Alaska town opens Palin's $25m 'road to nowhere'

JUNEAU, Alaska - Alaska now has a Road to Nowhere going to what would have been the Bridge to Nowhere.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's transportation department has completed a $25 million gravel road leading to the site of a bridge that Palin, as John McCain's vice presidential candidate, now boasts that she stopped, so as to save taxpayers money. The road was built with federal tax dollars.

Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein said the 3.2-mile road will be useful for road races, hunters and possibly future development. But with no bridge to serve it, that's probably about it.

"I think it will be good for recreational things like a 5K and a 10K," Weinstein said. "And instead of people walking through brush, it may be used for hunting in the area."

Palin repeatedly tells campaign crowds she said "thanks but no thanks" to Washington when it came up with $400 million for a bridge linking Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport. In fact, she turned against the bridge only after it became a national symbol of wasteful spending and Washington had backed off financing the project.

Roger Wetherell, speaking for the state Transportation Department, said the road opened several days ago might someday get people to and from Gravina Island after all, if cheaper designs for a bridge become a reality. Meantime, it opens access to land development, he said.

McCain opposes the pet projects that lawmakers in Washington wring out of the federal budget for their constituents in the form of special spending, or earmarks. He's railed for years against the bridge, doing more than anyone to make the nickname Bridge to Nowhere stick. And as his running mate, Palin talks about how she killed the bridge project and "championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress."

She supported the bridge during her campaign for governor in 2006, then pulled back state money for it a year later, after Washington had pulled the plug.

Alaska received about half the bridge money anyway, on condition it be used for other things. Palin's predecessor and the Legislature redirected all but $60 million in 2006 to other projects, and Palin has left the remainder untouched, to be used eventually to improve access to the island, her spokeswoman has said.

The airport is separated from its users by a quarter-mile-wide channel of water, forcing travelers to catch either a ferry or a water taxi for a 15-minute ride. Ketchikan, seven blocks wide and eight miles long, is Alaska's entry port for northbound cruise ships that bring more than 1 million visitors yearly.