Long Range Transportation Plan
Anchorage has an opportunity to think, plan and act boldly in planning how
to move goods, services and people in a growing city. The city is writing
the first long-range transportation plan for Anchorage since 1991, a plan to
take the city to 2025. These solutions to traffic problems will make a big
difference in what kind of city Anchorage becomes. With a bad decision,
traffic could overwhelm the city and make getting around a daily trial. The
quality of life here—the noise levels, the ability to walk to a park or
store, the cleanliness of the air—will be affected by the long-range
traffic decisions.
How do you see getting around Anchorage twenty years from now? On freeways
or streetcars? Driving to parks and schools or walking? High speed traffic
downtown or wide sidewalks full of people on their way to work and shopping?
Decisions made this spring/summer will guide the next twenty years of
transportation investments. The first LRTP draft is due out this summer and
your voice is needed to stand up for the northern city envisioned in
Anchorage 2020, our adopted comprehensive plan.
Our transportation planners need to hear that you want them to follow
Anchorage's adopted comprehensive plan and build a northern city with: less
traffic congestion; more housing and commercial development in the central
business district so more people can walk to work; major investments in
street cars, commuter rail and buses so families are not forced to drive so
often; linked sidewalks and trails that are maintained all year around and
transportation investments that improve the city, not divide neighborhoods
and bring more pollution to the city.
Anchorage should be bold and broad-minded in planning how we'll all get
around in a growing city.
Background
Status of Transportation Plan, September 2005
The draft plan ADMITS that we CANNOT BUILD OUR WAY OUT OF CONGESTION. Other
strategies are needed. Walking, cycling, public transit, and telecommuting
need to have larger roles.
Why then are our city leaders and transportation planners still focused on
more roads? Already there are signs that the $100 million+ per mile
Fairview Freeway, the Bragaw Extension, the Boniface Expressway and expanded
Lake Otis to the Glenn aren't enough.
The Assembly
- Is pushing for Bragaw to cut through the University of Alaska
property (September 7, 2005 University Area Community Council minutes).
- Questioned the money spent on sidewalks and trails' explaining that
leaves less money for roads. (September 8, 2005 AMATS meeting)
This draft plan spends $20 on roads for every $1 on transit and pedestrian
safety. It does not address the air quality, health or safety costs of freeways and
expressways. Our decision makers NEED TO HEAR that we need to build and fund transit and
pedestrian safety as called for in Anchorage 2020.
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