Commuting Alaska: valley riders see of bus service.

• Author: Kalytiak, Tracy
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

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Every workday morning at 5:50, Rick Allen awakes in his Palmer home, takes care of his Jack Russell terrier and then grabs a $1 cup of fresh-roasted java during his 7 mile drive to a Trunk Road park-and-ride lot.

Allen, director of Alaska's Office of Public Advocacy, leaves his SUV and boards a 39-passenger Valley Mover bus at 7:20 a.m. for his commute to Anchorage.

"I plug my headphones into my iPad and listen to music, bang out emails," Allen said. "The time just zooms by."

People throughout the state participate in the commuting ritual, with slight variations: some people can walk to work, while others must get there by air, ferry, bus, passenger van, car, motorcycle or bike.

Alaskans who drive to work take less time to get there than the national average of 25.2 minutes, with the exception of Mat-Su commuters, who take an average of 33.6 minutes to get to work.

NEARLY HALF OF VALLEY WORKERS COMMUTE

An estimated 40 percent of the work force in Mat-Su commutes to Anchorage jobs.

Many of those commuters, like Allen, are headed to Anchorage for their workday and the actual travel time is generally longer than the census indicates for the 40-mile trip.

The need for commuting options is critical in Mat-Su, which has a population of nearly 90,000 people and is the fastest-growing region in Alaska. Between the 2000 and 2010 census counts, Mat-Su's population grew 42 percent.

Sixty-seven percent of Alaskans drive to work alone in their car, truck or van, according to statistics published in March 2011 by the Alaska Department of Labor. That number is higher in Mat-Su, where 70.1 percent of the commuters drive to work alone in a car, truck or van, and only 0.5 percent use public transportation.

LONG-TERM IDEAS

Over the years, officials and planners have concocted a variety of ideas aimed at sugaring the pill of that tedious, sometimes hazardous Valleyto-Anchorage commute.

They've discussed and dismissed and rediscussed various prospects: offering light rail from Anchorage to Mat-Su, erecting a $4 billion dollar bridge connecting Point MacKenzie to Anchorage, running a 195-foot-long, 60-foot-wide twin-hulled steel-and-aluminum icebreaking Navy prototype ferry back and forth across Knik Arm.

Light rail, so far, is still just an idea. The bridge remains controversial and unbuilt. The ferry exists but landings for it do not, and the Mat-Su Borough in November had not yet decided whether it would keep the dry-docked $78-million...