(ANCHORAGE, Alaska) – Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (ADOT&PF) opened the West Dowling Extension to traffic over the weekend. The new section of road extends Dowling between C Street and Minnesota Drive.

The $47 million extension is the final piece of a complex, multi-phased, multimodal project to improve east-west connectivity across Anchorage. The project is a four-lane facility with on-street bike lanes, a separated multi-use path, and improvements on connecting streets. The project also constructs a new bridge over the Alaska Railroad tracks at Arctic Boulevard, new signalized intersections and extensive stormwater management for Tina Lake.

ADOT&PF worked with designer HDR and contractor Granite Construction to nominate the project as a pilot project for Greenroads, an independent third party sustainability rating system for transportation design and construction, which often results in cost savings—both for the initial buildout and maintenance of the asset. The baseline score showed that ADOT&PF rated well among other national projects on best practices for sustainability toward the environment and the economy.  

“Not only did we want to open up this entire corridor for easy, multimodal access, we wanted to do it the smartest way possible,” said Jim Amundsen, ADOT&PF chief highway engineer and former project manager. “We engaged Greenroads to find every best practice out there. We were surprised and pleased to incorporate their stormwater cost/benefit analysis that put data to our ideas.”

The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities oversees 237 airports, 9 ferries serving 35 communities along 3,500 marine miles, over 5,600 miles of highway and 839 public facilities throughout the state of Alaska. The mission of the department is to “Keep Alaska Moving through service and infrastructure.”

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