The federal government is lifting a funding penalty connected to the Fairbanks area’s failure to meet federal air quality standards.
That’s according to Fairbanks Area Surface Transportation (FAST) Planning Executive Director Jackson Fox. On Tuesday, he received a letter, dated Nov. 20, from federal officials with the U.S. Department of Transportation ending the so-called “conformity freeze.”
Fox said, when he saw the letter, he felt “really excited.”
“But then I also felt really exhausted because it’s just been such a long strung out process, and we’ve lost so much flexibility over the last couple years,” he said.
Since early 2024, the freeze has limited how local and state planners could direct federal funds for certain transportation projects in the area.
The penalty was kickstarted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration partially disapproving of a state plan to improve Fairbanks air quality. That was in late 2023. After some back and forth this year, the EPA gave final approval to an amended version of that plan in late October.
Fox singled out four major projects in the Fairbanks area that have been affected by the roughly two-year freeze, which total about $150 million. Those projects include improving the intersection at Airport Way and Cushman Street, reconstructing a segment of Old Steese Highway, resurfacing Steese Highway from milepost two to five, and building a grade-separated interchange at the intersection of the Steese and Johansen expressways.
“Effectively, those projects got paused,” Fox said. “And now, with this being lifted, we can resume work on those to get them back on track to construction in the coming years.”
Fox said the projects aren’t all ready to go to construction, though. He said the $30 million project to reconstruct Old Steese Highway from the Wendell Avenue bridge to the Johansen Expressway is the closest to being shovel-ready.
To rework the timeline for the projects, FAST Planning will need to amend its local funding plan in coordination with the Alaska Department of Transportation, and Fox said he hopes to get that process underway this winter.
Local and state officials working on the transportation and air quality issues have anticipated the end of the conformity freeze for months.
In January, the EPA under the Biden administration proposed approval of the state air quality plan and said that “relief from sanctions” should be provided as quickly as possible. In the final approval announcement last month, the EPA under Trump said that “FAST Planning is nearing completion of the final steps to lift the freeze.”