The City and Borough of Juneau has received $16.5 million in federal funding to complete final designs for a second Juneau-Douglas crossing.
Katie Koester, Juneau’s director of engineering and public works, said that boost will carry the project through the planning phase.
“This is enough money to bring it all the way through the environmental analysis, through the design process, to get it construction-ready,” she said.
The proposed crossing would create a new route between Juneau and Douglas to supplement the existing bridge. According to the city, the project would create an easier commute for more than 5,000 residents that live on Douglas Island while opening access to undeveloped city and tribal land on North Douglas.
The city and the Alaska Department of Transportation have been studying five possible routes for the crossing, at Mendenhall Peninsula, Sunny Point, Vanderbilt Hill Road, Twin Lakes and Salmon Creek.
According to Koester, it will take a year or more to narrow down those options.
“Great progress has been made, great momentum, but the project is far from a sure thing,” she said. “And we’ll need a lot of public engagement to get it there.”
The five routes will be presented and discussed at public meetings over the next year before a final design will be considered.
Once a preferred route is selected, the new federal money will fund the development of final design plans and an environmental review, which is required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
The funding — which was awarded through the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant — will supplement $7 million in federal funds awarded for the project earlier this year.
The funding will not cover any of the construction costs, and the project is still far from breaking ground. The idea of a second crossing has been in discussion since the 1980s, without much progress. But in 2020, city and state transportation officials began planning again.
The new funding comes from a larger pot of money — $27.8 million — that was awarded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law mainly for roads for rural Alaska communities. Those include road improvements for Kake and Petersburg and more than 100 miles of new roads to connect villages near Bristol Bay.
