The Kenai City Council adopted a resolution that may help relieve long wait times for individuals traveling S. Spruce St. that either already have passes purchased or are local traffic not in need of purchasing a pass during the busy fishing season.
A reallocation of funds within the Municipal Roadway Improvements Capital Project Fund will allow the Public Works Department — in coordination the Parks & Recreation Department — to install a new bypass lane on S. Spruce Street near the ball fields to improve the flow of traffic during the Personal Use Fishery.
Kenai City Manager Terry Eubank explains the problem on South Spruce Street;
“So on S Spruce St. this is the street that goes by the cities Little League baseball fields down to the beach. When it comes time for the personal use fishery, we establish our fee shacks to set the South end of the baseball fields there and what we do experience on occasion when we get a real influx of. Participants is we get cars backing up all the way down Spruce St. We actually split that road into three lanes at that point, with cones trying to provide more storage. But we still end up in situations where we have traffic backing out on the spur highway, which is very problematic and very unsafe. So in an effort also considering the activity with the Boys and Girls Club purchase of the care center and realizing that likely to be more traffic on the street in the future, the choice was to try to create a bypass lane to allow either traffic not participating in the fishery to bypass the shacks. Or already permitted participants to use that bypass lane to bypass the shacks to end some of those lines.”
This new bypass lane is approximately 300’ in length, 15’ in width, and is only intended to be used for traffic during the fishery from July 10th – 31st annually.
Eubank discuss the project;
“We’re going to construct from the first entrance into the Little League until the second entrance, about 15 feet off of the current curb over. We’re gonna cut in another road to create this bypass lane. Once they hit that second X entrance, they’ll be just directed with coinage around the rest through the rest of the way through the Little League parking to. To get past our shacks so it’s just us trying to create a new way to limit some of those lines and and make sure it’s still safe down there it should create a honestly a little bit more parking in the little league area during non-personal use fisheries with the construction on that road it’ll widen the parking in that area a little bit too so i think it’ll be beneficial in that way as well.”
Work is anticipated to be completed prior to the start of the fishery and is expected to cost less than $50,000 with any remaining funds being returned to be used toward other Personal Use Fishery related projects.
The completion of this project is expected to improve the user experience for the fishery by reducing wait times and will assist the City by limiting the need for the Police Department to manage traffic overflow backing up onto the Spur Highway.