JUNEAU, Alaska — Little more than a week after criticizing the Alaska Railroad because it has “not built one single mile of track” in more than 40 years of state ownership, a state legislator has proposed giving the railroad a way to do just that.
An amendment introduced Rep. Kevin McCabe (R-Big Lake) would allow the Alaska Railroad Corp. to issue $58 million in revenue bonds to finance a 32-mile spur to reach Port MacKenzie, a deepwater port near Anchorage currently accessible only by road, reports the Mat-Su Frontiersman of Wasilla, Alaska. The amended version of HB122, introduced to allow the Alaska Railroad Corp. to issue bonds for a cruise ship dock in Seward, also would allow the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority to finance up to $300 million for infrastructure to support mining.
McCabe’s criticism of the railroad — and an accompanying statement that rail access to the port was essential — came in a March 21 Transportation Committee meeting on a bill proposing that the state sell the railroad [see “Bill seeks privatization of Alaska Railroad,” Trains News Wire, March 25, 2024]. The Frontiersman reports that McCabe’s amendment caught other legislators by surprise, including the original sponsor of HB 122, Rep. Frank Thomaszewski (R-Fairbanks), who said he would seek to remove the mining language when the bill reaches the House Finance Committee.
Plans for the Port MacKenzie spur have been laid out for more than a decade, as outlined here, and portions of the right-of-way have been graded. A 2020 Alaska Railroad document estimated the total cost of the spur at $314 million.
Lets face it, the Port of Anchorage is land locked. With JB Elmendorf-Richardson blocking any expansion of the port, Alaska will need a newer, better deep water freight port.
Port MacKenzie is directly across the bay from Anchorage, provides way more opportunities for growth for expanding Alaska exports. But moving the port takes jobs out of Anchorage, which I am sure has some bearing on the politics of the matter.
The choice is what is best long term for Alaska, or best short term for Anchorage.
The state of Alaska better be careful . First question what is its OR? Suspect it may be over 100. Sale would be ripe for another activist investor to milk the assets dry. Sale would be a disaster IMO for the necessary passenger service. Alaska needs to observe what happened in the UK with BR going private and now going back to mostly government owned,
It’s stories/situations like this that suggest to me the privatization of the Alaska Railroad is LONG overdue. While certainly conceding Mr. Bentz’s point above regarding traffic potential of a Port MacKenzie spur, if this legislator proposing this idea is unhappy about the Alaska Railroad not having “laid one mile of track in the last 40-years …..” Well, when your master is the Alaska Legislature (and Governor, and ultimately the residents of the State of Alaska), commercial business decisions can’t be made in an expeditious manner.
Yes, the Alaska Railroad is a rather unique operation with both passenger and freight services (and the passenger services mostly, but not entirely, seasonal due to summer tourism), nonetheless it would still seem that a private, commercial firm could do a better job of running the railroad than the Alaska legislature.
It will be interesting to see if the proposed legislation to study the privatization of the Alaska Railroad (and issue RFPs?) gets any traction/moves forward.
When will commuter service to the Anchorage Airport (LONG talked about) finally start having serious work done?
As I recall, part of the reason the line hasn’t been completed is because no one’s identified a source of traffic to actually ship out of Port MacKenzie. Whatever traffic was expected hadn’t materialized when the project stopped. Has that changed?
I think McCabe is saying that the revenue stream (Passenger Steamships) can’t begin until the line and a dock is built so it can be used. Of course this also assumes that any improvements would benefit Mr. McCabe’s district…