The Alaska Department of Transportation is in the process of getting ready to conduct safety corridor improvements for the Sterling Highway from mile post 82.5 to 94, which is from Sterling to the Y in Soldotna. The project consists of expanding the highway from Soldotna to Sterling as a four-lane highway. Also included are a pathway and safety improvements such as continuous illumination, medians, and center turn lanes, which are funded through Alaska’s Highway Safety Improvement Program.
Shannon McCarthy, Communication Director at the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities tells KSRM:
“That section of the Sterling Highway was designated between 2006 and 2009 and it was designated as a safety corridor because it does have a higher rate of serious injury and fatal crashes than other highways. In fact, just Southcentral Alaska has four of these designations. It’s actually been our intention since the late 2000 to actually make the engineering changes that would make this a safer highway and then we could take that designation back off because it wasn’t intended to be a permanent designation. What’s nice is that we have the leadership now that we’re really pushing hard to get these changes made and made quickly.”
McCarthy says that because of the corridor improvements, businesses like Good Time Charlies, which is on land that the DOT owns, had to close:
“That is correct, and this is a really unusual circumstance. Back about 30 years ago, we had a project in this area, and we did purchase right of way, and we purchased the right of way that Good Time Charlies sits on, that land, and then what typically we do is when we purchase property for transportation purpose, we allow the business to stay in place until we are ready to go to construction. Unfortunately, the project got sidelined, but what typically would be kind of a six months, you can stay in place, turned into a much longer situation where he’s been in place for between 20 and 30 years and has been on the state-owned land and has to pay lease payments to the State of Alaska.”
Summer 2023 is the target date for the Department of Transportation to begin construction. Until then, they will do a design build, which involves Requests for Permits to hire the designer and the builder.
Click here for the Final Environmental Assessment of the safety corridor.