Lynn Canal Highway

The Lynn Canal Highway, or Juneau Access Road, is a proposed road between Skagway and City and Borough of Juneau, the capital of the U.S. state of Alaska. Such a road, if built, would still require ferry access to connect Juneau to the Alaskan highway network. The new road would be 47.9 miles long, built at a cost of $574 million, and be a part of Alaska Route 7. The plan of the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF) called for extending "The Road" northward from Juneau to a ferry terminal 18 miles south of Skagway. The corridor crosses Berners Bay LUD II which is a congressionally designated roadless area created by the Tongass Timber Reform Act (TTRA). The act permits crossing LUD IIs when the governor of the State of Alaska designates routes as essential transportation corridors. The proposed road skirts the shore of a northwestern section of Alaska's Inside Passage, which was recently named a National Scenic Waterway. As of 2017, the project has been indefinitely shelved due to the state's budget crisis.

Juneau has been served by the Alaska Marine Highway ferry system since 1959. In 1987, citing "more than 15 years" of project work, Alaska senator Jim Duncan won federal funding to study nine options that would provide road or road/ferry access to Juneau. The previous year's Southeast Transportation Plan had cited prices ranging from $231.5 million to $440 million, with annual costs from $2.1 million to $12 million, depending mostly on the length of the road.

Starting in the early 1990s, the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF) initiated the Juneau Access Improvements Project, intended to improve surface access between Juneau and communities further north. Because of the proposed routing, DOT&PF needed to obtain approvals and permits from several federal agencies and obtain an environmental impact statement. A draft of this report was issued in 1997 followed by a period of public comment and analysis. This process was halted in 2000 by former governor Tony Knowles due to the high costs of the project. The next governor, Frank Murkowski, ordered the completion of the environmental impact statement in 2002, resulting in a supplemental draft EIS in January 2005 which was finalized in January 2006.

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