Whittier, the quirky port town at the western edge of Prince William Sound, is known for keeping people in close quarters.
Almost all of the approximately 275 residents live in a single building, a converted military structure called the Begich Towers. The only route in and out for land vehicles is a 2.5-mile, single-lane tunnel — the longest highway tunnel in North America – that cars, trucks, buses and motorhomes use on a tight schedule that alternates with use by Alaska Railroad trains.
Its port, which has both deep waters and year-round ice-free conditions, is used by cargo ships, cruise ships, commercial fishing vessels and hundreds of watercraft carrying recreational boaters, sport fishers and sightseers. It is an important site for the Alaska Marine Highway System, which uses Whittier as a terminal in its Southcentral routes, and for the railroad, which ferries cargo and passengers in and out of town.
All that crowding in a once-isolated town about 60 road miles from Anchorage has prompted state and local officials to launch a long-term project called the “Whittier Moves Transportation Master Plan.”
“All eyes are on Whittier as an area of opportunity to grow tourism and freight,” says the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities website for the project.
The Whittier Moves project aims to set goals and investment priorities to guide work to be phased in over several years starting with some short-term fixes to alleviate bottlenecks.
To guide their planning, state and city officials are soliciting comments from residents, visitors, business operators and anyone else interested in Whittier. They have posted an online questionnaire that will be open until July 31. DOT also staged some information booths, where employees of engineering contractor DOWL on July 16 collected suggestions and comments from visitors, residents and cruise company workers. A public meeting is to be held in September to review input gathered over the summer.
The project is timely, with a new cruise dock built by the Native-owned Huna Totem Corp. in operation and increasing interest from cruise companies on top of the regular Alaska ferry and marine freight traffic, said Shannon McCarthy, a DOT spokesperson.
“A lot is happening in a confined space,” she said by email. “The study is primarily looking at the transportation needs, pedestrian facilities, parking, the potential for transit to get people to where they need to go, wayfinding to guide those from out of town and what future capacity may be needed for the tunnel.”
The project is using a federal grant of about $360,000, McCarthy said. While DOT is leading it, partners include the Alaska Railroad, which owns much of the land in town, and the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the Chugach National Forest that surrounds Whittier, as well as the city government.
Whittier’s year-round population may be tiny, but the town is anything but sleepy, at least in summer.
Cruise ships from various companies make regular port calls that started this year on April 28 and are scheduled to run until early October.
Vehicle traffic through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, named for the U.S. Army engineer who oversaw its construction during World War II, is highest in summer and crowded enough to result in “significant delays,” according to DOT. Overall, including winter, use has increased steadily since the tunnel was opened to vehicle traffic in 2000. DOT statistics show that traffic grew from 229,098 total vehicle trips in 2011 to 278,378 in 2019.
Small-boat harbor space is at a premium, with a yearslong waiting list for private slips at the dock, according to DOT. The older cruise ship terminal used by Princess Cruises, located at the small boat harbor, is aged and needs reconstruction or some kind of reconfiguration, according to the department. The new Huna Totem terminal, built in cooperation with Norwegian Cruise Lines and the city, is part of a “head of the bay” concept for development west of the existing and crowded waterfront.
The idea of modernizing Whittier’s transportation facilities aligns with local efforts to improve the waterfront and expand community development beyond the hulking Buckner Building, a massive structure used by the Army for only a few years and then abandoned.
One of the challenges has been the Alaska Railroad’s land ownership. Railroad tracks cut directly through town, limiting access for people traveling between the waterfront and the Begich Towers area. One access point is a 512-foot sheltered pedestrian tunnel that doubles as a tsunami evacuation route.
Tsunamis are a longstanding concern in Whittier. The area is seismically active; 13 people in Whittier died and the entire waterfront was ruined in the magnitude 9.2 quake and tsunami that struck in 1964. Additionally, landslides are increasing in the steep mountains that rise above Prince William Sound’s fjords and bays, a phenomenon that is partly triggered by the accelerated melt of glaciers. Those slides threaten to create localized tsunamis.
While the military legacy looms large in Whittier, the site’s role as a transportation hub dates back centuries before the Army arrived.
Portage Pass, a notch in the Chugach Mountains, links the Prince William Sound with the Cook Inlet region, and the 2-mile trail that hikers continue to use there was a traditional passageway for the region’s Indigenous people and later used by miners and prospectors.
