FAIRBANKS -- The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is taking another look at a long-discussed proposal to build a 25-mile road linking the village of Rampart to the Elliott Highway.
A survey of the route, expected to cost at least $150,000, was recently opened for bidding. Rampart is a village of about 20 year-round residents on the Yukon River.
"Last summer we got $500,000 from Sen. Stevens, and it is a governor's priority," DOT Northern Region spokeswoman Shannon McCarthy told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. "We could see some construction from the summer of 2004."
Project manager Steve Henry said that, at present, there is a track passable by four-wheel drive that stretches from the ghost town of Eureka about 13 miles toward Rampart. A dirt ATV trail stretches the last 12 miles.
"It's in pretty bad shape," Henry said of the route, though he noted it is driveable in the winter. If the DOT proposal goes forward, the track would be replaced by a 24-foot-wide gravel road, roughly the same specifications of the Elliott, Henry said.
An environmental impact statement has already been prepared, and Henry said the EIS identified no major problems. At a public meeting on the subject in 1999 in Fairbanks, most area residents and other speakers came out in favor of the project.
Linda Evans, president of the Baan O Yell Kon Corp., the village corporation for Rampart, said the majority of village residents still favor a road, both to cut down the price of bringing supplies to the village and perhaps to bring in a business or two. She said the only store in the village closed a few years ago, shortly after the school closed when it fell below minimum student requirements.
"The population's dropped a lot," she said. "Right now there's no business there, no store." Evans said people are concerned about the potential changes brought about by being on the road system but said opponents of the road are outnumbered by supporters.
Sen. Georgianna Lincoln, D-Rampart, said she has mixed feelings about what a road might bring in, but that villagers want the road and she supports it on their behalf. She noted that, while the road could also bring in intrusions from the outside world like new hunters, homesteaders and others, it would also allow for tourism, better access to health care and cheaper goods.
Henry said the project has been progressing slowly but was given a boost when Stevens appropriated money to assist it. Henry said the $500,000 will cover the aerial survey and part of the design phase. The road itself would cost around $1 million per mile and would take four or five years to complete.
McCarthy said the money for the construction would probably have to come from federal highway funds, which are funneled through the state. She said the project is on Gov. Frank Murkowski's "priority list," though she wasn't sure just how big or small that list is.
McCarthy noted that in addition to the village access, the road would serve a number of mining claims, which is in keeping with Murkowski's platform to expand roads in Alaska to reach resource areas.
