Alaska ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ the Knik Arm Crossing Project, Still on the Table
28th September 2011
In the 2008 presidential campaign, two projects in Alaska were ridiculed as examples of pork-barrel spending. Each sought more than $200 million from Washington to build a bridge to a sparsely populated area with light traffic. In the end, neither received earmarked federal funding.
But the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, or KABATA — the group behind a bridge project that would link Anchorage to a peninsula nearby — is still wooing private investors and trying to pry loose a considerable amount of state financial backing. And more than $50 million it has spent on promotion has been federal money.
Although earmarks for the bridge were eliminated, some of the redirected federal money has still made its way to the bridge authority for research and promotion.
(Emphasis added)