Port work keeps pace

POINT MACKENZIE — As one project wraps up another is set to begin as the Mat-Su Borough steadily works to link Port MacKenzie to Alaska Railroad’s tracks.

Brad Sworts, the borough’s transportation planner, said the bi-modal loop — a road that will eventually be converted to a rail bed and allow trains to turn around at the port — will wrap up next week.

At the same time, the borough is waiting for the federal Surface Transportation Board to give the final go-ahead to start the next piece of the contract — finishing up that loop and get started on the rail bed.

“We’ll go ahead and extend the rail embankment about five to six miles to the north,” Sworts said, stopping just short of the agricultural district.

He said that part of the project will continue through the winter.

“As long as you can keep the ground broken up where you’re excavating your materials, as long as you keep that pit open, you can keep working,” he said.

He said the contract includes building the embankment extra heavy so it will settle out much better.

“We’ll let that embankment sit for about a year so it gets good and solid,” Sworts said.

The $30 million for that portion of the project came this year in the state’s capital budget. The project will need a few more of those kinds of appropriations before it can be completed. There is also the last stretch linking the rail line to the Alaska Railroad’s main line to complete, too.

“The final phase will be adding the rails and the ties and the switches and any mechanical or electronic equipment into the line,” Sworts said. “That’ll probably require a specialized contractor that does that kind of work.”

Exactly how much more money total it will take is something the borough is still trying to determine. Cost estimates in 2008 came in at around $300 million. A $20 million appropriation in 2010 put the total from the state for the construction phase at $50 million.

Sworts said one of the things the borough is looking at is trying to get a better idea of exactly how much it’s all going to cost.

“We’re in the process of doing a real good cost estimate,” he said. “Once we get this second contract out for the rail embankment we’ll have a real good idea of what the projects are coming in at.”

A borough press release says 24 jobs were created by this summer’s work and tries to give a scale for the work by saying 7,500 pickup truck loads worth of dirt has been moved in the Port MacKenzie area every day since April.

Elsewhere in Point MacKenzie, the borough is redesigning the road — Don Young Way — that accesses the port.

“The borough produced the design and then (the state’s Department of Transportation) is carrying out the construction work and Kenderson Construction is the contractor on that project,” Sworts said. “I think the contract extends up until next summer just to make sure all the slopes are grassed in and everything is stable, but I think they’re going to get a good portion of the work done this fall.”

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