Win Gruening, in his October ‘My Turn,’ praised Norway’s E39 highway modernization as a prime example to guide Alaskans to support Juneau Access (The Road). Puzzlingly, he overlooks some salient facts.
E39 is about 1,300 miles long, has nine ferry crossings (with five charging fees), nine toll stations, access to a central corridor of north-south roads. Additionally, Norway has a supplementing rail system connecting all major cities: Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, etc., as well as strategic international routes connecting with Sweden. Indeed, the modernization to improve an already existing route deserves some applause, albeit reserved, inasmuch as it upgrades and supplements access for over 1.3 million people (about 40 times the population of those Southeast Alaska communities impacted by Juneau Access).
Not so puzzling is Mr. Gruening’s omission of cost per mile of the E39 improvements. Norway’s Prime Minister Olberg, as cited by Gruening, states “…where the road goes, it will give economic injections.” Norway’s capital, Oslo, now ranks as the most expensive transit system per passenger boarding in all of Europe; it’s apparently easier to collect and redistribute taxpayers’ money where there’s authoritarian governmental control.
Diana Kelm,
Haines