Summer construction on the Cooper Landing Bypass Project is picking back up for the season. State transportation crews will spend the season working on the project’s single-span steel bridge, which will cross Juneau Creek Canyon.
The bypass project aims to alleviate traffic congestion through the community by adding ten new miles of highway. As designed, the new section will branch off of the Sterling Highway close to the Sunrise Inn and then rejoin the highway near the east end of Skilak Lake Road.
Crews have spent previous construction seasons building access roads and installing culverts. Now, they’re turning to the Juneau Creek Bridge. It’s the biggest component of the bypass project and carries a price tag of around $150 million.
Dozens of steel support beams for the bridge – 45 in all – arrived in Seward last week from Coolidge, Arizona. Engineer Marcus Forkner is overseeing the bridge construction and says those beams are a significant component.
“It’s basically what the entire bridge is – all the weight is going to be resting on and on top of,” he said.
Each beam is more than 100 feet long, and will be trucked to the project site over the next few weeks. This summer, Forkner says crews will get the beams set up, bolted together and across the canyon.
The bridge will be the largest single-span bridge built in Alaska in decades. Only the Juneau-Douglas bridge, in Southeast, is longer. It will also be Alaska’s highest-crossing bridge, surpassing Hurricane Gulch near Denali by more than 30 feet.
The bridge is also unique in form. Forkner says most Alaska bridges use concrete support beams. But because the Juneau Creek Bridge is so big, the state brought up steel beams from the Lower 48.
Jonathan Tymick is managing the bypass project. He says starting bridge construction is a “huge milestone.”
“It feels like a long time coming for us to now see the girders arriving in the state here five, six years later,” he said.
Alaska’s transportation department started designing the bridge in 2019 and the construction contract in 2023. The roughly $150 million contract accounts for more than half of the project’s total construction costs to date.
Tymick estimates the state will need another $350 million more to finish construction and open the highway to cars. The federal government is footing the costs, and he says uncertainty over when the money may be available has the state planning for contingencies.
“With the funding not identified, we are, you know, kind of anticipating the worst case scenario — that it could approach a billion dollars,” he said.
The close-to-billion-dollar estimate is about three times as much as the project’s estimated cost in 2018 and $160 million more than 2023 estimates.
Including construction, design and geotechnical Tymick says about $450 million has been spent on the project. And the department is already working to get the next phase funded.
For now, Tymick says summer construction isn’t expected to disrupt travel along the Sterling Highway. But he says drivers should watch out for those steel support beams as crews drive them to the Cooper Landing from Seward.
