‘Lines on a map’: Impacts a highway connection would have on Anchorage’s Fairview neighborhood
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - A study on a Glenn and Seward Highway connection is wrapping up, and those involved are weighing the impacts of such a project.
The study was one of the featured projects at the Anchorage Transportation Fair on Tuesday. DOT Highway Design Project Manager Galen Jones said they received more than 500 responses during a recent public comment period.
“We’ve heard a lot of support for Fairview and trying to provide certainty on where this connection could go,” Jones said. “Ultimately, we’re trying to answer the question: Is a highway needed or a regional connection needed, and if so, where would it go?”
They are hoping to publish the final results of the study in October 2025, at which time they will provide recommendations for the project. Already, several options have been released.
“It’ll probably in the final recommendations have a couple of different sub-area plan recommendations,” Jones said. “So each sub-area plan will have probably a handful of projects that come out of it.”
Jones said that, so far, they estimate total costs to range anywhere from $400 to $700 million, but hope to reduce that number before final results are published.
“We’re sharpening our pencils right now, and we’re trying to cut off, I’d say, hundreds of millions of dollars from some of those alternatives,” Jones said.
For the neighborhood of Fairview, such a project could be neighborhood-altering.
“I look at it from the idea of ‘what do we want this area to look like when this project is done?’” said SJ Klein, member of the Fairview Community Council. “I think the vision of the neighborhood and definitely my vision is that we have sidewalks that are wide enough for people to walk on safely, that we have traffic that doesn’t impede the connection of people through the neighborhood.”
Klein operates his business, “Alaska Sprouts,” out of a shop on the corner of 15th Avenue and Gambell Street, just blocks from where the Glenn Highway turns into Gambell, and then later, the Seward Highway.
“The highway has been going through Fairview for decades and decades, and really to the detriment of the neighborhood, pedestrians get killed every month,” Klein said.
Safety is the main priority, Klein said, even if no connection is ever made.
“The plans that are on the table right now are not to build a super highway through the middle of our city, in the heart of our city. You know the heart of downtown really,” Klein said.
“You know, the traffic numbers and the demand on the road system through this area has decreased over the years, not increased. So you know the idea of ‘biggering’ a connection for the sake of more traffic flow is not the point of this, you know. And if that’s where — if that’s where people are thinking this is going, they’re missing the point.”
Ultimately, designating smaller sub-projects and “lines on a map” will have a greater immediate impact, Klein said.
“In some ways, the options are kind of just lines on a map because they may never happen,” Klein said. “But, you know, lines on a map really have an impact.”
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