It's been a little over two years since we took friends downtown to catch the bus to Seward and their cruise south and my interest was piqued to check on the cruise lines.
That led to a post about how Carnival owns most of the cruise related businesses in Alaska (Holland, Princess, Sheffield Hotels) plus they have significant connections with the Alaska Railroad. (The former head of the railroad and current Port Authority Director, Bill Sheffield, sold Sheffield Hotels to Holland and his assistant became a honcho with Holland, and Stevens helped the cruise lines get a railroad depot at the Anchorage Airport and it was named after Sheffield... and much more at that old Carnival Cruise Lines post and a little more at New Pirates on the Seven Seas.)
Well, yesterday we took our visitors to the Sheffield Depot to catch their train to their Princess cruise out of Seward. Still, four years after the depot opened, the only people I know of who use it as a train depot are people who buy an Alaskan cruise. I've also heard you can rent out the depot for parties since most of the time this depot is not in use.
So dropping them off gave me an opportunity to get some pictures of this beautiful present from Ted Stevens and members of the legislature to Carnival and the Alaska Railroad.
Here are some of the passengers waiting for the train to take them to their cruise.
And here's the train waiting for the passengers to be called to the platform. Eventually a man came out and yelled, "Alllll Aboard!"
We had a little extra time so we wandered with our friends down the tunnel with the northern lights arts project and the ten or so aerial photos the Anchorage Airport over about a 50 year span. I'd forgotten about this tunnel which we used to take before all the new buildings got put up and the easy access through the station from the parking lot ended. What I also discovered was the new rental car facility, somewhere I never go since I never rent a car here.
I know Andrew Halcro complained when all the money was being spent on the railroad depot and not on a new space for the rental car offices. [Update Monday evening: Actually he "opposed the rail depot because it was built with $30 million in federal taxpayer money even though the feasibility study showed it would never be used for anything other than cruise passengers for four months out of the year." You can see more details on his thoughts here. I thought I'd linked to this, but didn't.] I have less of a problem with the rental car space. This is a feature of all airports. Every passenger has the option of using a rental car, and thus this space. It isn't dedicated to a couple of companies and their clients exclusively. Plus there's a tax on rental cars and I believe some of that was used for this space. Not sure what percent was paid that way.
But it is pretty fancy and the new parking lot is huge.
As we drove past the parking pay booths, we got this glimpse of the engine waiting above the road.I wonder if the FBI has collected data on how money got funneled to this project. When they were lobbying for it they promised commuter service to downtown, Girdwood, and the Valley from the airport. None of which ever materialized. Sierra Club, do you feel a little sheepish now for supporting this project? Maybe you can still redeem yourselves.
We could still have a train car that went back and forth to provide service between the airport and downtown every half hour both ways. I'm sure someone has invented a fairly inexpensive, fuel efficient vehicle that can run on railroad tracks. Knowing that one had, at most, a 30 minute wait would mean that it would be an attractive alternative for passengers who needed to go downtown and people downtown needing to go to the airport.
Again, the details are all in the previous posts.
Well, I may have been got used to the good but I don't see anything special on these photos. It is like an ordinary airport to me.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong it is not bad or ugly but nothing special.
Fly into London and you can take the train into town (a taxi costs mucho bucks). Fly into Paris and you can take the train into town. Fly into almost any European city; bus and train connections are Right There!
ReplyDeleteFly into any American city and Fat Chance that local transportation options are available.
Good for Anchorage for this step in the right directions. I'll take a look at it in a couple of weeks when I come up for some fishin'
I was in AK in July for some fishing in Seward. I was impressed with the new facility but thought it looked a little underused. You folks who live in the area should be screaming for a 1/2 hourly train into downtown and commuter trains to Girdwood and the Valley. That would be a great feature and cut down on congestion.
ReplyDeleteRopi, I agree. Nothing special for an airport. The point was that this is a railroad depot. As the earlier, linked posts document, it cost $28 million in federal money (you people from Outside Alaska should be interested too) plus another large chunk of state money. And the only people who use it are the cruise ship passengers. So, essentially it was a gift to Carnival cruise lines.
ReplyDeleteSo, Albert, thanks for the good words about Anchorage, but they are misplaced. If you don't buy your ticket from Carnival (I'm not sure about cruiselines not owned by Carnival), you can't get a train here. And unless you get here at exactly the right time (summers only) in the day, you will see the empty depot that Jim mentions.
Jim, since Federal money paid for a big part of this, call your Congressperson and ask why you paid for this special gift to Carnival and why the people of Anchorage can't use it to get to and from the airport and downtown. Thanks.
Problem is the train depot downtown is in a valley - which would require yet one more mode of travel. Possible they could or should have built a light rail into downtown. For local traffic they could just add one more bus and/or a dedicated bus between the airport and downtown bus depot with a swing by all of the hotels. The train depot at the airport should just be boarded up.
ReplyDeleteCommuter service everywhere is subsidized. The Alaska Railroad is a for-profit corporation that runs trains to make money. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteWant something different? The answer is a Regional Transit Authority.
Anon 2:35 - You may well be right that a dedicated bus would be a much more cost effective option. Boarding up the depot seems a bit harsh. It is there and perhaps some better use could be made of it.
ReplyDeleteAnon 2:43 - I suspect there might be a bit of irony in your comments. In any case The railroad belongs to the State of Alaska. The RR website links to its:
Governing Statutes & Rules
* pdf document Alaska Railroad Corporation Act ("ARCA") AS 42.40 (June 2008)
* pdf document Alaska Railroad Transfer Act ("ARTA") United States Code Title 45 Chapter 21
* ARRC Board Rules
* pdf document ARRC Procurement Rules
The Alaska Railroad Corporation manages the railroad for the state. I don't see anywhere in the State Law that there is to be a profit. The closest I see is:
(D) carry out its responsibilities on a self-sustaining basis;
The airport train depot is not something any public official wants to talk publicly about - not the airport folks, not the cruise execs, not the railroad execs - they'd all rather ignore the "gift" as you so appropriately described it. We pointed to this as another way in which the cruise industry has maintained it's economic dominance over Alaskans and Alaska communities as we worked on the cruise regulation and taxation initiative (now law). There are billions to net here in Alaska, yet they are currently trying to get us all to believe it's the head tax that is causing cruise tourism to dry up. The industry will say and do ANYTHING to keep making $$ here. In the memorable words of Pete Kott - "lie, cheat, beg and steal".
ReplyDeleteisn't that a tragedy? we can't make buses run closer than an hour and twenty minutes apart, but we can manage to build a $40 million white elephant like that?
ReplyDeleteanother future church, perhaps? it already looks the part.