Knik Bridge Future Murky: SETBACK: City Panel Advises Against Putting Span in Its Long Range Transportation Plan.

By Richard Richtmyer, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska

Feb. 14–Anchorage’s Planning and Zoning Commission has recommended against including a Knik Arm bridge in the city’s Long Range Transportation Plan, which sets the framework and unlocks federal funding for area transportation projects.

Monday’s vote by the Planning and Zoning Commission — an advisory panel appointed by the mayor that makes policy recommendations to the Anchorage Assembly — isn’t binding. And it is just one in a series of procedural steps toward getting the Knik Arm bridge project built or rejected.

Nevertheless, it is the latest in a series of setbacks suffered by proponents of the long-wished-for bridge.

A span across Knik Arm linking Anchorage with the largely undeveloped area around Point MacKenzie has been the dream of some Alaskans for decades. The proposed project gained momentum in 2005 after Congress set aside more than $200 million for it — a fraction of the total cost — in a five-year transportation spending bill.

The “earmark” fell out of the bill, however, after the proposed Knik Arm bridge and another linking Ketchikan with Gravina Island gained nationwide notoriety as “bridges to nowhere” and were held up as examples of wasteful government spending. Much of the money still came to Alaska, but without the earmark it had to be divvied among a much broader range of transportation projects.

The Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, a state agency charged with figuring out how to pay for and build a bridge, is now looking for private investors to fund a large portion of the proposed project, which they estimate will cost about $600 million.

But the project as planned still would need a significant chunk of federal funding, said Mary Ann Pease, a consultant for the bridge authority.

Getting that money could be difficult if the project is not included in Anchorage’s transportation plan.

The transportation plan does not have final say about any projects or allocate any funds. However, projects that aren’t included in the plan or are not consistent with its goals do not qualify for federal funding, said Lance Wilber, Anchorage’s transportation director.

Even if the project were to be entirely privately funded, it still would have to be incorporated into the transportation plan before developers could get the required city permits to build it, Wilber said.

Six of the Planning and Zoning Commission’s nine members voted against the Knik bridge. Another member was excused from voting because of a conflict of interest. The remaining two were absent and did not vote.

“The bottom line is, we felt there was nothing we could do to modify the proposed document to make it acceptable to add to the existing Long-Range Transportation Plan,” said Toni Jones, who chairs the commission.

Pease said she thought the commission, rather than nixing the idea outright, should have listed concerns members had and proposed a series of conditions on the project.

The Planning and Zoning commission’s action is only the first step toward either including or keeping the proposed bridge project out of the transportation plan.

Next, the Anchorage Assembly will consider the question. The 11-member Assembly doesn’t always heed the Planning and Zoning Commission’s advice. Just last fall, for instance, the Assembly approved a plan to build a Wal-Mart store in Muldoon after the commission rejected the proposal.

If the Assembly gives its nod to adding the bridge project to the transportation plan, the proposal would then go to a committee of state and local officials, called AMATS, which would make the final decision.

A public hearing before the Assembly is expected later this month.

——

Daily News reporter Richard Richtmyer can be reached at rrichtmyer@adn.com or 257-4344.

—–

Copyright (c) 2007, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NYSE:WMT,