PROGRESS:Bad Historic Planning, Lack of Regulation Causing Mat-Su’s Continued Traffic Woes

As the population of the Matanuska-Susitna region continues to grow, Borough developers and planners are taking a hard look at just how the roads that funnel the area’s residents to work and play are able to handle the volume — and what can be done to plan for the future.

The upcoming 2020 U.S. census is likely to federally recognize what locals already know to be true: the MatSu Borough has more than passed the 100,000 resident mark. For road planners those numbers solidify the truth that the region’s transportation infrastructure system has not kept up with demand.

Good road planning relies on a grid system laid out over the course of the region’s development, Borough officials said. But the MatSu Borough, which historically never expected the kind of population growth the region has seen, doesn’t yet have that.

“Transportation and roads — adequate roads — that efficiently and effectively move people are one of our biggest challenges,” said Jude Bilafer, the capital projects manager for the Borough.

That lack of groundwork, combined with a lack of regulation that makes the region so friendly to developers and new residents alike, and a recent halt to state and federal funding for major road improvement projects, has left Borough officials trying to problem solve with little cash to do so.

“I can show you some maps from the 80’s. Part of the challenge was there was a willingness to concede things to developers in order to bring development to the Borough … there was some lose guidelines and we get ourselves into this mess,” Bilafer said. “That doesn’t work in the long term and we are reaping the benefits of that, if you will.”

Today the Borough is a combination of roads built or maintained by the state, including Palmer Wasilla Highway, the Glenn Highway, most of Bogard Road and Knik-Goose Bay Road; roads built and maintained by the Borough, such as Trunk Road; and privately owned roads that cannot be maintained by the Borough because they do not meet Borough standards.

“One of the biggest issues is we don’t have a planned road grid like you down in the states,” said Brad Sworts, the Borough’s capital projects pre-design and engineering manager. “The way we’ve been developing here is subdivision by subdivision. At some point the subdivisions that are near the front end of the road end up taking a lot of traffic from the subdivision that get developed behind them.”

Connecting all of those roads and subdivisions together into a system that makes sense and keeps residents happy is largely a Borough problem, whether it officially controls the issue areas or not, Sworts and Bilafer acknowledge. And fixing those issues is going to take some teamwork, they said.

Currently, developers are only required to connect to roads the homes they build, Bilafer said, according to a manually put in place by the Borough in the early 1990s.

The Borough will accept any newly constructed roads for maintenance if they meet their standards, which include specific drainage requirements and minimum width of 60 feet, he said. Roads that don’t meet those benchmarks are instead designated as “private,” and their maintenance is left to the residents.

The manual does not require developers to help the Borough manage traffic flows by constructing what are known as “collector roads,” which are about 100 feet wide, Sworts said.

The manual could be subject to an update by the Assembly soon, said Terry Dolan, the Borough’s director of public works, whose office is responsible for maintaining the roads built to Borough standards. But pushing such an update through may not happen quickly or easily.

“It’s politically very sensitive because it essentially says how much money developers have to spend,” he said. “They’re businesses doing their best to create value out of the properties that they purchase, and as long as the roads are connected and they create them well enough that the Borough can maintain them, that’s as much as you can expect.”

Without new regulations ordering them to do so, convincing developers to construct bigger roads in and out of subdivisions is an uphill battle. Sworts and Bilafer argue that developers who do so could see an increase to their property values as residents are given more and better access to commuting corridors.

“By not providing the collector road system the developer is kind of shooting themselves in the foot because they don’t get the benefit of the increased value,” Sworts said. “People start saying ‘I don’t want to live there because it’s too congested, too hard to get out.’"

Bilafer said his office is willing to work with developers to create easy residential access. He said if developers would give the Borough a boost by donating the right of ways or even simply laying utilities in locations that will not require them to be moved during future road projects, the Borough may be able to do the rest.

“Fifty percent of the cost of the road project is the right of way. [Donating] that would get us half way there,” Sworts noted. ““If [developers] could realize the potential of what they would gain by building the road then they would. But they’re not there yet.”

As it stands, however, Bilafer and his team are powerless to build new major roads without directed funding. That money must come through a bond package approved by the Assembly and voters or by federal or state funding, he said. The current fiscal environment has left his office strapped for cash for even small projects and coming up with ways to find cost savings enough to scrape together left over funding from a 2013 bond package.

A new road bond proposal could be presented to the Assembly as early as June, according to Borough officials.