plans for a four-lane divided highway.

It is time for us all to set aside our personal and political interests on this project and focus on the public good. We have a responsibility as a community to help design and engineer a Parks Highway upgrade that is safer and less congested for all Alaskans.