THE FAST LANE

WASILLA — As predicted last year, the new Trunk Road isn’t likely to be opened until next summer.

Well, it might open early, said John Waisanen, construction project engineer with the Alaska Department of Transportation. But that’s a big “might.”

“That depends on how our paving goes in the fall,” he said. “We don’t have a schedule to open it. The contract is until July of next year.”

The crew hired to put in the new road comes from Scarsella Brothers, a firm headquartered in Washington state. The current project, dubbed Phase I, carries a price tag of $22 million.

When Phase I is complete there will be a new, straighter route from the Parks Highway to the Palmer-Wasilla Highway that will also avoid the treacherous hill above the UAF Experimental Farm on the current Trunk Road.

Phase II would bring the new, improved Trunk all the way up to Palmer-Fishhook Road. The state hopes to begin on that phase once it finishes the first one. The state says it’s already bought most of the right-of-way it needs for Phase II.

The new road follows a different path from the old until just past Bogard Road. Up to that point it will be a four-lane divided road with a 55 mph speed limit. The old road will remain in place as a local collector road servicing the local neighborhoods and businesses.

This summer the plan is to just continue the work on Phase I, which has already cut a broad swath through the trees readily visible from the Palmer-Wasilla Highway and various points along Trunk Road.

Motorists may have noticed a building sitting in the right-of way. Waisanen said that is a building the state bought to complete the road and intends to remove once there is a good path out onto the Palmer-Wasilla Highway.

The speed limit has also been reduced near where Trunk meets the Palmer-Wasilla.

“Once we go into the active construction project we go into a 10-mile speed limit reduction for safety reasons,” Waisanen said.

At that same intersection, crews removed the permanent stoplight and put up a temporary one with plans to build a new permanent one.

Other than that, he said, motorists shouldn’t expect much disruption to traffic patterns, except for later in the year at Duchess Drive, which hits the old Trunk Road just south of the college.

“There’s going to be a lot of trucks and equipment crossing at the Duchess Intersection,” Waisanen said. “We’ve got a lot of material to move out.”

He said crews will have flaggers directing traffic there at some point.

More information, including project timetables and a list of answers to frequently asked questions, is available on the project’s Web page at trunkroad.com. Visitors to the site can also submit comments to DOT.

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