Alaska Builds Second Six-Lane Highway: Anchorage mega-project in second of three stages.

AuthorFriedman, Sam
PositionBuilding Alaska

Aproject to transform Anchorage's major north-south highway into a six-lane road is almost two-thirds done. This summer, contractor QAP plans to finish construction on the second of three main phases to widen and improve the Seward Highway between Tudor Road and O'Malley Road.

The third stage of the project is now being designed, with plans for construction to start around 2021.

For more than a decade planners have been working on the busy four miles between Tudor and O'Malley, transforming the stretch of roadway into the second six-lane highway in the state.

Key Corridor

As it enters Anchorage from the south, the Seward Highway passes near Dimond Center (Alaska's largest shopping mall), midtown Anchorage, the University of Alaska Anchorage, and Providence Alaska Medical Center (Alaska's largest hospital) before ending at 5th Avenue in downtown Anchorage.

The original Seward Highway was built in 1952. The then two-lane highway connected Seward on the Kenai Peninsula with downtown Anchorage, along a path that sometimes parallels the Alaska Railroad tracks. The city of Anchorage itself had grown out of a railroad construction camp established at Ship Creek in 1915.

In 1952, Anchorage had recently overtaken Fairbanks as the largest city in the Territory of Alaska, but Anchorage was a much smaller city than today. Along the Seward Highway corridor, the hospital and university in the Goose Lake area didn't open until 1962 and 1970, respectively. The Dimond Center, originally a small shopping center, opened in 1977, and the BP high rise that towers over midtown Anchorage wasn't built until 1985.

Anchorage's population at the 1950 census was 11,254 and the city hadn't yet swallowed what is today the neighborhood of Mountain View (which had a 1950 population of 2,880).

The Seward Highway remains a two-lane highway south of Anchorage, the only road from Anchorage to Girdwood, Whittier, and the Kenai Peninsula. Inside urban Anchorage, the original two-lane highway is known is the Old Seward Highway and parallels the path of the current highway.

Construction of the four-lane New Seward Highway was completed in 1971, with a series of interchange expansions occurring over the next two decades. The current highway between south and midtown Anchorage is a modern "controlled access" freeway, which means drivers can only get on and leave it at a limited number of designated entrances and exits.

According to a 2016 traffic study, the Seward Highway had...

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