DOT: Strip Cascade Point from the STIP!

There’s yet another way to tell the Alaska Department of Transportation to call off the Cascade Point Ferry Terminal project. If it feels like you’ve already done this before, we get it, we keep telling the Dunleavy administration “NO!” and they keep ignoring us and we have to do it again. 

This time we’re asking you to use the tool created by DOT rather than one of our comment tools, but we’ll walk you through it and provide a template you can copy and paste or use for inspiration. 

Let’s go!

The Alaska Department of Transportation should remove Cascade Point from the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program and the Southeast Alaska Transportation Plan. The agency is pushing the development of Cascade Point while more than 90 percent of commenters have rejected this expensive, unpopular and redundant project. 

The project appears to be a politicized priority of the Dunleavy administration, with DOT&PF’s Southcoast Region Planning Chief Jill Melcher saying about the project: “Cascade Point we’re not going to remove. It’s a department priority. I’m being completely transparent here. It’s in the plan. We have been asked to remove it many times. But as a department we’re being told it’s a priority and we’re going to keep it in the plan.”

It is a dereliction of duty to prioritize a wasteful and infeasible project over the priorities of Alaskans and Alaska communities, putting at risk coastal communities’ essential safety and transportation needs.

We respectfully remind AKDOT:

• Financial mismanagement of state and federal dollars heightens all Alaskans’ risks.
• The sole beneficiaries of this public infrastructure project continue to be private corporations (Goldbelt, Inc., Grande Portage Resources, Juneau Hydropower).
• This project does not align with long-term regional planning goals that have long been in the works – this idea did not arise from the communities that will be affected by it.
• There are numerous resultant infrastructure costs that have not been factored into the cost estimates for the project:
  • Road repairs and upgrades needed for increased traffic volume, including:
    • Road shoulders need widening,
    • If an ore haul will take place there must be passing lanes,
    • Road surfaces are not adequate to support increased passenger traffic volumes let alone heavy trucks carrying ore; frost heaving is an issue and the road surface beyond Adlersheim is riddled with potholes. 
  • Bridge upgrades/replacements of Kowee Creek, Eagle River, and Herbert River bridges according to the bridge inventory. Currently the road approaches are wider than the bridge lanes, which increases the risks of head-on collisions 
  • There are no emergency services beyond Cohen drive. 
  • There are scant guard rails along a windy Glacier Highway that snakes along sea cliffs. 
• How can this project be considered feasible if the full footprint of associated costs have not been factored into the already ballooning projections? 
  • At this point total project costs continue to soar, currently projected at $120,452,862.

The Cascade Point Ferry Terminal project should be removed from AKDOT’s planning documents and cancelled altogether before more harm is done and more public funds are wasted. 

Questions? Email stacy@seacc.org.