Motorists will get a break from interchange, passing-lane construction project delays, detours — until next year
Good news for motorists traveling over the Richardson Highway: you won’t have to worry about long road-construction delays for the next six months or so, because contractors have wrapped-up this season’s work along the highway between Delta Junction and Fairbanks.
“Work is completed for the 2024 season and we'll pick up paving and other work in 2025,” says John Perreault, an Alaska Department of Transportation spokesperson.
Perreault says that does not include routine maintenance like patching potholes, which will continue as needed.
“There is still preventive maintenance and asphalt surface work that gets done,” he said Thursday.
The biggest of the Richardson Highway project completed this construction season is the railroad-crossing overpass at milepost 359, near Fort Wainwright’s south gate. Perreault says contractors have completed all but the finishing touches on that project.
“By the end of October, it should be done,” he said, “including the bike path that connects the Badger Road bike paths to the Fairbanks area bike paths.”
Perreault says crews also are also done with preliminary work on a new overpass at milepost 351, near 12-Mile Village, to replace an intersection where too many accidents occur.
“We are putting in an interchange to make that much safer for vehicles entering and exiting roadway,” he said. “And that will begin in earnest in 2025.”
Farther south, DOT contractors have completed construction of passing lanes along five stretches of the highway between Moose Creek and the Fairbanks North Star Borough boundary, near Tenderfoot Hill.
“We're putting in 10 new opportunities for people to pass in north- and south-bound directions,” he said, “and we're hoping that those will help with military convoys and RVs and other things that people have complained along about along a narrow two-lane stretch there that is pretty heavily traveled, especially in summer.”
Other things people have complained about include the 60 or so truckloads of ore that Kinross Alaska and its partner Contango Ore are transporting daily from the Manh Choh mine near Tetlin to the Kinross mill near Fox.
Perreault says next year, DOT’s contractors will complete work those passing lanes and build three more near Shaw Creek Flats and Quartz Lake.
“Next year, there still will be some work for folks making the route between Delta and Fairbanks, but we look forward to having those done.”
South of Delta, DOT has widened and added lanes on a stretch of the Alaska Highway between milepost 1330, near Tanacross, to mile 1400, near Dry Creek.
The department also reconditioned two stretches of the Alaska Highway south of Tok and just west of the Alaska-Canada border.
