Road upgrade gets traction

BIG LAKE — When you consider the project to build a new South Big Lake Road, the phrase “long time coming” comes to mind.

“The (Mat-Su) Borough started this project close to 20 years ago,” said borough transportation planner Brad Sworts.

And the borough actually got amazingly far considering that the project was pretty much abandoned.

“It went through the (borough) assembly and got the alignment approved, the design was completed and they did geotechnical work and they got their permits. It looks to me like they had everything except the construction funding and then it just stopped,” Sworts said.

The borough had even purchased the land it needed to build the new road.

“It has been pretty much sitting there,” Sworts said.

Sworts said he doesn’t know what it was that stopped the project in its tracks. He said he suspects it might have had something to do with the downturn in state funds after the state oil crash in the 1980s.

At any rate, the project was revived in 2006. Well, sort of. The $9.2 million the state put toward the project wasn’t enough to complete it. So again the project languished.

Recently it was revived yet again. The state sent people out to do a “reconnaissance” report and decide if the work the borough already did still held true.

That report delivered last year determined that the route picked when the borough’s realignment effort started 20 years ago was a good path, Sworts said.

So, armed with that, the borough went to the state and asked if the project could be shifted over to the borough, which would take that $9.2 million and just move the project forward until the money ran out.

“We may not even have enough money to pave it but I think we will have enough money to do the fills and cuts and build the road embankment itself,” Sworts said.

The deal would have the state maintaining the new road after it’s built and the borough maintaining the old road.

Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss mentioned the project in last week’s Mayor’s Minute podcast recorded just after the assembly had signed off on the deal.

“The centerline is being marked as we speak and next summer the upgrade and straightening of South Big Lake Road from Jade Lake up to where the Burma Road begins will be in full progress,” he said.

Sworts confirmed that the centerline had been marked. He said that the new alignment is essentially a new road. The old South Big Lake Road along that portion will become a local road once the new one is done.

“People in that area have wanted a straighter, safer road for sometime,” he said.

The borough is working on wetlands issues, checking if there are any along the route and making sure it can get those permits.

Next step will be to find a firm that can review the 20-year-old borough plans, make sure they’re still useable, and update them if they’re not.

“Our goal is to try to get something moving for construction probably mid- or late-summer of next year,” he said.

DeVilbiss seemed pleased.

“Finally something is happening there,” he said on his podcast.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-227.