KTOO’s Clarise Larson brought us a recent story about the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities’ effort to find other people somewhere to start installing a new $47 million traffic light in front of Fred Meyers in response to a series of serious and even fatal accidents there. We examine the details in this important story.
The story is all to familiar to Juneau residents. An inexperienced or inattentive driver pulls out of the parking lot at the Fred Meyer store in Juneau to enter the 70 mi/hr traffic on Egan drive and a tragic accident occurs. Indeed, just a few years ago, the scene was witness to a fatal accident.
As the KTOO article noted, this is hardly a new problem. Juneau residents have been demanding that the state address the dangerous intersection for more than 20 years and just last year the Juneau Assembly passed a resolution calling for immediate and swift action.
Thankfully, the officials at AKDOT&PF have got the message and are on top of a plan to make the necessary changes.
John Rhodes, Chief Deputy Assistant Media Relations Management Director for the AKDOT&PF’s Region 2A Highway Traffic Control Safety Subunit brought us up to speed on the details. “We are throwing everything we can at this problem,” he said.
“Our Deputy Director scheduled an emergency meeting next month to form an Investigative Committee to nominate and select an Advisory Team evaluate the problem, just to make sure it actually falls under our purview. I would expect a report from the Advisory Team within six or eight months. If the Advisory Team determines that further action is needed, the next step would be to create a Planning Strike Force to draft a scope of work and a bid request so that we can hire an engineering firm to propose three sets of alternatives for our Regional Planning Department. Then the Regional Planning Department will choose one of the alternatives for approval, and after a minimum of three public hearings and at least one closed committee session, one of the alternatives may be selected. That’s when we start to get really busy,” Rhodes noted.
“A project like this will involve 8 to 12 phases, depending on the circumstances. The Regional Planning Director will form several Task Groups. We need to do a safety study. An environmental impact study. A seismic study. A wetlands impact study. A cultural survey. A feasibility study. And a financial impact analysis. And more. For each of these studies, the Task Group will need to seek approval to hire contractors to conduct the study and make a report. Hiring the the contractors means going through a bunch of departments – Fiscal Services, Legal, Procurement, Divisiveness and Inclusion and Human Resources ,” Rhodes explained. “All this takes a bit of time, and while we know people are getting killed at that dangerous intersection, we still have to cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s in a project like this,” he said.
Rhodes told us that AKDOT&PF management has made the issue a top priority and so the first planning phase could begin as early as 2026, while the last planning phase might be finished as early as 2031.
Once all the planning and study contractors are finished with their work, an engineering plan will be made and a scope or work will go out for bid to actually install the $47 million traffic light. “Now it gets a bit more complicated,” Rhodes continued, “There are all kinds of set-aside provisions that require us to give preference to women-owned, minority-owned, veteran-owned and Native-owned contractors, and it’s common to see multiple challenges to a contract of this size, which really slows down the process a lot.”
Once the contractors who actually do the work are hired, construction of the traffic light should only take a few more years. “I don’t think it is being optimistic to say that we can get this thing done and working by 2036, ” Rhodes noted proudly. “That’s what happens when professionals get together and focus on an urgent problem like this one,” he said.
We went down to Freddie’s ourselves with a radar gun to get a firsthand look at the problem. Speeding cars and trucks careened down Egan drive, at speeds we measured as high as 85 mi/hr, putting lives in great danger as cars tried to pull out on the highway from a dead stop. We decided to interview some customers to see what they thought about the problem.
Keith Hanover, a typically unsophisticated blue-collar worker who is temporarily in town on a construction job from his home in Fairbanks, took a predictably simplistic view of the problem. “All they need to do is to put in a traffic light. Right there!” he said, pointing at the site of the recent fatal accident. “That would fix the whole problem. What idiot let them build a Fred Meyer on a highway like this without a stoplight in the first place?” he asked rhetorically.
Hanover seemed incredulous at the likely cost of the traffic improvement. “Did you just say ‘forty-seven million dollars’?! Are you f*****ng sh****ng me?!” he exclaimed. “How in the hell can anybody spend $47 million to install a stoplight? A $47 million light should come with a control tower, a parking lot and a terminal building!” he scoffed sarcastically. Hanover was not placated when we informed him that scope of work would include other aspects, like a new routing of the exit lanes and some painting and landscape work around the intersection. “Listen!,” Hanover interrupted rudely and without evidence, “you give me ONE million dollars and I will have a traffic light up an running in two weeks, with all the painting and landscaping you want,” he claimed wildly.
Jane Tellers, a local 5th grade teacher who spoke to us more civilly, seemed to worry about the timeframe of project over its expected cost. “They want to take 12 years to install a stoplight?” she asked. “I mean, I know the government has its own ways of doing things, but a lot of people are going to get hurt and killed in the next twelve years and I don’t think it’s more important to cross the T’s and the I’s than it is to fix the problem.”
Bill Broman, a local businessman, owns the land on Egan drive where the improvements will be made. “Did you say $47 MILLION?” he repeatedly asked us, when we tracked him down. After we finally convinced him that the expected cost was correct, Broman started shaking. “Oh Sweet Jeebus!” he said. “They’re going to have to buy me out! I need to go see a lawyer now!” he shouted, as he ran to his car.
We saw several close calls, but we did not observe any actual vehicular accidents during our 30 minute visit to the intersection. While some of Juneau’s citizens may quibble over the cost or duration of this crucial safety project, it should be comforting to all to know that the issue now lies soundly in the hands of the professionals, who will see that the stoplight is installed properly according to all the appropriate rules and regulations.