ABOUT CLICKED

The modern news consumer ignores Weblogs and online citizen journalism at his own peril. But not everyone has the time to keep track of what's going on the Web. With this blog we hope to track the highlights of what's being discussed online so when news breaks from the Web, we're ready.

Will Femia is a Weblog enthusiast who, through good fortune and dumb luck, was introduced to the form as his position as chat producer for MSNBC.com careered into obsolescence. On any given day, Will can be found having already spent an unhealthy amount of time squinting at a computer screen.

Send a message to Will at spotter@msnbc.com



Finding Nowhere

Posted: Tuesday, September 09, 2008 6:04 PM by Will Femia
Filed Under:

This isn't really about Web culture but since I have the links handy and I know some folks are like me and like to have a mental map of locations in the news, I'll share. With all this "Bridge to Nowhere" talk I finally bothered to look up just how nowhere the place is. The idea was to connect the town of Ketchikan to the airport across the Tongass Narrows. As I understand it, part of why the price tag was so big was because the bridge had to be high enough to allow ship traffic to pass under it.

What I can't quite make out on the map is the "Road to the Beach" which is the name describing the road that would have led to the bridge had it been built but instead just leads to the water's edge and stops. I don't know the date of Google's last pass over Alaska so it's hard to say if there's anything to see of the road project even if I knew where it was exactly. UPDATE: Found it. Here's a very useful pdf map of proposals and alternatives to "the Bridge." (Via)

The Knik Bridge, what they're calling "the other bridge to nowhere," at least has Anchorage at one end, so while it may appear to go nowhere, at least it comes from somewhere. (I've never been to Anchorage but on the map it looks like somewhere.) Poking around the Knik Arm we get a sense of Anchorage's proximity to Palin's home town of Wasilla.

Alaska also has a "Road to Nowhere" (not even to the beach?) project which is a little harder to get a sense of, but basically the idea seems to be to connect Juneau to one or two towns to the north, Haines and/or Skagway. I'm using the "terrain" view on Google Maps because part of the difficulty of the project is dealing with some steep cliffs and other awkward ground.

Useful in putting this together was this list of Alaska mega-projects. NOTE: It is not a neutral source. It's handy in that it describes the projects but it opposes all of them. My goal here was just to get a sense of "where" in my head when hearing about these things. Their value to Alaska is a much more complicated question than the political ping-pong ball of federal pork spending.

MAIN PAGE

Email this EMAIL THIS

Comments

I'm torn on the Knik Bridge.  Currently to get to Anchorage, folks in Wasilla, Big Lake, Houston, Willow have to drive around the inlet.  From Wasilla, that makes Anchorage a 50-mile drive.  The point that the Knik bridge would connect is about 3 miles from Anchorage across the water.  There are a lot of people who live in the Wasilla area and commute to Anchorage, making the area a bedroom community, and projections from the height of the housing boom indicated that the population was just going to mushroom upward, leading to traffic congestion and higher accident rates during the winter.  We're talking estimates of population doubling or tripling within the next ten years.

So, it sounds pretty good to me.  BUT, it's expensive.

The other Bridge to Nowhere has less support; there's already a ferry that takes people across, and the complaint that it doesn't run in rough weather, making people unable to get to the airport island, is problematic...because when it's rough weather, usually the flights are cancelled anyway.

Kate (Sent Tuesday, September 09, 2008 10:41 PM)

FYI--A 2003 economic trends study indicated that 35% of Matanuska-Susitna Borough residents work outside the borough.  Some of them no doubt work on the North Slope, but a substantial majority of them work in Anchorage.

Kate (Sent Tuesday, September 09, 2008 10:54 PM)

No, I don't think your goals were that innocent. But nice try!

KM (Sent Tuesday, September 09, 2008 11:08 PM)

Kate, one thing I have to think about these bridges and roads to nowhere is that they wouldn't be nowhere if there was a bridge or a road to them. If that Knik bridge went through it seems to me not only would the commute to places like Wasilla be shorter but a whole new town would probably grow on the other side of the bridge.

I understand the baggage that comes with that kind of development and why some people wouldn't want it but at least by looking at the map we can see that these projects have some root in practicality.

I figure the Ketchikan airport ended up where it is because it's the only flat area around but it still seems pretty bizarre that it's the only thing on that whole island (or the only thing worthy of being mapped).

Since the one thing everyone seems to agree on is that these projects are too expensive I won't question that conclusion but I'd be interested to see if anyone worked out an estimate for what the return would be on them. I see a lumber yard north of the airport and pleasure cruise ships across the water. To what value would those industries be helped by a bridge and an accompanying road?

Will Femia (Sent Wednesday, September 10, 2008 12:40 AM)



SEND A COMMENT

PLEASE READ: All comments must be approved before appearing in the thread; time and space constraints prevent all comments from appearing. We will only approve comments that are directly related to the blog, use appropriate language and are not attacking the comments of others.

Message (please, no HTML tags. Web addresses will be hyperlinked):

Your name, city and state (John Doe, Seattle, Wash.): 

 Your e-mail address (jdoe@msnbc.com):

Your website (it's okay if you don't have one):

Remember me? (We'll keep it private)

TRACKBACKS

Trackbacks are links to weblogs that reference this post. Like comments, trackbacks do not appear until approved by us. The trackback URL for this post is: http://clicked.msnbc.msn.com/trackback.aspx?PostID=1369882