Transportation

Starting on May 7, every air traveler age 18 and older will need a REAL ID to board a flight within the United States.

Lauren Whiteside, division operations manager for the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles, said her agency is ready to help any residents who still need to upgrade their IDs.

“We are ready and willing to issue to anyone and everyone who doesn’t have one that wants one,” she said.

The Real ID deadline was delayed many times, but the Transportation Security Administration says this upcoming deadline is for real.

Whiteside urged travelers who plan to fly on or after May 7 to ensure they have a REAL ID. Without one, people may face delays or be denied entry at TSA security checkpoints, preventing them from boarding their flights. Military bases will also require REAL IDs for entry starting May 7.

Whiteside said the DMV has already issued REAL IDs to many Alaskans.

“DMV’s been issuing REAL IDs for over six years now,” she said. “We’ve issued a little over 350,000 unique REAL ID credentials since January of 2019.”

Whiteside said her agency has used mobile units and outreach programs to reach Alaskans in more remote parts of the state.

“DMV does have a mobile DMV unit that does travel to rural Alaska.” she said. “We have traveled to several communities over the last few years issuing REAL IDs.”

If you’re unsure if your driver’s license is a REAL ID, check the top right-hand corner, it will have a star symbol to indicate compliance.

To obtain a REAL ID, visit your local DMV or motor vehicle agency. Here is a checklist for what you will need to bring. For more information, visit the Alaska DMV website.

Juneau’s Valley Transit Center will soon have a new charging station for the city’s fleet of electric buses. 

Construction will begin March 31 and should be completed in mid-July, according to Capital Transit Superintendent Rich Ross.

The city will close the parking lot, restrooms and the public electric vehicle chargers off of Mendenhall Mall Road during installation. Pick-up and drop-off will be temporarily moved to the park & ride lot next door.

The two new chargers will serve seven electric buses that arrived in December. Capital Transit drivers have been using slower chargers at their bus barn on Bentwood Place, which can take six hours to fully power up a bus when it’s dead. The new chargers should cut that time down to two hours, Ross said, and the more convenient location will keep buses on-route longer. 

The charging station project is estimated to cost roughly $1.6 million dollars, most of which was provided by the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. The city is covering $160,759.

The first electric bus that Capital Transit tested, made by Proterra, was out of commission for more than a year due to numerous repairs. The new buses were made by a different manufacturer, Gillig, which also made the city’s diesel buses. 

Ross said that he was nervous about how the new electric fleet would perform, but so far “these are a completely different animal than that first bus we tried,” he said. “I think it’s a good value for the community.”

All of the new electric buses should be on the road in June, Ross said. 

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Bentwood Place. 

A draft of the 20-year plan for Alaska’s state ferry system is open for public comment. Officials with the Alaska Department of Transportation are asking residents to weigh in on the plan that will guide the Alaska Marine Highway System through the year 2045.

The long-range plan seeks to increase service to over 30 ports. In recent years, port calls have decreased and coastal communities have repeatedly voiced their concern.

In an online public meeting March 19, AMHS Director Craig Tornga said the system is planning for more reliable service – not increasing it much but bringing it back to pre-pandemic levels.

“We’re really looking at trying to increase the port calls at our current communities and to make sure that we have some reliable service on a regular basis that can be planned,” said Tornga. “And then keeping it as efficient as we can from a cost perspective for the state, so it can be maintainable going forward.”

The state plans to build new hybrid ferries to replace the aging fleet, hire more workers to run them, and improve infrastructure at the ports.

That, plus regular maintenance, will cost about $3 billion. The plan to pay for it includes a combination of state and federal money along with increasing profits from ridership.

In creating the plan, the state hired engineering and research groups to crunch data and gather information from dozens of coastal communities. Economist Katie Berry said the ferry plan anticipates the state to appropriate roughly $120 million a year in operating costs. The 20-year plan also calculates that federal funding remains intact.

“The expectation is that the federal funding sources that have pre-dated the Federal Infrastructure Act will be stable over this time period,” Berry said.

The Infrastructure Law brought in about $700 million in federal funds to the ferry system in the last three years. Meanwhile, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed millions in state ferry funding that the Alaska Legislature approved.

Efforts for a long-range plan began in 2022 after the Legislature created the Alaska Marine Highway Operations Board to help guide the state’s DOT. The nine-member board is made up of state workers and coastal residents with ferry knowledge.

The public comment period on the long-range plan ends March 30. The operations board will consider the plan in April before it heads to the Legislature. According to state law, the plan will be updated every five years.

Public transportation riders in Juneau will soon be able to pay their fares using a new mobile app. 

Next month Capital Transit is set to launch a new app through Token Transit. It allows riders to buy their tickets online using their smartphones. 

Denise Koch, the city’s director of Engineering and Public Works, said at a city meeting earlier this week that the goal is to make riding public transportation in town more convenient and accessible.

“I know, even for myself, sometimes I think, ‘Oh, I never have like $1 or $2 on me,’ this is just another option to pay,” she said. “I think it’s going to be one that’s very exciting.”

Koch said riders can use the app to purchase single rides, youth rides or monthly passes. Paying in cash or using physical passes will still be options, but the city is getting rid of ride tokens. 

General fare tickets cost $2 for a one-way ride or $1 for youth riders. Children under 5 and seniors with sales tax exemption cards will continue to ride for free. 

Koch said the city will also adopt fare capping on the app, meaning once a rider spends the same amount of money as what it would cost to purchase a monthly pass, they won’t be charged more than that.  

“Right now, we have some of our most economically vulnerable people who can’t front the money initially to buy a monthly pass, and this would be really great for them,” she said. 

The Assembly is considering offering rides purchased on the app for 50% during the first week of its launch in April. Koch said the city will announce the date the app goes live in the coming weeks. 

A decades-old proposal to build a controversial road between Juneau and the communities of Haines and Skagway was put to rest in 2016.

But that just changed. The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities unveiled plans last week to launch a new study to examine the feasibility of building a road – and other infrastructure – that it says could create more cost effective and reliable transportation for the region. It plans to pay a firm at least $1 million for the study, due at the end of the year.

According to agency spokesperson Sam Dapcevich, the road could help Haines residents get to Juneau and back in one day, reducing the need for mainliner ferries in the region.

“If you knock 14 hours or more out of the mainliner schedule on Lynn Canal, you can do a lot better for some of the other communities in southeast, while even improving the service to Haines and Skagway,” Dapcevich said.

Whether such a road would achieve those goals has been debated for decades.

The state has repeatedly studied and pitched proposals, including in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s – and now.

This time, the state is looking at the west side of Lynn Canal. Supporters say the terrain on that side is less avalanche-prone than on the east side. They also say it would open more of Haines to recreation and provide a more reliable way to get to Juneau, which is only accessible by boat or airplane.

“In the years when we first came here, in the 70s, the ferry was dependable. It was very dependable, you could almost set your clocks by it,” said long-time Haines resident Jerry Lapp, a former mayor and assembly member who supports the road. “But it’s become so undependable, in the winter time, you don’t know if you’re going to get to Juneau and back.”

Many see it differently. Critics have argued the road would be extremely costly to build and maintain, in part because each version that’s been proposed over the years would have required new bridges, ferry terminals and shuttles. State officials estimated that the version that died in 2016 would have cost upwards of $570 million.

That hasn’t changed this time around. Dapcevich, of the Transportation Department, said the new study will focus on a west-side road that would need a ferry across Lynn Canal near Juneau and bridge across the Chilkat River near Haines. Another possibility would be to extend the road further, roughly 25 miles past Haines, where it could connect with Chilkat Lake Road near Mosquito Lake. That route would require a bridge across the Tsirku River.

Maggie Rabb, the executive director of Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, said she’s interested to see the proposal.

“I’m very skeptical that they’re going to learn anything new, other than the price has gone up significantly in the last decade, and the potential environmental impacts have not gone down,” Rabb said. “But we’ll spend money to confirm that, apparently.”

Others say the money put toward the study and potentially the road would be better spent on fixing the ferry system itself.

“The road that’s made out of water works year-round. And it costs us nothing to build, nothing to maintain, nothing to pave, nothing to plow,” said Haines Mayor Tom Morphet. “If you just stop and think about it for about 10 minutes, the economics become pretty clear.”

The state will accept bids through March 25 from consulting firms interested in conducting the study, according to an agency document.

Correction: An earlier version of this story excluded a second route the road could take. The study will focus on a road that would require a bridge across either the Chilkat River or Tsirku River near Haines. A typo was also corrected in Dapcevich’s first quote. 

Alaska’s state development agency is ending a two-decade partnership with the operator of the Ketchikan Shipyard, throwing into question the future of the multimillion-dollar state facility.

The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority notified Vigor Alaska last week that it would not exercise the final ten-year extension to its public-private partnership with the company. AIDEA cited poor performance by the operator as its reason for ending the agreement in a four-page letter to Vigor dated February 28.

“After reviewing Vigor’s long-term economic performance, projections, extensive studies, repair budgets, and other documentation relating to the Shipyard, AIDEA has reasonably determined that Vigor has not demonstrated its ability to fully utilize all of the Shipyard’s economic capabilities,” AIDEA Executive Director Randy Ruaro wrote. He also cited “inadequate” contributions to a repairs and maintenance account.

Vigor’s agreement with AIDEA will expire at the end of November, though Ruaro said AIDEA was “willing to discuss” extending the end date to March 1, 2026.

Ruaro and AIDEA’s deputy director did not respond to interview requests. The Ketchkan Shipyard is one of six projects the agency owns outright. The federal and state governments have spent a combined $80.1 million on the facility, according to AIDEA.

Vigor took over operations when it acquired Alaska Ship & Drydock in 2012, later overseeing construction of the state’s two so-called Alaska Class ferries, the Hubbard and the Tazlina. The yard also maintained state, local and federal government vessels.

The news came as a surprise to Vigor, a spokesperson said in a statement.

“AIDEA’s unexpected announcement impacts nearly 100 family-wage jobs in Ketchikan, with no clear understanding of who might take over or whether the facility will even continue to operate as a shipyard,” Vigor Public Affairs Director Benton Strong wrote.

Local officials in Ketchikan say the news took them by surprise, too — but they say tensions between AIDEA and Vigor have been simmering for some time.

“There’s been a lot of conversation over the years about the performance from the yard,” Rep. Jeremy Bynum, R-Ketchikan, said in an interview.

The AIDEA letter cites declining employment at the shipyard as evidence the facility was operating below its full potential. Despite what the agency describes as an “uptick” in staffing last year, over the past decade, the number of full-time jobs at the yard dropped from more than 150 in the mid-2010s, while the Tazlina and Hubbard were under construction, to less than 80 in the early 2020s, according to the letter.

“Halving the number of jobs at the Shipyard over a decade is strong evidence that Vigor is not fully utilizing the Shipyard’s economic capabilities,” Ruaro wrote.

AIDEA also takes issue with the shipyard’s poor financial performance and large maintenance and rehabilitation backlog, according to the letter. The agency says it has seen a payment in only two of the nine years that a profit-sharing agreement has been in place, despite what Ruaro called “significant tax and utility subsidies, and a major advantage in the structure of the Agreement itself.”

Still, Vigor argues it did a better job running the yard than any operator before it.

“Vigor has been a strong operator of the Ketchikan Shipyard, investing millions in the facility, employing more people and generating more revenue than any previous operator, and triggering profit-sharing with AIDEA for the first time in the yard’s history,” said Strong, the Vigor spokesperson.

What the future holds for the shipyard, a major employer in Ketchikan and the only facility of its kind in Southeast Alaska, is uncertain. Ketchikan Gateway Borough Mayor Rodney Dial said in a phone interview he hoped to “make the best of a bad situation.”

“We’ll do everything we can to assure there’s an orderly transition and that the jobs are protected,” Dial said. “We’ll also push for whoever comes in behind Vigor to really have a plan to expand that facility and maximize its use and return on investment for the community.”

Whether nine months — or a year, if the agreement is extended — is enough time to find a new operator to take over the industrial facility is unclear. But Doug Ward, a former Vigor Alaska executive who worked to expand the facility and is the namesake of the shipyard’s assembly hall, said in a phone interview that he’s optimistic a new operator will be able to take over the facility without a significant interruption to the shipyard’s operations.

“We have some very capable operators in the state that are Alaska businesses and would make outstanding operators of the Ketchikan Shipyard,” he said.