Isn't Alaska planning on building a "Bridge to Nowhere"?

[rbgarr]

The photo with this article shows that Maine may already have one:

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/051231bridgename.shtml

[Meerkat]

Alaska bridge isn't happening - Congress declined to write the check.

[Ken Hutchins]

I for one, even though we 4,000 mles away honestly think the Alaska bridge in Ketchian SHOULD be built. It is absolutely stupid to have to ride a ferry to get to the airport. :rolleyes: BEEN THERE DONE THAT, all this is spite of the fact that I enjoyed riding on that ferry that was built by Blount Marine in Warren RI. smile.gif

[ 12-31-2005, 05:54 PM: Message edited by: Ken Hutchins ]

[Donn]

Alaska already is nowhere. What do they need a bridge for?

I spent some time in Fairbanks. It was part of the Marine Corps' acclimatization program. We spent an hour in Honolulu on the way to Vietnam, and an hour in Fairbanks on the way home. :rolleyes:

[BrianW]

Alaska bridge isn't happening - Congress declined to write the check.Actually, Alaska is still getting the money, it's just not earmarked for the bridges. How silly is that?

Also, as mentioned, it's not a 'bridge to nowhere', but the moniker stuck, is an example of how the media can mislabel something, and make it stick.

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

With a senator like Stevens and a governor like Murkowski, Alaska is the darling of the media already.
If Alaska wants to get out of the limelight they need to put forth politicians less notorious than those two.

Charlie

[BrianW]

Don't forget Don Young! smile.gif

We love'em up here, naturally. smile.gif

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by BrianW:
[QUOTE]it's not a 'bridge to nowhere', but the moniker stuck, is an example of how the media can mislabel something, and make it stick.Oh, it's a bridge both to and from nowhere.

The "bridge to nowhere" would connect Ketichikan (population 8900) with Gravina Island (population 50) where the Ketichikan airport is.

The cost? A mere $320 million dollars :eek:

see http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm889.cfm for more.

As it stands, there's a perfectly functional ferry service running to the airport. From http://www.ketchikanalaska.com/ketchikan_alaska/travel .html, (http://www.ketchikanalaska.com/ketchikan_alaska/travel.html,) we get this:
<span style="font-family:serif;">Getting To and Around Ketchikan

Ketchikan International Airport is located across the Tongass Narrows from Ketchikan on Gravina Island. A ferry, known simply as the airport ferry, makes the 5 minute round trip every 30 minutes. It leaves the Ketchikan side at 15 minutes after and [15 minutes before] the hour and from the airport side at 30 minutes past the hour and on the hour. The cost is 4.00 per adult and 6.00 for vehicles.Just another case of the supposed fiscally conservative Republicans spending money like a junkie shooting heroin :rolleyes:

[edited to add the following]
The Heritage Foundation also notes in its policy blog that (A) the Governor of Alaska and his daughter (Frank and Lisa Murkowski) both own land on Gravina Island and stand to profit from the likely increase in property values there. So does the son-in-law of Rep. Don Young, the boondoggle's primary sponsor. Full story at http://www.heritage.org/press/dailybriefing/policyweblog.cfm?blogid=48B816BE-BE54-017F-BBBB0B74CE0BB95E

[ 12-31-2005, 08:48 PM: Message edited by: Nicholas Carey ]

[George Roberts]

The Wall Street Journal had some comments on the issue. I believe that the Congressman has relatives with 33 acres on the island.

[Don Olney]

Here's a total waste of tax dollars. I've been on this bridge a few times. I used to work out of Cordova. It is absolutely in the middle of nowhere. Go to Timbuctu and make a right. It was named the "Million Dollar Bridge" because that's what it cost to build it in 1910. It was originally used by the Copper River Railroad which closed in the 30's. It was damaged in the 1964 earthquake.

Cordova is landlocked. Can only get there by boat or plane. An access road will never be built as the article below explains. $19 mil down the drain.

"Traffic should be light on the bridge." :rolleyes:

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6933283p-6832200c. html (http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/6933283p-6832200c.html)

http://www.alaskayukontravel.com/2379ee60.jpg

More about Cordova & the Copper River Highway:

http://www.alaskayukontravel.com/copperriverhwy.htm

[ 12-31-2005, 09:14 PM: Message edited by: Don Olney ]

[BrianW]

I guess it's a matter of perspective. The fine citizens of Ketchikan don't consider their town 'nowhere' at all. It's very telling, of the sort of people who labeled it such in an effort to stop the project.

After all, it wouldn't be so catchy a phrase, if they labeled Ketch as a town situated on a narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea. A town seperated from it's airport by an often rough channel.

The bridge would connect Ketch to their airport, and to a lot more land to expand their town. It isn't a 'nowhere to nowhere' bridge.

I don't find any irony in the fact that some relatives, if not the actual politicians own land on Gravina Island. Unlike Senator Clinton of New York, who probably couldn't have found NY State on a map... the Youngs, Murkowskis, and Stevens all are long time residents of Alaska, with solid families in various communties. It's only a natural that sometimes things like this will occur.

BTW, the bridge will not help me at all. I just take offense at those who would think any town not connected to their road system is 'nowhere.'

[BrianW]

Don,

That's a 'cool' spot, ain't it...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/BrianW/stuff/millliondollarbridge.jpg

Say, ya forgot to mention that the alternatives to repairing the bridge were...

tear it down (more expensive)
let it collapse (even more expensive to clear)

...so I guess it made sense when the democratic governor at the time, Tony Knowles, recommended the repairs.

[George Roberts]

BrianW ---

I don't view the issue as one of connecting nowhere to nowhere.

The issue is that the cost of the bridge is out of line with the benefits - which leads to the "nowhere to nowhere" phrasing. Cost/benefit comments are true of many other government funded projects.

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

I'm really having trouble with the image of an Alaskan who risks his life crabbing off the Aleutians but gets all wanky because he has to ride a ferryboat to get to the airport.
And having your hand out for government funds certainly damages that rough, tough, fearless, Alaskan-frontier image.
When (not if) Alaska has it's next wholloping earthquake it will expect and will get aid from down here. Why not be good citizens now wnd tell Murkowski, and Stevens to return the bridge money so it can help the Katrina sufferers?

Charlie

[Katherine]

Is the real story the road ways & bridges or the development potential that they open up?

[George Roberts]

Like New Orleans ----

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

[huisjen]

Originally posted by rbgarr:
The photo with this article shows that Maine may already have one:

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/05 1231bridgename.shtml (http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/051231bridgename.shtml)Since I don't really want to sign up with them, they won't tell me what's in the article. What Maine bridge are we talking about?

Dan

[ccmanuals]

I have been to Ketichkan as well. Wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper to build an airstrip on the town side of the channel. They sure have plenty of land to play with there.

[BrianW]

Originally posted by George Roberts:
BrianW ---

I don't view the issue as one of connecting nowhere to nowhere.

The issue is that the cost of the bridge is out of line with the benefits - which leads to the "nowhere to nowhere" phrasing. Cost/benefit comments are true of many other government funded projects.George,

If you don't view it as a 'nowhere to nowhere' issue, but rather a benefit issue, I can repect that view. But, the anti-bridge lower-48 whiners didn't take that approach. They probably realized that depriving a city of legally sourced funds, based on a 'need' issue wouldn't catch headlines and attention. They needed to distort the facts in order to sway public opinion.

While I'm not sure how you decided Ketchikan doesn't deserve a bridge, at least your not lying about your reasoning.

[BrianW]

Ironmule,

See what we're dealing with? smile.gif

[Meerkat]

Onc can pay for a great many $4 ferry rides (and ferries!) for $320 million!

Doesn't help either that the governor and congress critter would benefit hugely and personally from this bridge. It's $10 million per acre of island, near enough!

[BrianW]

Originally posted by Cuyahoga Chuck:
I'm really having trouble with the image of an Alaskan who risks his life crabbing off the Aleutians... ...And having your hand out for government funds certainly damages that rough, tough, fearless, Alaskan-frontier image... ...When (not if) Alaska has it's next wholloping earthquake it will expect and will get aid from down here.CharlieChuck,

The crabbers don't live in Ketchikan. Look at this map and note that Ketch would be somewhere around northern Georgia, the Bearing Sea is located in the area where New Mexico and Colorado meet...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/BrianW/stuff/alaskamapdraw.gif

Luckily, Alaskans are not concerned over the opinions of folks from Ohio. Nor are we under the impression that you can control emergency funding in case of natural disaster.

In fact, my understanding is most Ohio folks in Alaska only live in Los Anchorage, because they like traffic lights, multilane roads, and concrete. They like to attend free cheese and 'whine' parties and complain about the savages in rural Alaska.

[BrianW]

having a problem getting the image small enough, will try later...

[ 01-01-2006, 05:09 PM: Message edited by: BrianW ]

[Mrleft8]

No place is "nowhere". But is it worth the tax payer's money to build a bridge to "somewhere" where it isn't really needed just to buy some political gum? I think probibly not. BUT there might be some good reason that we just haven't been alerted to yet.

[George Jung]

On the face of it, this criticism would suggest some merit; however, I wonder how this compares to the pork programs around the rest of the country. I suspect it pales in comparison. Pork is pork; and it's all relative.

[Meerkat]

Originally posted by George Jung:
Pork is pork; and it's all relative.You're related to pork? :eek: :D

[Katherine]

It's a Jungian thing. :D

[George Jung]

Very good, Grasshopper....

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by Meerkat:
Onc can pay for a great many $4 ferry rides (and ferries!) for $320 million!For a lot less than $320 million, one could double the number of ferries on the run and endow a trust so the ferries could operate in perpetuity carrying passengers free.

If Seattle got needed highway construction funds at the same per-capita funding, the Feds would be sending us a check for some $20,500,000,000 -- we could build a hell of a replacement for the Alaskan Way viaduct with that.

The problem is that the cost of the bridge is way out of line with any benefits it might provide. Having the bridge won't improve access to the aiport. It would be hard to beat a 5-minute ferry ride, especially once you count in having to park the car (and pay for airport parking!)

Ol' Golden-Fleece-Award Senator Proxmire must be spinning in his grave.

[Bruce Hooke]

Originally posted by rbgarr:
The photo with this article shows that Maine may already have one:

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/05 1231bridgename.shtml (http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/051231bridgename.shtml)Dan,

The site did not force me to sign up, but in any case, they are talking, as you may have suspected, about the new Waldo-Hancock bridge.

I'm not going to enter the debate about the bridge in Alaska, but I do have to take issue with calling the new Waldo-Hancock bridge a "bridge to nowhere." It is the only bridge across the Penobscot River south of Bangor, and it is a major link to downeast Maine for both commercial and recreational traffic. I (along with a whole lot of other people) drove over the old bridge 4 times in the last 10 days.

If you have not been to the site it may be hard to understand why they are building such a large bridge structure. As I understand it, the key issues are that the road is 130 feet above the river (because of the very steep slopes down to the river) and the river is something like 90 feet deep in that area, so a simpler bridge was not possible. Also, as I understand it, repairing the old bridge was not viable or cost effective.

The old bridge was completed in 1931 and was Maine's first long-span bridge. After 75 years it is still the only bridge over the Penobscot south of Bangor so I'm sure the traffic has only grown in volume. So, it seems pretty evident to me that 1)the old bridge gave a lot of years of good service and 2)this was, and still is, an important place to have a bridge.

[rbgarr]

Bruce- I was making a joke about the replacement for the Waldo-Hancock Bridge because the photo in my link showed the old and new bridges extending across the river into a fog bank that just made them LOOK like they went 'nowhere'. Bad joke I guess.

The new bridge pylons will be taller than the Washington Monument and on the Prospect side visitors will be able to ascend to the top. Personally I'm looking forward to that, because I've always liked the view there from the Sail Inn Restaurant (which has closed).

http://www.workingwaterfront.com/article.asp?storyID=20051201

[ 01-01-2006, 11:11 PM: Message edited by: rbgarr ]

[BrianW]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/BrianW/stuff/ketchairportsmall.jpg

Thats Ketchikan on the left, and the airport on the right.

From the opposite direction...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/BrianW/stuff/ketchikanandgravina.jpg

It's obvious that the city needs room to expand. There's a lot of land across the channel.

Someone earlier suggested they build a new airport on the city side. I was wondering which mountian they would suggest the airport go on?

That's the problem with just reading articles about Federal pork spending and not getting the whole picture.

[ 01-02-2006, 03:38 AM: Message edited by: BrianW ]

[Bruce Hooke]

rbgarr,

Ah, now I see. It was a good joke once I got what you were getting at!

That is an interesting article from Working Waterfront.

Earlier this week I was startled to discover that the new bridge pylons are visible from 10 miles down the bay. The old bridge was too low to be visible, and I'd never really registered how relatively close it was to a spot on the shore where I've been going since I was born.

I had forgotten about the observation deck. That should be pretty interesting. Given where I could see the bridge pylons from, you should have a very good view down the bay from the top of the Prospect pylon.

It is a real shame that they had to take the Sail Inn Restaurant. That has been a local fixture for generations. Given how things are shaping up, I do have to wonder if they could not have managed to save the Restaurant if they had tried.

[Bruce Hooke]

Regarding the bridge in Alaska...

On matters like this I am basically in favor of states deciding where to spend their transportation dollars (as long as basic prinicples of sound environmental policy, disaster planning and so on are adhered to). So, if the people of Alaska think a bridge in Ketchikan is the right way to spend this money then that is their choice, especially given that the money is now going to them to use on whatever road project they want to use it on, rather than as an earmark.

That said, I would raise two questions:

1. Was the money for this bridge allocated over and above what would otherwise normally have been alocated to Alaska? If so then there is more justification for national interest in this project, and the proponents of the bridge should have been willing to offer of some solid cost-benefit numbers to support building the bridge.

2. Has anyone really done a cost-benefit analysis to determine how much benefit Ketchikan would gain from this bridge? A short ferry ride does not seem to me to be that big a deal, so if allowing for growth is the key issue then I am a bit surprised the pressure to find more places to build has not already driven more people to accept the ferry ride as part of daily life. Among other things, it looks to me like the drive into town from the areas in the foreground of the second picture above could well be longer than a ferry ride! Are there other reasons why people are not building more on the airport side besides the lack of a bridge? On both sides of this issue there may well be local factors that I am not aware of...

3. I suspect that much of the time the projects that sound like the biggest pork projects are not actually the worst offenders.

[ 01-02-2006, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: Bruce Hooke ]

[huisjen]

The Waldo-Hancock County Bridge was my first guess, but I could imagine too that there might be something going on around, say, Portland, that I might be completely unaware of. Maybe a bridge out to some residential island...

Anyway, if it was up to me, I'd call it the Acadia-Downeast Bridge, since those are the regions served by it.

Was this the picture in question?

http://www.waldohancockbridge.com/waldo-county-bridge/slides/pic4-29.jpg

Sorry. I could only get the small one to come up.
(Edit: Huh?! The full sized one came up anyway. Cool.)

There are better (more illustrative) pictures.

http://www.waldohancockbridge.com/waldo-county-bridge/slides/mellowbridge_new.jpg

Nice panorama shot:
http://www.earthcam.com/client/mainedot/images/panorama1.jpg

Dan

[ 01-02-2006, 07:43 PM: Message edited by: huisjen ]

[rbgarr]

That's an even better picture than the one in the article. I'd hate to drive out there and find myself face to face with a big rig.

[George.]

Originally posted by BrianW:


It's obvious that the city needs room to expand. There's a lot of land across the channel.

Why exactly does a city - any city - "need" to expand?

And why should the tax dollars of anyone outside said city be spent to provide for such a "need"?

[BrianW]

George.

I assume your asking in a general sense, as this type of deal is done in all states, not just Alaska.

[George.]

Originally posted by BrianW:
I assume your asking in a general sense, as this type of deal is done in all states, not just Alaska.You bet. Especially since this type of "deal" is far too frequent in Brazilian states. We have bridges with no road, and roads with no bridge... :rolleyes:

I do mean the questions in a general sense. My personal feelings towards Alaska in particular is that it must be a beautiful place, full (well, not too full smile.gif ) of great people, which I would dearly like to see before I die.

[BrianW]

Dan,

That's a beautiful picture in your post, but it's making this thread hard to read. Could ya edit it to be a bit smaller please?

[Bruce Hooke]

George's questions are not simple, and as Brian noted, apply just as well (or more so) outside Alaska as inside. Actually, I'm going to focus on the first question (about the "need" to expand) because the second question gets into all the issues about what the role of the federal government should be, which has already been the subject of many threads around here!

To me there can be both good and bad reasons to expand a city. Bad reasons include not wanting to deal with more problematic, previously developed properties within the existing city (i.e., "brownfields") and simply the desire of people who basically live in the city to live like they are in the country. In addition, I'm not that keen on seeing my tax money go to making it easier for people to move to places with lower property taxes or other similar benefits.

On the other hand, if conditions in the city are making it hard for average residents in the city to afford to live there (or make a living there) then it does seem reasonable to me to ask whether opening up new areas to development makes sense.

This is rarely an easy issue. I am basically in favor of protecting existing open space and against sprawl development, but I have also seen what can happen when the demand for property in a given area makes it all but impossible for average folks to remain in that area, and it is not a pretty situation. Hard questions about the costs and benefits of opening up new areas should be always be asked, and other solutions should be considered.

In the case at hand I certainly think it is fair to ask how much of a hinderance to development a very short ferry ride really is. Sure you can't locate something like a supermarket a ferry ride away from 90% of its customer base, but usually in cases like this it is space for housing or industrial operations that is most lacking, and neither housing nor industry needs to be that hindered by a short ferry ride.

[Bruce Hooke]

Originally posted by BrianW:
Dan,

That's a beautiful picture in your post, but it's making this thread hard to read. Could ya edit it to be a bit smaller please?Or just post a link to it...