Upgrade planned for problem intersection

WASILLA — The Mat-Su Borough is hoping as soon as next summer to tame the troublesome intersection at Lucille Street and Seldon Road.

“Just recently, somebody got T-boned there and they bent up the guardrail there that’s on the north side of Seldon,” borough transportation planner Brad Sworts said.

The plan is to tackle the problem three phases. In Phase I, the borough will upgrade the intersection, Phase II will upgrade the stretch of Seldon just west of there and Phase III will tackle the access to nearby Tanaina Elementary.

“What we’re shooting for is to get Phase I done this coming summer,” said Mike Brown, the borough’s capital projects director. “We’re looking right now at having Phase II queued up, but that’s going to depend on the right of way acquisition.”

Buying the right of way — the land on which the road will be built — will determine if the borough can construct the Seldon extension next summer or if will have to wait another year.

Phase III is farther in the future. The first two phases are already funded through $5 million in bonds voters approved in 2010 and $5 million the state Legislature agreed to chip in. Phase III won approval at the ballot box just this fall in a raft of bonds that address school access issues. The other half of that funding still needs to come from Juneau.

“Assuming that the state matches that, we expect to see that as a project in the near future,” Brown said.

As for what all the phases entail, Brown and Sworts said that in Phase I, the borough will work to cut down the hill that impedes visibility at the intersection.

Also, very rudimentary drawings for the first phase, the one addressing the Seldon/Lucille intersection, include a roundabout. Sworts said a decision to put a roundabout there isn’t final, but Brown said it’s going to be in the plan the borough presents to the public next month.

“At this point we are leaning in that direction,” Brown said. “That’s what we’re going to be prepared to talk about at the public meeting — our rationale behind that and why we would recommend or lean in that direction in terms of why we wanted to go in that direction.”

A project open house is from 6 to 8 p.m., Dec. 4 at Tanaina Elementary, 2550 N Lucille St, Wasilla.

With two roundabouts in operation in the borough, Brown said he doesn’t think such an intersection will be a tough sell as it once was in the Valley.

“They’re not such a foreign concept anymore and they’re a little bit more open to the idea of more of those in the Valley,” he said.

Phase II, meanwhile, will widen and upgrade the narrowest, slowest stretch of the current Bogard/Seldon corridor.

“That is the stretch that has the least amount of improvements to it all the way from Palmer to Church (Road) right now,” Sworts said.

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