KABATA and its consultants say that if the bridge is built, Mat-Su’s population will increase and there will be 36,000 bridge trips a day by 2035. But Scott Goldsmith, an economics professor and director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska, recently said the number would be half that. By that estimate, the state would pay out more to the contractors than it would receive in toll revenue at least until 2034.
Private contractors are concerned about how this would work and whether the state would guarantee its payments.
“We did consider bidding on the Knik Arm project in Alaska,” said Keith Stephens, spokesman for Fluor, a giant construction company that Menard said was one of the firms interested in the project. But he added: “We couldn’t pull together a team or consortium that made sense to fully chase the project. We’ve opted to pass.”
Last week, however, KABATA revealed a list of six major consortia planning to bid on the project. The bridge authority also said it would release new cost estimates. Critics say its cost numbers assume two lanes, while its traffic numbers assume four.
The bridge has other problems. One proposed site would interfere with the dry barge dock at the port, making it impossible to use. As a result, Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan, who says he supports a bridge, sued KABATA to keep the bridge from disrupting the port. After that maneuver, an editorial in the Anchorage Daily News dubbed the project a “bridge to litigation.”
The battle of the bridge has crossed party lines here.
A trove of e-mails from former governor Sarah Palin, released in June, showed that she was no fan of the project.
“I think KABATA should wise up and realize until they get their ‘creative’ private sector financing in place, there will not be the adamant public support for continuing to throw more money at the crossing — not when the feds are saying it won’t be built on their dime,” Palin wrote on March 26, 2007.
On July 31 that year, she wrote: “As for Kabata, I hope folks know my intention is to continue to NOT support the nonsensical notion that the state can fund Gravina and/or Knik Crossing. If the feds can’t fund these projects that have minimal public support, then they’re not going to happen.”
Meanwhile, the Mat-Su borough is taking ownership of a ferry — a 195-foot-long, 60-foot-wide steel and aluminum ship — provided by the federal government as a result of a congressional earmark inserted in legislation years ago by then-Sen. Ted Stevens (R), who died in 2010. The ship is an ice buster, capable of handling large, swift-moving icebergs.
But neither Mat-Su nor Anchorage has a ferry terminal. Mothballing the ferry would cost more than $1 million a year. Selling it would cost even more — there isn’t much demand for big ferries, and the borough would have to repay millions of dollars to the federal government. Some pundits have dubbed the boat a “ferry to nowhere.”
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