Traffic Patterns Of Summer Travelers Over The Alcan May Change Due To Ore Trucks On The Highways
NEWS FROM THE ROADS ORE TRUCKS ON THE ALCAN, UPPER RICHARDSON & STEESE HIGHWAYS A Kinross-style truck (Photo from Alaska Safe Highways...
https://www.countryjournal2020.com/2023/10/traffic-patterns-of-summer-travelers.html
NEWS FROM THE ROADS
ORE TRUCKS ON THE ALCAN, UPPER RICHARDSON & STEESE HIGHWAYS
A Kinross-style truck (Photo from Alaska Safe Highways Website)
95-Foot Long Trucks To Travel Every 12 Minutes, 24 Hours A Day, Year-Round, Over 250 Miles Of Road… For 5 Years
TRUCKS TO TRAVEL THROUGH TOK, DELTA, SALCHA, NORTH POLE, & UP THE STREETS OF FAIRBANKS TO FOX
Changing Tourist Traffic Patterns
The road to Fairbanks from the Canada border may soon seem quite different once oversize ore trucks begin hauling gold ore round-the-clock from the new Manh Choh Mine in Tetlin to the Fort Knox gold mill north of Fairbanks.
The trucks are due to begin rolling 24-hours a day in the next few months. These are no ordinary trucks. Each truck is as long as a 737 jetliner.
The Manh Choh Mine near Tok on Tetlin Native land is operated by a Canadian mining company, Kinross.
The Ore Truck Route To keep their costs down, Kinross wants to mill Tetlin's gold ore at their Fort Knox Mine north of Fairbanks, 250 miles from the Manh Choh mine. The ore route travels over the highway corridor serving all the major tourist towns of Eastern Alaska north of the Denali Highway.
These include… • Tok (“Mainstreet Alaska” — the welcoming town to inbound travelers)• Delta Junction (“The Friendly Frontier” with its historic roadhouses and huge farms) • Salcha (the jumping off point to northern river travel with a boat launch ramp) • North Pole (where Santa lives in the summer)• Fairbanks (the “Golden Heart City" full of old buildings, small museums, riverboats, and Pioneer Park), and • Fox (home of Gold Dredge #8)
The debate over the trucks is heated. For some, dispatching a double ore truck every 12 minutes over wilderness roads to Fairbanks is no big deal. But a sizable number of people have been writing the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, worrying that the ore trucks will hurt the asphalt and the five bridges they will cross – including several bridges that are 80 years old. They also fret that locals in outlying communities, driving back and forth to Fairbanks with 52-wheelers coming at them in both directions will be endangered as they head to town to go shopping, on sports trips, or for business or medical care.
Trucks May Change Tourism Traffic Patterns If critics are right, and the ore trucks are dangerously intimidating, what changes might happen in tourist travel patterns on Alaska’s primary inbound route?
Will travelers coming in from the border decide to head south from Tok or Delta Junction to escape traveling with them? If so, this could shift the Copper Valley to become the first leg of their Alaskan trip instead of the last.
The ore trucks may also affect Fairbanks residents headed to a weekend of dipnetting in Chitina or fishing in Valdez. Both towns are key summer recreation destinations for Fairbanks sportsmen; the ore trucks will be traveling along with them for 95 miles of highway between Fairbanks and Delta.
It’s not just RVs and sportsmen who use the Alcan route from Tetlin to Fairbanks. Many tourism bus lines also travel the Alcan and Upper Richardson.
Impact On Downtown Fairbanks
Meanwhile, the trucks could affect Fairbanks itself. The ore run comes into town, up Peger Road. It crosses Airport Way, Fairbanks’ major city street, and goes past historic Pioneer Park. Then it turns onto the Johansen Expressway to the Steese Highway before heading to the Fort Knox Mill.
Current Governor Mike Dunleavy strongly supports the ore trucks. “I need Alaska to say yes to everything,.. There's too much ‘no’," Dunleavy has said. "No trucks on the road from Tetlin to Fort Knox, no West Susitna Access Road, no Ambler Road, no King Cove Road. No timber, no logging in the Tongass. No this, no that.”
Former Governor Frank Murkowski, who has a very long history of promoting mining in Alaska, sees the trucks on the road not as a mining issue, but a safety and infrastructure issue. In both the Anchorage Daily News and the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, Murkowski, in a piece entitled “Avoiding a highway disaster,” questions the wisdom of turning a “huge section” of Alaska’s only “permanent route to Canada and the rest of the world… into a mining haul road for a private corporation.”
In Fairbanks, citizen groups who oppose what they see as the overtaking of the public highways for commercial purposes by a non-American company are engaged in a war of words against people who think the trucks will not be a problem.
If the trucks are allowed to go through on Alaska's northern highways, tourism in roadside communities will not be the same.
SEE EARLIER JOURNAL STORY:
NEWS FROM THE ROADS
ORE TRUCKS ON THE ALCAN, UPPER RICHARDSON & STEESE HIGHWAYS
 |
| A Kinross-style truck (Photo from Alaska Safe Highways Website) |
95-Foot Long Trucks To Travel Every 12 Minutes, 24 Hours A Day, Year-Round, Over 250 Miles Of Road… For 5 Years
TRUCKS TO TRAVEL THROUGH TOK, DELTA, SALCHA, NORTH POLE, & UP THE STREETS OF FAIRBANKS TO FOX
Changing Tourist Traffic Patterns
The road to Fairbanks from the Canada border may soon seem quite different once oversize ore trucks begin hauling gold ore round-the-clock from the new Manh Choh Mine in Tetlin to the Fort Knox gold mill north of Fairbanks.
The trucks are due to begin rolling 24-hours a day in the next few months. These are no ordinary trucks. Each truck is as long as a 737 jetliner.
The Manh Choh Mine near Tok on Tetlin Native land is operated by a Canadian mining company, Kinross.
The Ore Truck Route
To keep their costs down, Kinross wants to mill Tetlin's gold ore at their Fort Knox Mine north of Fairbanks, 250 miles from the Manh Choh mine. The ore route travels over the highway corridor serving all the major tourist towns of Eastern Alaska north of the Denali Highway.
These include…
• Tok (“Mainstreet Alaska” — the welcoming town to inbound travelers)
• Delta Junction (“The Friendly Frontier” with its historic roadhouses and huge farms)
• Salcha (the jumping off point to northern river travel with a boat launch ramp)
• North Pole (where Santa lives in the summer)
• Fairbanks (the “Golden Heart City" full of old buildings, small museums, riverboats, and Pioneer Park), and
• Fox (home of Gold Dredge #8)
The debate over the trucks is heated. For some, dispatching a double ore truck every 12 minutes over wilderness roads to Fairbanks is no big deal. But a sizable number of people have been writing the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, worrying that the ore trucks will hurt the asphalt and the five bridges they will cross – including several bridges that are 80 years old. They also fret that locals in outlying communities, driving back and forth to Fairbanks with 52-wheelers coming at them in both directions will be endangered as they head to town to go shopping, on sports trips, or for business or medical care.
Trucks May Change Tourism Traffic Patterns
If critics are right, and the ore trucks are dangerously intimidating, what changes might happen in tourist travel patterns on Alaska’s primary inbound route?
Will travelers coming in from the border decide to head south from Tok or Delta Junction to escape traveling with them? If so, this could shift the Copper Valley to become the first leg of their Alaskan trip instead of the last.
The ore trucks may also affect Fairbanks residents headed to a weekend of dipnetting in Chitina or fishing in Valdez. Both towns are key summer recreation destinations for Fairbanks sportsmen; the ore trucks will be traveling along with them for 95 miles of highway between Fairbanks and Delta.
It’s not just RVs and sportsmen who use the Alcan route from Tetlin to Fairbanks. Many tourism bus lines also travel the Alcan and Upper Richardson.
Impact On Downtown Fairbanks
Meanwhile, the trucks could affect Fairbanks itself. The ore run comes into town, up Peger Road. It crosses Airport Way, Fairbanks’ major city street, and goes past historic Pioneer Park. Then it turns onto the Johansen Expressway to the Steese Highway before heading to the Fort Knox Mill.
Current Governor Mike Dunleavy strongly supports the ore trucks. “I need Alaska to say yes to everything,.. There's too much ‘no’," Dunleavy has said. "No trucks on the road from Tetlin to Fort Knox, no West Susitna Access Road, no Ambler Road, no King Cove Road. No timber, no logging in the Tongass. No this, no that.”
Former Governor Frank Murkowski, who has a very long history of promoting mining in Alaska, sees the trucks on the road not as a mining issue, but a safety and infrastructure issue. In both the Anchorage Daily News and the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, Murkowski, in a piece entitled “Avoiding a highway disaster,” questions the wisdom of turning a “huge section” of Alaska’s only “permanent route to Canada and the rest of the world… into a mining haul road for a private corporation.”
In Fairbanks, citizen groups who oppose what they see as the overtaking of the public highways for commercial purposes by a non-American company are engaged in a war of words against people who think the trucks will not be a problem.
If the trucks are allowed to go through on Alaska's northern highways, tourism in roadside communities will not be the same.
SEE EARLIER JOURNAL STORY:
