My wife and I moved to Anchorage last June to attend the University of Alaska Anchorage. While we quickly grew to love it here, it’s shocking how dangerous our streets can be for pedestrians.
Data from the Municipality of Anchorage Traffic Department indicates that, since 2000, Anchorage drivers have killed 164 pedestrians. Is that the drivers’ fault? I don’t think so. It’s the fault of outdated city planning, anticipating some sort of 1950s car-based utopia that never materialized. Recent news about more deaths highlights these issues again.
At UAA, by far the No. 1 complaint among students is how much of a food desert the U-Med area is. More importantly for UAA and Anchorage, and with Alaska’s crisis of population loss, several students who came here from out of state have told me that while they love Alaska, they have seriously considered not coming here because of how cardependent Anchorage is.
How many students has Anchorage lost because our city is too car-dependent? How many future residents has Alaska lost because of our outdated street designs?
These issues cost us lives, students, and quality of life. For the sake of Alaska’s future economic sustainability, we have to fix the way our city is built.
— Louis Jovanovich
Anchorage
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