Juneau, the City and Borough of Juneau has been awarded $16.5 millions of federal funds to finalize the design of the second crossing between Juneau and Douglas.
Katie Koester, Juneau’s director of public works and engineering She said that the boost would help it through to design phase.
“This is the amount of money needed to get it to the analysis of environmental impacts process, throughout the designing process and to be constructed,” she said.
The proposed crossing will create an additional route that runs between Juneau as well as Douglas to complement the existing bridge. The city claims that the plan will make it easier to commute for the more than 5,000 residents who reside in Douglas Island while opening access to tribal and city land located on North Douglas.
The city along with The Alaska Department of Transportation have examined five routes for the crossing located at Mendenhall Peninsula, Sunny Point, Vanderbilt Hill Road, Twin Lakes and Salmon Creek.
As per Koester the HTML0 will require up to a year or more reduce the choices.
The span style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”Great progress has been made and there is great momentum however, the project isn’t a guaranteed project,” she said. “And we’ll require plenty of engagement from the public in order to achieve it.”
These five options will be shown and debated at public meetings throughout the coming year, before a final design is decided upon.
If a preferred option is chosen after which the federal funds will be used to fund the creation of design plans for finalization and an environmental assessment, which is required by the National Environmental Policy Act.
The grant that was granted by the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant — will be added to the $7 million of federal funding awarded to the project earlier in the year.
The funds won’t be enough to cover the costs of construction the project is not even close to getting off the ground. The concept for a new crossing been discussed since the 1980s, but without any progress. However, in 2020, the officials from the state and city government began to plan again.
The new money comes from an even larger sum of funds -$27.8 million $27.8 million. It was provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, primarily for roads that serve remote Alaska communities. These include roads that have been improved in Kake and Petersburg as well as greater than 100 miles brand new roads connecting villages close to Bristol Bay.
