“March Madness” refers to the effect of big winter on small brains. Cold and darkness topple the frontal lobe, resulting in events that cannot be explained.
Husbands leave wives they never deserved. Underqualified and overpaid workers quit their jobs. Villanova beats Georgetown by shooting 79 percent from the floor.
Stuff happens in March. So we shouldn’t be surprised that Alaska DOT has resurrected the ghost of a loser idea from 60 years ago titled the “Juneau Road.”
When I arrived here as a reporter in 1986, I covered my first of what were to be countless “Juneau Road” hearings, where an exasperated Norm Smith – who’d been watching this terrible rerun already for 20 years – stood up and said, “If DOT bought a 747 twenty years ago and flew people for free between Juneau and Haines, it still would have been cheaper than what’s been spent studying the ‘Juneau Road.’”
Smith was right. There are two main groups who support building a road down Lynn Canal: People who want to make money building it and people who want to make money planning it. Any sane person who drives a car during winter here knows that just getting to the Haines ferry terminal can be death-defying.
Driving an additional 40 or 50 miles through a wilderness in a blizzard only to arrive at an isolated ferry terminal for a ferry ride in a smaller boat appeals to exactly three groups of people: 1) drunks, 2) 17-year-olds, and 3) 17-year-old drunks.
In 2014, the State of Alaska’s own Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, intended to be the final word on the matter, found that, in fact, improved ferry service would cost $5 million less annually in maintenance than a road up Lynn Canal.
(Even more astounding: The state is now proposing a road up Lynn Canal’s west side. In 2014, that alternative was ruled out in favor of a road up the east side. Both routes still require a ferry ride in Lynn Canal.)
The road to Juneau was built eons ago. It’s made of water and it’s called Lynn Canal. It’s open 24-7, requires no construction, no maintenance, and no plowing and it never develops a pothole. For it to operate, our state only needs a few decent boats, which it had for the first 35 years of the ferry system, even before Alaska got rich on oil.
Then, a little more than 20 years ago, ferries started being designed by politicians instead of by engineers. The first pair were aptly-named Fairweather and its twin, Chenega. These were catamarans out of a James Bond movie. Very sporty. They cost $68 million, ate up gobs of fuel and couldn’t operate in rough seas. Doh!
Then in 2023, the state rolled out its “Alaska-class” ferries, the Tazlina and the Hubbard. Smartly, these boats featured a “clamshell” bow that lifted up like a hatch, with a back door on the stern. Patterned after Washington-state ferries, these $125 million wonders were to allow motorists to enter through the rear and exit out the bow, eliminating hours of loading, drastically reducing voyage time.
Alaska-class ferries were to make the Lynn Canal route so timely as to make crew quarters and a passenger cafeteria unnecessary.
But the “clamshell” bows leaked and side doors had to be added, plus crew quarters. Hot food is now made in the crew kitchen and shuttled over to the snack bars on those boats. New ferry system director Craig Tornga is considering welding the clamshells shut, eliminating annual inspection costs of a door that doesn’t work. Doh!
Tornga seems a smart guy. The ferries he’s planning now will resemble the Malaspina and Matanuska, the vessels from the original fleet, ships built by the same generation of engineers who built the space ships that went to the moon.
“No more Franken-boats,” a Southeast Conference employee whispered in my ear a few weeks ago. And please, for the love of God, no more Franken-roads, either.