Alaska opens West Dowling Extension in Anchorage

The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (ADOT&PF) said Monday it has opened the new West Dowling Extension between C Street and Minnesota Drive in Anchorage.

The $47 million extension project was part of a complex, multiphased, multimodal connection designed to improve the east-west links throughout the Anchorage community.

The project gives the community a four-lane road with a separated multiuse path,  on-street bike lanes and further improvements for the connecting streets.

In addition, the project included a new bridge crossing the Alaska Railroad tracks near Arctic Boulevard. There also was extensive stormwater management work and new signalized intersections located near Tina Lake.

“Not only did we want to open up this entire corridor for easy, multimodal access, we wanted to do it the smartest way possible,” ADOT&PF Chief Highway Engineer Jim Amundsen said. “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.”

ADOT&PF partnered with designer HDR and Granite Construction on the project.