Alaska Gov. Bill Walker and Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz were featured in a Facebook interview by KTUU TV that was at once awkward and off-putting, with the audio having a three-second delay with the video.
The two incumbent politicians stood in their requisite hardhats and orange vests at the site of the Artillery Road Bridge in Eagle River on the Glenn Highway, which was struck by a commercial truck on Wednesday and rendered unsafe. That crash led to horrific traffic backups on Thursday and the shut down of Chugiak and Eagle River High Schools on Friday.
State workers living in the Mat-Su Valley were advised to stay home Friday after the commute on Thursday, when an injury accident on the Glenn could not be reached by ambulance due to the gridlock, requiring the victim to be airlifted by helicopter to a hospital. Both sides of the highway — north and southbound — were closed due to that incident.
In all, the bridge accident has highlighted the need for better access between Anchorage and the ever-growing Mat-Su Valley. We should say it highlighted it for many residents, but not for the governor.
When questioned about whether the bridge disaster demonstrated the need for the Knik Arm Crossing, which the governor vetoed in 2016, Walker brushed off the question, citing a need for a full fiscal plan, and better plans for future disasters. When asked where the funds would come from to repair the bridge, he replied that he did not know.
Viewers of the video were unsatisfied with the governor’s performance, and to a lesser extent the mayor of Anchorage, who had a minor speaking role. By Friday evening, more than 430 people had left comments on the Facebook page, and only a handful of them were charitable.
Take a look at the video that drew such an epic social media response:
Or view it here on Facebook and read the comments viewers provided (you’ll need a Facebook account to do so).
Alaska’s drowning in fiscal folly and we want to resdurrect the multi-billion-dollar Bridge to Nowhere?
Have we lost our minds?
The -one- good thing Governor Walker did was drive a stake through the heart of this monster.
Now we hafta to bring it back just because some damned fool can’t load a truck properly?
Such a debacle could never happen on your Bridge to Nowhere, no?
Oh heck yes, let’s do it… It’s just a billion or two or ten depending on who or when you ask.
Might as well spend Alaska’s Permanent Fund before the Communist Chinese and the Gasline Gang grab it…
How would this be a bridge to nowhere? It would allow access and an additional route from Anchorage to the valley. The bridge to nowhere was out of Ketchikan
It’s a Bridge To Nowhere because it does not solve a thing except what to do with state money that has not yet been spent.
Had it been built timely it would have allowed truck traffic to avoid Downtown Anchorage and route directly to Fairbanks and to Tok and the Alcan. The Alcan was built on the Great Circle Route from the Interior US to Asia. Modifying the Port for RoRo traffic would have given a fast, direct route from Asia to the Interior US with minimal handling. While a bunch of old men with friends in high places made some fancy salaries, the Canadians beat us to it with a RoRo port directly linked to the Canadian and US rail systems.
The BTN won’t accomplish anything that another lane on both sides of the Glenn Highway would do faster, better, and cheaper.
Problem for us is our lobbyist-legislator team apparently know more about what is best for us than we do.
Think about it… The same bloody crowd who can’t build a port properly, who can’t build roads that last more than a few years, for whom cost overruns and payola are a way of life… these you trust to build a bridge?
1 billion dollars was just appropriated for walkers gas pipeline yard art.that money would go further on the knik arm bridge. pt McKenzie would be a proper place to consider moving the capital. would save a lot on per diem for the legislature.
If we believe we are in a fiscal crisis. Assume a budget for a Knik Arm crossing.
There are simpler far, far less costly methods such as periodic both south, South north cross overs that could be gated when in non emergency use.
However, a bridge would allow for an expanding population. I would, however, investigate who owns vast properties on the Knik side. Politicians? As the Doritos commercial caught in the act said, “Could be?”
Hey, Gov….. How about you put person-pods into your pipedream pipeline? So, when The Glenn is closed people can just pop into a pod in Wasilla and be spit out in Anchorage. OH, RIGHT, Alaska’s isn’t for Alaskans….it’s for China! Silly – thinking the pipeline might end someplace where Alaskans could benefit. Silly idea? OK, but maybe not quite as silly as the fervent belief that a pipeline that generates losses is a marvelous way to spend megatons of money.
I just hope when we finally do get a new bridge here in Eagle River that it is not designed by the same drunken idiots that designed the new Muldoon Rd, and Glenn Hwy. interchange. Just when you thought roundabouts couldn’t get any more dangerous and confusing, these drunken engineers took up the challenge and managed to endanger every person that has to use the death trap.
Friends don’t let friends exit The Glenn at Muldoon. I wonder if businesses on Muldoon are feeling any effects.
The Money the state received from the Federal Government will have to be pay back if the bridge does not go in.
Sadly, we get the leaders we deserve and these two C-teamers are about what we have asked for. Until the voting public insists on higher quality folks, expect more of the same: A Valdez bloviator and a San Francisco trendy-climber.
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