In late December, the state’s transportation department released a draft environmental assessment for a billion-dollar safety improvement project on the Seward Highway.

Draft plans for the project, intended to reduce fatal crashes along a 20-mile stretch between Anchorage and Girdwood, show widening the highway to four lanes is preferred. After reviewing a report with the possible environmental impacts, some residents say the proposed design would turn the scenic byway into a perpetual construction zone and degrade public access to Chugach State Park.

Travelers frequently stop at pullouts along the Seward Highway to take in the view, and those who are lucky catch glimpses of Dall sheep and Cook Inlet beluga whales. The narrowhighway — whichwinds between the water of Turnagain Arm and steep foothills of the Chugach Mountains — serves as an access point to popular state park trailheads, including at Bird Ridge, Rainbow and Falls Creek. It is the only road to the Kenai Peninsula from Anchorage.

In addition to its scenery, the two-lane stretch of the Seward Highway is known for serious car accidents, traffic bottlenecks and wreck closures that can last for hours. Transportation planning to address the dangers along the narrow corridor has spanned decades.

While smaller-scale projects have reduced crash rates, fatal accidents continue to occur, according to data from the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. Through an ongoing project titled “Safer Seward Highway,” the agency is proposing to flatten curves, widen shoulders and create more separation between northbound and southbound traffic.

DOT revealed its preferred design, a four-lane divided highway, last month. Draft plans also include a separated multi-use path, “consolidated and improved” trailhead parking and pull-offs and rock catchments.

Current cost estimates for the project sit at $1.5 billion. Construction would occur in stages, and it could take as many as 20 years to finish the whole corridor. Project managers plan to use federal funding and grants to pay for construction, according to a project overview.

Planners shared details about how the project could affect adjacent parkland, wildlife populations and trailheads during a series of open houses in Anchorage, Girdwood and Indian this past week. The public comment period on the draft environmental assessment will stay open through Feb. 12.

During a public hearing at the Loussac Library on Wednesday, residents expressed anxiety about engineers’ four-lane preference, and worried a widened roadway would only encourage the reckless driving that already occurs on the Seward Highway. Others said the project may permanently harm the landscape and recreation opportunities that attract locals and visitors to the area.

“The Seward Highway is a gateway to Alaska’s natural beauty, not just a highway corridor,” resident John Hall said. “The industrial scale of the proposed realignments and plans to source material by blasting in the park will permanently scar the landscape.”

In 2006, the areawas designated Alaska’s first “Safety Corridor” due to the high rate of fatal and serious injury crashes.Over the two decades since its designation, DOT has chipped away at highway improvements.

To date, the agency has spent more than $100 million on safety projects, according to the Safer Seward Highway project page. Most have been spot improvements, such as rumble strips and new slow vehicle turnouts, project manager Chris Hughes said Wednesday. Other recent projects include widening near the Portage Glacier Road turnoff and new rock catchments near the McHugh trailhead.

The project area would begin at Potter Marsh at Mile 118 and stretch just south of Bird, at Mile 98.5. Transportation officials said widening this narrow segment of the Seward Highway is a difficult undertaking as it is sandwiched between the mountainside cliffs of Chugach State Park, the Alaska Railroad and the Turnagain Arm.

While engineers considered a three-lane configuration, the Department of Transportation selected four because safety modeling shows this option would reduce total and serious crashes by as much as 69%, spokesperson Shannon McCarthy told the Daily News. It would also give drivers “consistent passing opportunities and preventing long backups that form behind slow vehicles,” she said.

Between 2016 and 2021, the Department of Transportation recorded 49 head-on collisions and 10 fatalities in the project area. Although traffic volumes are significantly higher May through August, the majority of crashes occur during the winter.

Under the existing proposal, DOT would maintain the 55 mph speed limit.

Bike Anchorage Executive Director Alexa Dobson called the Seward Highway a “racetrack” and said most drivers do not adhere to posted speed limits. Rabbit Creek Community Council member AnnRappoport said straightening the roads may promote higher speeds by providing passing opportunities “99% of the time,” she said.

“We also believe that both increased enforcement and winter maintenance could do a lot to improve safety along the corridor, but they are not adequately described (in the draft plan),” Rappoport said.

To make room for a four-lane highway, the department would need to take possession of more than 130 acres of Chugach State Park and 17 acres of the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, and re-align roughly 7 miles of the Alaska Railroad, according to the draft environmental assessment.

The project also calls for approximately 120 acres of infill in Turnagain Arm, half of which is critical habitat for the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale, the assessment states.

About 40% of the overall 20-mile stretch would require rock cuts on the cliffside. With the proposed scale of rock blasting, someAnchorage climbers at the public hearing saidthe draft plans would lead to the destruction of more than half of the 400 rock and ice climbing routes accessible from the Seward Highway.

According to a written statement from Mountaineering Club of Alaska President Peter Taylor, the project will destroy several “high-use, high-quality” climbing crags, including Resolution Bluff and Goat’s Head Soup, while threatening others like Sunshine Ridge.

For the climbs that remain, Chad Jensen of the Climbers Alliance of Southcentral Alaska requested “formalized, safe” pullouts, and access trails that move climbers away from the road immediately, rather than onto narrow shoulders along the highway.

“We believe there is a solution that improves the highway without decimating a community resource or creating a new roadside hazard,” he said.

The Department of Transportation has received more than 60 written comments, in addition to 23 public testimonies in Anchorage and Girdwood, McCarthy said. The final environmental assessment is expected this spring.