$20.5 million because planners like to connect dots?

This item was in the Anchorage Daily News today. We've known this was going to happen a while and it's probably too late to do anything about it. But we should question the logic of moves like this.

I did write about this last year at the end of a post on B Street (It should be Avenue).

Here's what the Municipality Planning Documents say:

(Double click to see this larger and clearer and complete.)

Increased connectivity. Reduced congestion on 42nd. The existing couple of blocks of E. 40th is a sleepy street with comfortable, but not fancy houses, in a hidden, quiet neighborhood. With the explosion of the Providence Hospital complex, their neighborhood has been impacted with streets punched through from Tudor to Providence at Piper and at Dale Streets.

But let's look at what this is about.

The green on the map is the existing E. 40th Avenue. It starts, as a street at Piper (on the left) and goes to Dale (on the right) with a little extra that dead ends at UAA property and then jogs north along Providence Hospital to Providence Dr. The UAA dorms are in the way of extending E. 4oth to the east and there are houses in the way if someone wanted to later extend E. 40th west of Lake Otis. This is simply providing a street on the south border of Providence and API grounds.

To call this an "extension" is a bit of a misnomer. As you can see the new road (the red line) is more than double the existing street.
Here's a view from Laurel Street (B on the map above) (another of the new roads going from Tudor to Providence Drive.) We're looking westward toward Lake Otis where the new road will be punched through between the Kidney Dialysis Center and another building. It will be tight to get a two lane road through there with sidewalk and/or biketrail.

Then turning around and looking east, the road will go over (they do have money in there for retaining walls, so maybe they'll just cut through the hill, but then what happens to the buildings on the right of the fence?) this hill and down on the other side along the back of API until it hits the existing couple of blocks of E. 40th.

Is this really worth $20 million? E. 42 Avenue is just a bit further south and already goes through. It's a pretty rough road - two poorly maintained lanes, no sidewalks - but it's mostly apartments, condos, duplexes, and trailer parks. Relatively high density. So it needs a better street with sidewalks. But part of the justification here is to reduce congestion on that E. 42. It is used by some as short cut to avoid Lake Otis and Tudor, but I've never had more than two or three cars in front of me at a stop sign on E. 42. This street is NOT congested by any stretch of the imagination. Why should a street where people moved to knowing there was some traffic be relieved so that a much quieter street with lower density become a bigger through street?

The only reason I can think of: This is what Providence wanted. A $20.5 million dollar street punched through along its southern boundary. E. 42 is due for improvements, including sidewalks, AFTER E. 40th is done.

I would note that we passed this paper signed nailed to a tree on the hill as we walked to dinner.

There has to be some irony when the Mental Health Trust Authority is kicking the homeless off their land and sending them to Brother Francis Shelter. One has to imagine that a number of the homeless have some, at least minor, mental health issues. Is this to get them out of the way of the construction companies due to build the road this summer?

So, why should I write about this if it's a done deal? First, I just want to document a little of what things look like before the changes. Second, there is still time to prevent the order freaks who need every point to be connected to the nearest other point with a straight line from dividing the University land with a road from Tudor to Northern Lights.

They are already busily constructing Martin Luther King Road (just south of Tudor, already wiping out parts of a new beautiful bike trail there). It could easily take people from Elmore to Boniface which goes to Northern Lights already. There's no need for a new road.

If the most densely populated city in the US - New York City, with 23,702 people per square mile (1990 data) - can tolerate a green belt in its very heart going 5o city blocks with only about four cross streets with very restricted hours - then surely Anchorage, with only 133 people per square mile (number 200 and the last city on the list) can tolerate having to go around the university green belt area as well. In the future, when our population has increased, this piece of in-town wilderness, will be cherished in the same way New Yorkers cherish Central Park.

There are already people organizing to make sure this sanctuary is not violated. Personally, the only road option I would not oppose is a tunnel that would leave the land above intact.