With back-to-back snowstorms having smothered Anchorage with near-record-breaking snow this month, residents are once again in a foul mood. With neighborhoods still waiting on plowing, parents scrambling as the school district cancelled school for four days due to road conditions, and bus service also cancelled for days, residents have taken to social media to express their frustrations. Even worse for residents, the first round of snowfall, which left the city with snow that had the consistency of wet concrete, left its legacy in the form of canyon-level ruts on many of the city's busiest roads.
I myself can attest to the severity of the ruts on the road: in my near-twenty years of driving in Anchorage, I have never experienced a more bumpier ride than I had this past week. While turning east onto Benson Boulevard from Denali Street a few days ago, I found that traffic at the light with the New Seward Highway had backed nearly all the way to Denali, spanning the length of the Midtown Mall. I thought perhaps it was a convoy of snowplows up ahead that had resulted in the traffic. Then I thought maybe it was an accident up ahead. But as I crawled closer to the intersection with the New Seward, it became clear why there was a backup: It was the ruts. An entire lane at the intersection was being abandoned left and right by drivers, as it had a deeper level of ruts that nobody dared mess with. Everywhere else, drivers crawled at slow speeds not only to save their tires and axels, but also to prevent a rut from suddenly thrusting their vehicle onto another lane, sending them into a collision with another car. I remember having to look at the two lanes on either side of me, checking to make sure that no car was sent my direction by the icy ruts. It was that bad.
But as I look on at this near-annual collective rage from city residents, I am once again reminded of how things could have been had Anchorage approached city building with careful urban planning. I quickly made this map, seen above, of how Anchorage might have looked had it maintained an even coverage of urban density, perhaps, at minimum, with density comparable to that of the Bootleggers Cove neighborhood east of downtown. With the city's roughly 270,000 citizens in a more compact city, it may very well be that Tudor Road or International Airport Road would become the city's southernmost road. But this is a very rough, non-scientific estimation. Under this ideal version of Anchorage, half, if not more than half, of the city's streets, roads, and freeways are gone. This includes all of Dimond Boulevard, all of O'Malley Road, all of Jewel Lake Drive and Raspberry Road, all of DeArmoun Road, and all of Dowling Road. This also includes eliminating most of C Street, Lake Otis, Arctic Boulevard, and the Old Seward Highway. The entirety of the Minnesota expressway would also be eliminated. I've had this ideal vision of Anchorage in my head for many years, and while I have used this vision as a way to improve walkability, make transit viable, and make the city more attractive and livable, this fantasy map also serves as a guide on how not to overwork your snowplow and grader drivers. With snow crew from the state and municipality concentrated on a smaller urban footprint, it's safe to say that the nasty ruts drivers have been recently experiencing, which is the result of long neglect from overworked snow crews, would be a thing of the past.
And yes, for those scanning the map for details, I've included some additional changes to the city! For starters, I've curbed the sprawl east of Muldoon Road. In West Anchorage, I erased Turnagain By The Sea entirely. Meanwhile, nearby, a green belt now surrounds Fish Creek; the trail that starts at Northwood Park now travels without interruption along Fish Creek and extends out to connect with the coastal trail at the Fish Creek Estuary. In midtown, I plopped down a park in the center of the business district. It's meant as a wink and a nod to the block bordered by Denali Street, 36th Avenue, Benson Boulevard, and A Street. Before it became home to businesses like Walmart and Century 16, the whole block was grassland. I also included a large park in northeast Anchorage. Oh, and of course, I eradicated Tikhatnu Commons.
