The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is hoping to minimize the amount of traffic that is being produced for people traveling on the Sterling Highway between Soldotna and Sterling, also while trying to improve public safety.
According to the Julia Hampson, the project manager for the Sterling safety corridor project, the department is hoping to start work relatively soon.
“My plan is to have our design builder team under contract by next year. So then the next year, things are going to start to pick up.”
The proposed project would include turn lanes, intersection realignments, four-lane divided highways with a depressed median, median breaks every half mile, and continuous highway lighting.
“The permeant measure is that we need four lanes, not two, so people can pass while others are turning into driveways, or, if you’re passing a slow vehicle, and we need to restrict in some part of the road, we need to put restrictions on left turns. And that’s how we ended up with a median,” says Hampson.
Hampson also says that members of the Sterling safety corridor project would like to create a road where it goes through the back of people’s property that connects to a side street, and then gets to a median break so that people could make safe left turns.
Hampson also explained that these ideas are possible, but further research and investigation needs to happen before this plan is fully executed.
“Right now, we have existing traffic, and that’s what we go out and count, but that existing traffic is affected by people who are turning directly on to the Sterling Highway from their property, they’re not using the side streets at the brakes. So one we start redirecting traffic to those brakes where they can make left turns safely, the traffic at those intersections might go up. And then we might warrant a traffic signal.”
Hampson hopes that construction can begin in 2025, but it most likely won’t be done until 2028.