or nearly four decades, there have been conversations about upgrading the Sterling Highway between Sunrise Inn and the eastern entrance to Skilak Lake Road near Cooper Landing. Those upgrades are now underway as a part of the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) Sterling Highway MP 45-60 project, a development with an estimated cost of $375 million and a projected completion date of 2025. “It’s hard to pin down the actual date, but I’ve heard 1982, or even maybe before, is when the first go at this environmental impact study started,” says DOT&PF Project Manager Sean Holland. “We were finally able to get a record of decision in May 2018 that’s letting us move forward with the Juneau Creek Alternative.”

DOT&PF considered five alternatives—four build alternatives and a No Build option. In the end, the Juneau Creek Alternative was chosen and will include a new alignment section that will start at MP 46.2 and end at MP 56. A part of the project’s new alignment section will be the construction of the Juneau Creek Bridge, which as planned will be the longest single-span bridge in Alaska.

“It’s going to be a bridge that, depending on geology, will have a clear span of 450 to 825 feet,” says Holland.

This project will address three problems with the Sterling Highway MP 45-60. It will reduce congestion; meet current highway design standards; and increase safety measures along the roadway. Holland notes that traffic jumps from about 1,000 vehicles traveling the highway per day in the winter to about 8,000 during the peak of dipnetting season in August. He estimates the new bypass will redirect the bulk of traffic and reduce congestion. “It should have a design speed of 60 miles per hour and a posted minimum of 55,” Holland says. “Right now, we’re slowing people down to 35. It’s not uncommon—that occurs in other parts of the state—but it’s not really a compatible use to have a highway go through a small community like that. This bypass is going to be able to redirect an estimated 70 percent of the traffic that goes through Cooper Landing now to the Juneau Creek Alignment.”

In order to meet current highway design standards, Holland and DOT&PF are focused on creating 12-foot-wide lanes and 8-foot-wide shoulders. “The highway is classified as a rural highway—there are no shoulders there,” says Holland. “A rural highway has a minimum of a 6-foot shoulder and preferably an 8-foot shoulder. Fifty percent of the curves during that stretch, from [mile post] 45 to 60, are too sharp. They don’t meet current design standards.”

Holland says the third need the project is addressing—safety—requires a mix of decreasing highway congestion and meeting current highway design standards. “The crash rate is about double what we see on average on a rural highway,” he says. “Along with that, both the major injuries and the fatality crashes are above the statewide average rate.” Cooper Landing’s existing safety path will be replaced along the east end of the project, though a new separated pathway, estimated to be 10 feet wide and nearly 2 miles long, will be constructed on the south side of the highway between Quartz Creek Road and the intersection of the “old” highway.

In addition to addressing that section of highway’s three primary needs, the Juneau Creek Alternative was also selected in part because it will have the least environmental impact—while remaining practical—of the five alternatives. “Out of all of the alternatives we looked at, this has the least amount of damage for the environment,” Holland says. “A higher weight was put on the safety of the Kenai River because it is a really important resource for the state from a recreational, commercial, and historical use. This alternative goes furthest away from the river and reduces the probability of a tanker truck driving into the river or something like that.”

Throughout the summer of 2019, field crews began working on the corridors of the highway before work was halted in August due to the Swan Lake Fire. That field work included surveyors collecting detailed information from ground surveys and drones and geologists using drill rigs—both on and off the roadway—to extract cores from the ground to provide information on soil and rock conditions. Scientists have continued the wildlife and cultural resources monitoring that began in preparation of the Environmental Impact Statement.

The first design phase focuses on the east and west ends of the highway that will lead to the new alignment. HDR is contracted to provide environmental and public involvement support while designing the west end, MP 56-58. Working as a subcontractor to HDR is R&M Consultants, which is tasked with the design of the east end, MP 45-47. “HDR has the longest history with the project and they have the most knowledge,” Holland says.

Holland notes the west end is classified as Phase 1A, which will comprise the reconstruction of the existing alignment segments and construction of pioneer roads within right-of-way to access th.e bridge site. The same work will be done on the east end (Phase 1B). Phase 1A design is expected to be completed this fall, with the design of Phase 1B anticipated to be completed in early 2021. Construction on the two ends is slated to begin during the summer/fall of 2021 and take and take one-and-a-half construction seasons to complete.

Phase 2 of the project is the bridge, which Holland describes as the hardest part of the project. DOT&PF plans to design the bridge in house, though it will employ a firm to oversee the design before construction begins. “We’re going to hire a firm from Outside that has more experience with a bridge of that type to provide a design check,” says Holland. “We have really capable people; it’s not a bridge that we design on a regular basis, but I’m confident that they have the ability to do it. We just want someone who has done them before to take a look at the design, as is required by code.”

Part of what makes the bridge complicated is that it travels over Juneau Creek Canyon, in which no work can take place. “We can’t even have temporary work inside the canyon to minimize the impact of the wildlife that travels through there,” Holland says. “There’s a lot of challenges with the entire project, but a lot of it is work that we do every single day. The bridge that we’re building is really uncommon for us.”

DOWL has been contracted to design Phases 3-5, the middle section comprised of MP 47-58, with Jacobs Engineering serving as a subcontractor that will also complete some highway design. Holland says the DOWL-Jacobs contract provides DOT&PF with seven design squads in all. A high-profile designer was tapped to help design the multiple wildlife crossings that will need to be built. “We have five wildlife crossings that we have to build to get wildlife safely across the routes they use today,” Holland says. “We’re trying to keep wildlife off the highway for two reasons: to protect the health of the wildlife and also to reduce the probability of wildlife collisions on the highway. We’ve hired A.P. Clevenger—who actually wrote the guide through the [Federal Highway Administration]—to help us design and build those wildlife crossings.”

The project is expected to be complete in 2025.

To maintain the proposed schedule, DOT&PF is already in negotiations with Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. about constructing the project. “It’s new to the Central Region DOT&PF, a new contracting method called construction manager/general contractor,” says Holland. “The idea is that we’ll get the contractor on board early.” He says DOT&PF typically completes project design and then releases it for bid before starting construction. However, the Sterling Highway Project is taking a different path for a few reasons.

“One of them being the schedule: we want to have the contractor on board during pre-construction during our design phases so they can help us come up with a more cost-effective design,” says Holland. “Then we’ll try to negotiate that work with the contractor that we have onboard during pre-construction. Using our traditional method of design/bid/build, we probably wouldn’t be able to meet our build-out schedule of 2025.”

Although Holland notes that, at the time of publication, the contract with Kiewit isn’t complete—“We’ve issued our intent to negotiate and we’re hopeful that we can sign a contract soon,” he says—he remains enthusiastic about the help Kiewit will bring once it joins the project. “If we have the contractor that’s going to do the work onboard, it streamlines a lot of things,” says Holland. “It streamlines permitting, communication with the public. Another thing we’ll be able to do is identify pieces of the work that we can go in and start on early. We might be able to go through and identify what foundations we’re going to need for the bridge so that we can get started on the foundation and not have to wait until we have the design.”

As project manager, it’s Holland’s responsibility to ensure the project meets its deadlines and stays on track for the scheduled 2025 completion date. “I have a detailed schedule that I think we kind of live and die by,” says Holland. “We review it at least once a week and we keep a list of tasks and keep track of what our urgent tasks are.” He says he’s relied on HDR and the project’s other consultants to help recognize various pieces of the project that are looming on the schedule, which was shuffled after August’s fires.

“One of the big things that we were delayed on by the fire is that we’re going through a really rich archaeological district,” says Holland. “A historical district, too—there are some mining sites there—but there’s been a lot of interest from the local tribes. We’re going to impact some of the sites in the archaeological district, so there’s a lot of work that we have to do out front of construction. Part of that is writing a paper about the archaeological district and submitting it to the Alaska State Library and then whatever artifacts there are will go to the state museum. All of that stuff takes time, so we have to get out there and get that done ahead of construction.”

Among the project’s most pressing matters is a clearing contract Holland says DOT&PF will begin advertising in the first quarter of 2020. “We’re going to try advertising for a clearing contract that will clear a 200-foot path through the off-alignment piece and allow us to get up to the bridge and start getting information about the geology up there,” says Holland. “That way we can choose the bridge type and start designing it.” He also notes that Phase 1A probably won’t be ready for bid until August 2020, with Phase 1B being on a similar track, though it could be a little slower because there is property that still needs to be purchased and utilities that need to be relocated.

Holland says he feels fortunate to serve as the project manager and appreciates the impact HDR and DOWL are bringing to the project. “I feel lucky to have this opportunity,” he says. “A lot of people go through their whole career and don’t get to build a project like this. My favorite part of it is being able to involve the whole community, all those consultants and the department, too. Some of the positives about being able to hire an HDR or DOWL is that they have resources down in the states that we can tap into, people that have done work like this in other parts of the country. We have that knowledge that we can tap into, but I like the fact that we’re all Alaskans trying to build everything together.”