Remembering the Bridge to Nowhere

I promise to stay out of politics with this little blog of mine. I have my own views, of course, but travel is non-partisan, so I'll keep it that way. But the advent of Sarah Palin has me thinking a lot about Alaska, for many years my stomping grounds.

With the exception of some extended stays in Washington, D.C., I lived in Alaska from 1973 until 1982. Most of the time, my home base was Anchorage, but my first two years were spent in Ketchikan, the southernmost town on the panhandle of Alaska, then and now a popular stop for ships cruising the Inside Passage.

Back then, Ketchikan was home to the largest pulp mill in the world. It was a logging and fishing community with a fair amount of tourism in the summer. The year-round population of Ketchikan was about 12,000, making it the fourth-largest city in the state (after Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau.) Three of us young guys were hired by the local government to come to Ketchikan as planners, and develop the city's long range comprehensive and transportation plans.

The biggest issue we faced in 1973 was whether or not to support a really big and super-expensive bridge that would link Ketchikan to the nearby island of Gravina where the community's airport had just been built. We planners looked at the idea, and decided among ourselves that it was transcendingly stupid. After all, nobody lived on Gravina and chances were, nobody ever would. Meanwhile, there was a perfectly pleasant little ferry people happily rode across the Tongass Narrows to get from the city to the airport. The trip took about five minutes.

The problem was, lots of people in Alaska equated progress with public works, and nothing signaled a city's coming of age better than a little freeway, a cloverleaf or a bridge. So there was pressure to put the bridge in the plans and get the money to build it pronto.

For two years, we planners never gave our personal views about the bridge, but after we ran the community through a detailed public participation process, the citizens themselves came to the conclusion that they didn't need a bridge. They tabled the notion until Congressman Don Young and Senator Ted Stevens, more than 30 years later, put it back on the theoretical map and into the national political lexicon as the fabled, "Bridge to Nowhere."  It was still a stupid idea, but Young and Stevens had the power to jam through the appropriation. I think that if it hadn't been for Katrina and the cost of Iraq, and the outrage people finally felt about such a useless and wasteful expenditure, the Golden Gate of the sub-arctic would have been built after all. But instead, it became a poster child for earmarks run amok. And Sarah Palin, who first favored the bridge when she ran for governor, gave it a second thought once she was in office and Alaska had egg all over its face. As governor, she didn't return the money to the federal coffers, but held on to it for other infrastructure projects in Alaska.  

I write all this because it’s amazing to see the inane bridge concept I knew in my youth become part of a presidential campaign in my dottage. And I write it to encourage you to travel to Ketchikan and enjoy the many wonders of Southeast Alaska. The pulp mill is long gone, but the ferry is still there and it’s worth a ride. And you can see exactly where the Bridge to Nowhere was never built.  Should be an historic landmark.    
 

Posted at 03:25 PM in Doug McConnell’s OpenRoad.TV Tips | Permalink