Alaska: Dalton Highway Reconstruction

A Lonely Road to a Critical Destination

Challenge: In the Lower 48, it’s Old Man Winter who reeks the most damage to roads, with salt, brine and freezing temperatures leaving many highways pockmarked. But in Alaska it’s not cold weather but rather a warming climate that’s damaging a route critical to Alaska natives and America’s energy security. Located on Alaska’s North Slope, the Dalton Highway between Mileposts 289 and 305 is a supply route to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. But it’s falling apart in a unique way, as rising rivers and a continuously melting permafrost undermine the highway’s foundation, sinking and sliding long stretches of the route, closing it for long periods, and otherwise making it too dangerous for heavy supply trucks to use. 

Solution: Raise the highway! With assistance from $74.5 million from in 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) highway formula funds, the Dalton Highway is in the midst of a literal facelift. Alaska’s Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is elevating the sunken road grade so it’s once again above the surrounding permafrost, which reduce frequency of snow drifts. It’s also replacing the route’s failing culverts and filling in ponding areas. But with weather interruptions, it’s a challenging task.    

What they’re saying: Interviewed by the Dec. 21, 2021 edition of Inside Climate News, Larry Persily, a former federal coordinator for Alaska gas projects, described the symbiotic relationship between the roadway and the Alaska Pipleine: “They are inexorably linked at the hip; not just at the hip but hundreds of miles of the hip. The interior of Alaska’s climate is changing, and those changes are felt equally by the highway and pipeline.”