a federally funded study of options<\/a>.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\tThat in itself was enough for some residents to show up at Monday’s open house.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I was wondering why they’re starting all over again,” said Jim Baumgartner, who’s been following the debate for the past 15 years. He said his curiosity was satisfied by learning a new planning method is being used, but his opinion about a second crossing remains steadfast.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I’m in favor of it,” he said. “Any time we have an accident near the hospital it isn’t good for the traffic situation.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Some advocates said Monday they’re hopeful now might actually be the time a crossing option is selected and built, due to the availability of federal infrastructure funds.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“This is as close as we’ve been in 30 years,” said Maggie McMillan, executive director of the Greater Juneau Chamber of Commerce, which has long endorsed a second crossing as a priority project for the city.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
But there’s also concern picking an option such as a tunnel near the airport or extended-length bridge at Fritz Cove could stretch the planning and construction of a crossing out for many more years.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“I’ve been waiting 30 years for this,” said Robin Paul, a retired state and private industry resident. “Anything that massive or intense, and I won’t be here to drive on it.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Juneau Mayor Beth Weldon said she sees favorable arguments for the Fritz Cove crossing, including endpoints for the bridge that are on city property that can be developed.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Once you get too far south you’re not doing what we want to do, which is a large (road system) circle and not a small circle,” she said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Proposed subsurface route by runway, long bridge across path of incoming planes may be short-lived <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":868,"featured_media":93621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[765,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-93620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-city-and-borough-of-juneau","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/868"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93620"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=93620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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